Posts Tagged ‘Istanbul’

Ethereum’s Istanbul Hard Fork Phase One is on December 7th

4, Dec 2019

Just a reminder that on December 7th, at block number 9069000, Ethereum (ETH) will execute the first phase of its Istanbul hard fork (a little more than 19000 blocks as of writing this). Earlier the hard fork was scheduled to happen today on 4th of December at block 9056000, but the date has been pushed back a bit. The second phase of the hard fork is scheduled for early 2020, though no exact date has been announced yet. The first phase of the Istanbul hard fork is not going to be changing anything related to the PoW mining algorithm hat the project uses at the moment, after the fork Ethereum will still be mined using the Ethash algorithm. The second phase for early next year though will bring a change in the mining algorithm from Ethash to the ProgPow algorithm, rendering the current Ethash ASIC miners useless for Ethereum mining (there are other Ethash cryptos out there though). To see the list of EIPs included in the fork (Ethereum Improvement Proposals). Make sure you upgrade your Ethereum local node if you are running one before the fork occurs in order to avoid possible problems.

– To check the time left before Ethereum (ETH) hard forks next at block 9069000…

Ethereum’s Istanbul Hard Fork to Start on December 4th

8, Nov 2019

The first phase of Ethereum’s next major hard fork is planned to happen on less than a month around December 4th at block number 9056000. The hard fork called Istanbul is divided in two parts with the first one to be executed on December 4th and the second one planned for early 2020. The next hard fork called Serenity that will bring Ethereum 2.0 and switch the project from PoW to PoS may or may not happen before the end of 2020, so there is still time for that. Is is worth mentioning that on December 4th Ethereum (ETH) will not be switching its mining algorithm from Ethash to the much anticipated and still somewhat controversial ProgPoW as this is still planned to happen in the second Istanbul phase with the EIP-1057 scheduled for the first quarter of 2020.

If you are still mining Ethereum with ASIC miners or GPUs and the Ethash algorithm you will have more than just a month left, it could easily take up to another 6 months for ProgPoW to replace Ethash as the PoW algorithm, though it can also happen faster than that. Nevertheless this can signal the upcoming death of ETH ASIC miners as although there are a number of other projects using the Ethash algorithm, they will most likely not be able to handle the massive hashrate outflow from Ethereum if/when it forks to ProgPoW. On the other hand ProgPoW can also bring a change in the way GPUs are being used for mining as it is supposed to provide a more level playing field for the different GPUs in terms of mining performance. So definitely Ethereum’s upcoming hard forks will have a serious impact on the crypto mining sector.


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