As we all know, the biggest problem facing Ethereum today is its own scalability problem, especially after gambling games became popular, the congestion of Ethereum has been difficult to alleviate for a long time.
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What is "Constantinople Hard Fork"?
According to the overall development plan announced by Ethereum, the release of Ethereum is divided into four stages, namely Frontier (frontier), Homestead (home), Metropolis (metropolis) and Serenity (tranquility).
The first stage is Frontier. This stage started in July 2015, and it is also the initial experimental stage of Ethereum. The software at this stage is immature, with only a command line interface and no graphical interface. You need to be very proficient in the entire Ethereum model. Mastered very well. But it is still possible to carry out basic mining, learning, and experimentation.
After the system began to operate, it attracted many people to participate in the development. As an application platform, Ethereum has been developing decentralized applications on it to realize its own value. During this process, Ethereum has accumulated popularity and its value has also been improved. .
The second phase is Homestead. This stage follows the frontier stage, and is the first official product release version of Ethereum, 100% adopts the PoW mechanism, and the frontier also uses the command line interface, without a graphical interface. In addition to the increase in computing power, the difficulty of mining has also added a difficulty bomb, which will increase the difficulty of mining geometrically.
Phase III Metropolis (Metropolis). This is a special stage because it is divided into two parts, Byzantium and Constantinople. More precisely we are now in the Byzantine phase of the metropolis, which will move towards Constantinople.
In the Byzantine phase, Ethereum introduced a graphical interface that allows non-technical users to use it easily. This is the Mist browser. So far, Ethereum has been using the Pow mechanism, and the upcoming "Constantinople" will introduce the PoS mechanism for the first time, paving the way for the full PoS mechanism in the fourth stage, which will inevitably reduce the miners' income.
The fourth stage is Serenity. This stage will completely abandon the PoW mechanism, and the Ethereum network will no longer need miners to mine. As for when this stage will come, it is unknown.
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Can the hard fork usher in "Ethereum 2.0"?
After the announcement of the hard fork, many media began to hype that "Ethereum 2.0 is finally coming". The transaction processing speed of Ethereum will be greatly improved, and the output of Ethereum will be reduced at the same time, which will eventually drive the price of ETH to rise sharply.
Ethereum 2.0 is called A Sharded PoS Ethereum 2.0. According to the description of the latest architecture of Ethereum 2.0 by Ethereum core developer Hsiao-Wei Wang, Ethereum 2.0 is mainly divided into four layers:
Shard chain: as a data layer, it only contains data consensus;
Beacon chain: mainly used as a random number generator, including selecting block proposers, selecting fair committees, etc.;
Shard chain: as a data layer, it only contains data consensus;
Virtual machine: Provides state execution results, as well as an Ethereum-style virtual machine eWASM.
Compared with Hsiao-Wei Wang's previous PPT document, the first-layer main chain of the Ethereum 2.0 architecture has changed from "PoW Main Chain" (PoW main chain) to "Main Chain", and the description has been revised to "provides staking".
This may indicate that the PoW and PoS coexistence architecture originally designed by Ethereum 2.0 was finally transformed into a pure PoS architecture in the adjustment of developers, that is, the main chain, beacon chain, and shard chain all use the PoS consensus mechanism, which means that Ethereum 2.0 will Really abandon the PoW consensus mechanism.
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Hard fork drives ETH to soar
Between November and December 2018, the price of ETH suffered a sharp drop, with ETH dropping 61% from $220 to less than $85. On January 2, 2019, the market value of ETH surpassed XRP and returned to the second place. The price of ETH has increased by 80% in the past 30 days, and as of press time, the price of ETH is hovering around $150.
And observing other mainstream currencies, both the market and EOS have been driven by ETH, and there has been a wave of good growth.
Economic analysts believe that the price increase of ETH is related to two factors: the resurgence of panic selling and the upcoming Constantinople hard fork.
After the sudden drop in price, many ETH holders continued to dump their holdings. This usually happens after a sharp price drop, known as panic selling. After the sudden drop in ETH price, the market showed an oversold condition and the selling pressure eased.
The upcoming Constantinople hard fork will reduce the mining reward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH, which will reduce the new ETH supply, resulting in an increase in price. Before the fork time comes, the ETH market will continue to remain positive and will not be easily pulled down.
The economic analyst went on to say that most of the forks so far have resulted in a price increase, and it is expected that the price of ETH will show a higher upward trend by the time the hard fork actually arrives on January 16.
However, he said that the rise of ETH will not drive the rise of the entire market. Observing the market of other currencies, it can be found that after a short period of follow-up, most mainstream currencies have chosen to step back on support, which shows that the market is far from Come. Just like BCH’s favorable conditions have also driven the market, but due to the bear market, the favorable conditions of a certain currency are not enough to support the entire bull-to-bear conversion. Now that the bottom is already being tested, there is still a relatively high probability of a market that fluctuates repeatedly.
