Ethereum will undergo an upgrade this Saturday, and developers unanimously agree to delay the launch of the difficulty bomb

Editor's Note: This article comes fromBabbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc)Editor's Note: This article comes from

, author: Trustnodes, compilation: Libert, released with authorization.

Image source: visualhunt

According to a report from Trustnodes on December 1, Ethereum will undergo the Istanbul Gas Upgrade (Istanbul Gas Upgrade) this Saturday, and developers have agreed to carry out an emergency hard fork within a few weeks after the upgrade.

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Image source: visualhunt

In the last public meeting on Ethereum, all developers and other non-developer attendees (such as marketers or miners) agreed to delay launching the difficulty bomb.

The meeting discussed whether to completely remove or delay the launch of the difficulty bomb. Alexey Akhunov, an ethereum developer working on the rental fee (Rent fee), said:

“So far, the risk/reward ratio of using the difficulty bomb is not high.”

Eric Conner, the marketer for Gnosis, an Augur-like dapp, is against removing the difficulty bomb entirely because he believes there could be “community” resistance if it were removed.

But no one objected to delaying the launch. In a discussion about inflationary issuance, Tim Beiko of PegaSys, the protocol engineering arm of ConsenSys, which works on ethereum client development, said:

“I would say this will be the first time the ethereum community has resisted the difficulty bomb without changing the issuance.”

James Hancock, who calls himself the HardFork Coordinator, said:

The question of why the hash rate fell was not discussed by the participants, as the answer seemed obvious, that is, the price of Ethereum fell, and the price is affected by supply and demand.

As the issuance of Ethereum continues to increase, demand must grow at the same rate to keep the price stable. If the demand remains steady, then the price will drop and therefore the hash rate will drop. If demand also falls, there is a chance that the price will double down.

At present, the price of Ethereum has dropped by 90% from the highest point, but its hash rate has not yet been halved.

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November 2019 Ethereum Hash Rate Chart

This means that Ethereum has paid a lot to ensure the security of the network. If you compare the price, the hash rate still has 40% room to drop, so it can still be said that it will still pay more.

However, the “consensus” among developers, marketers, and miners participating in this discussion seems to be to quickly remove the increase in algorithmic difficulty without touching the distribution.

Parity's Wei Tang said:

"For Parity, bomb delays, bomb cancellations, or reward changes are all simple json configuration changes, so I think we should be able to deploy it in a short time."

Hudson Jameson, the Ethereum Foundation employee responsible for Ethereum developer public relations, said:

“I support the idea of ​​launching in mid-January. Because by then we will have enough time to update the nodes regardless of their current status.”

At the latest meeting this year, Hudson Jameson also stated that due to the Christmas holiday, 12 copies could not be implemented, so the fork to reduce issuance had to be pushed to the end of February as originally planned.

Now that the ethereum protocol itself is reducing inflation, the holidays are coming, any testnets can be spared, audits can be spared. Who cares if a node is upgraded? As long as it is fast, the developers are tasked with rolling out the PoS chain now because of the "urgent situation".

The developers held a conference call to discuss all of this, but we don't know exactly what they discussed, as apparently someone felt there were some "technical issues" and there wasn't enough time.

But developers appear eager to shake off any pressure from time and seek to smooth out the fall in inflation ahead of Bitcoin's halving next May.