Ethereum’s Constantinople Ready For January Release, Devs Say
It seems that the long-awaited Constantinople hard fork on the Ethereum network will be taking place the next month. The decision has been taken by Ethereum (ETH) core developers that agreed on the date of the launch. The hard fork will occur at block 7,080,000. The decision has been discussed during a meeting a few days ago.
Constantinople Hard Fork to Take Place in January
Ethereum developers took the decision to upgrade Ethereum’s network on January 2019. This is something that the whole Ethereum community has been waiting for. The decision was taken following the decision to delay Constantinople’s hard fork due to a consensus issue back in October.
There are five different separate Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) for the upcoming hard fork. The main intention is to transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. The current system is not energy-efficient and PoS could offer a better system for protecting the whole Ethereum network.
With the activation of this new upgrade, the network might change completely. Synchronous nodes will update to the entire system.
Ethereum is one of the largest virtual currencies in the market. It offers users and developers the possibility to create smart contracts that run on top of the network. At the same time, Ethereum features its own virtual currency known as Ether (ETH). Furthermore, projects and developers can also launch their own tokens and networks on top of Ethereum.
Earlier this year, hundreds of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were launched. Other projects based on this network were also created. This is why Ethereum experienced scaling issues. A transaction could take hours to be processed and the fees were also higher than usual. At the same time, due to the bear market in the cryptocurrency industry, projects and ICOs decided to sell the ETH gathered to continue with their operations.
ETH is currently the third virtual currency in terms of market capitalization with $9.44 billion. Each ETH can be purchased for $91. Earlier this year, the virtual currency reached almost $1,400. With the latest upgrade, there are some analysts that believe that the network could experience a new price increase.
Other networks such as Tron (TRX) and EOS (EOS) are also growing in the crypto space offering similar services as Ethereum.
