January 3rd, 2020 at 2:26 pm // News
Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, will update its software in another hard fork. Although the price of the cryptocurrency has gone down, the Ethereum community has not been affected by the drop in the price of the asset. In this article, we will review the result of the next update on the Ethereum network for normal use of the cryptocurrency.
The next Ethereum software update
The most immediate update in the Ethereum network is planned for mid-January 2020. The update, also known as the muir Glacier update on the Ethereum network, will apply the EIP 2384 algorithm to the network. The new EIP 2384 software is expected to increase the network’s ice age by delaying the network’s difficulty mechanism.
The update is designed to maintain an average block time by taking advantage of the mining difficulty algorithm that produces a block of ethers. After the update is applied, the Ethereum network difficulty bomb will be added to the new algorithm every 100,000 blocks until the algorithm freezes.
The EIP update was first experienced at the 8.6m block, which took place around October 2019. The update resulted in an increase in the block time from around 13 to 14.3 seconds. Ethereum Expert announced that if this new update were not rolled out, the block time would be 30 seconds through February 2020, suggesting that the network would be significantly slowed down.
How will this update affect regular Ethereum users?
According to Ethereum experts, the hard fork will delay the difficulty bomb by another 4 million blocks, which will be mined in about 610 days. This means that the blockchain would be back at 20-second block times by the middle of this year.
Currently, the Ethereum network has an influx in the number of users. Due to the high number of users, the network has more decentralized applications and intelligent contracts than ever before. The Ethereum development team found it necessary to delay the difficulty variation algorithm and keep the block time constant.
In the meantime, after the new fork has been applied, the Ethereum PoW algorithm will be rendered unusable and the new PoS algorithm will be patched into the Ethereum network.
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