This article is from Coindesk, the original author: Rachel Rose O'Leary
Translator: Moni
Original link: https://www.coindesk.com/what-to-expect-when-ethereums-constantinople-hard-fork-happens
The Ethereum Constantinople upgrade has entered the countdown, are you looking forward to it?
When describing the mood of Ethereum's fifth system-wide "Constantinople" upgrade, Hudson Jameson, head of developer relations at the Ethereum Foundation, used two words-cautious and optimistic.
This Wednesday (January 16th), the Constantinople hard fork upgrade will be launched, which means that the new software needs to be unilaterally installed on all nodes in the network in order for the upgrade to work as expected. However, this escalation model has always been inherently risky. For example, if enough users disagree with an upgrade, a network split could result. In fact, this has already happened once in 2016, when a controversial hard fork was executed following the DAO crash, resulting in two different blockchains: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic (Ethereum Classic).
Afri Schoedon is the product release manager of Parity’s Ethereum client. He said that the risk of blockchain fork itself is not high, because as the most critical party of blockchain fork—Ethereum’s top mining pools will basically upgrade. He said:
"The miners are ready, and only miners can split the chain."
However, according to Peter Pratscher, CEO of top Ethereum mining company Ethermine, the adoption rate of the Ethereum Constantinople upgrade is only 15.6%, although he also said that the statistics may be flawed, and claimed that the adoption rate may now be lower. Close to the "majority", he said:
"We want the majority of nodes that haven't updated to complete the update when the block is forked."
The Ethereum "Constantinople" hard fork upgrade is named after the capital of the Byzantine Empire and is part of the three-part Metropolis. This upgrade will implement a total of five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), although most The Ethereum Improvement Proposal adjustment was not controversial, but there was still one aspect that caused dissatisfaction in the community. The Constantinople upgrade delayed the "difficulty bomb," an algorithm that increases the difficulty of mining in Ethereum, and this upgrade will reduce the difficulty of mining and will also reduce the amount of mining that miners pay to protect the network. Mining rewards - reduced from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block. This move has caused some miners to be dissatisfied with the upgrade, but at the same time, some major Ethereum mining pools are more supportive of this change. Peter Pratscher commented:
"We expect the upgrade to be completed without any issues."
In addition to forks, there may be other risks associated with system-wide network upgrades. For example, code bugs may cause network splits, and algorithm errors may cause various unexpected events. However, the developers believe this risk is minimal on the Constantinople hard fork, and they have gone through multiple tests to find bugs in the software. Hudson Jameson further stated:
secondary title
Five major upgrades
Constantinople will introduce five new upgrades to the Ethereum network. The first major upgrade focuses on designing more "people-friendly" optimization solutions for smart contracts and decentralized applications. Talking about the overall goal of the Constantinople upgrade, Taylor Monahan, CEO of Ethereum wallet MyCrypto, said that it will be an "optimized upgrade to improve the quality of smart contract development."
For another EIP 1283 Ethereum improvement proposal upgrade, Ethereum core developer Nick Johnson considers it a "net gas metering" upgrade. The Ethereum improvement proposal was written by Nick Johnson. He hopes to improve the usability of Ethereum through this Constantinople upgrade-that is, the rising gas cost. Nick Johnson says:
“If the Constantinople hard fork upgrade is successfully completed, we can reduce unnecessary contract gas fees and make the latest coding model more cost-effective.”
The third upgrade, which is also regarded as the most exciting change in Constantinople by many developers, is EIP 1014 Ethereum Improvement Proposal, also known as "Skinny CREATE2". The upgrade is expected to pave the way for layer 2 scaling solutions such as state channels. Nick Johnson added:
"After the Constantinople upgrade is completed, new types of state channels can be created to reduce or even eliminate on-chain deployment costs, thereby improving the scalability of Ethereum and further reducing costs and user troubles."
According to Alexey Akhunov of Turbo Geth, EIP 1014 may affect future changes in Ethereum, including rents for storing data on the Ethereum platform, or rolling costs, and may even lead to other unexpected new smart contract functions. Alexey Akhunov explained:
"In this Constantinople upgrade, CREATE2 has an exciting improvement proposal (of course, there are potential dangers), it can recreate a new contract after the destruction of the smart contract on the same address. When creating a smart contract, you can use the same code, or you can use different code (with more tricks). Basically, future smart contracts can be easily upgraded.”
The other two upgrades in Constantinople are EIP 145 and EIP 1052. These two Ethereum improvement proposals will improve the ease of use of smart contract development and simplify some operations in the Ethereum code. Nick Johnson explained:
secondary title
There is still a "pit" in the hard fork of Constantinople
While most of the upgrades in the Constantinople hard fork were technically well-tested, there is still one Ethereum improvement proposal that has caused controversy. It is EIP 1234 written by Afri Schoedon of Parity, which will The so-called "difficulty bomb" will be delayed and some technical features will be changed.
The original purpose of EIP 1234 is to ensure that Ethereum can transition smoothly to Ethereum's upcoming consensus switch, that is, from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoW). The difficulty bomb is an algorithm. If the difficulty bomb increases, the time required to generate new blocks will also increase. Ultimately, the difficulty bomb will force the ethereum blockchain into a state known as an "ice age," during which the difficulty will be so high that transactions can no longer be confirmed. However, the difficulty bomb is not without benefits. It is precisely because of the increased "difficulty" of the algorithm that it encourages developers to continuously modify and optimize the code.
According to Alexey Akhunov, delaying the difficulty bomb is the most important update of this Constantinople hard fork. He said:
“The most important thing about the Constantinople hard fork upgrade is to delay the difficulty bomb, otherwise the difficulty of mining will rise sharply. Frankly speaking, there are actually no other really important changes in this upgrade.”
However, delaying the difficulty bomb has its own subtleties, mainly because the rate at which blocks are generated on Ethereum also determines the incentive rules for the platform’s native cryptocurrency, ether. To this end, the Constantinople block reward will be reduced from 3 ETH to 2 ETH, resulting in a huge controversy among miners who need to rely on rewards to ensure their Ethereum mining operations are profitable.
However, another thing that makes miners "unhappy" is the emergence of more and more specialized Ethereum mining hardware. Some business Ethereum miners usually use hardware devices running GPUs to mine instead of professional ASICs. miner. Peter Pratscher, CEO of ethereum mining company Ethermine, said:
“Overall, we do not expect the Ethereum Constantinople hard fork, because once the upgrade is completed, many miners may not be profitable, which will have a negative impact on the Ethereum network security.”
Peter Pratscher said that the recent 51% computing power attack on Ethereum Classic is a typical example. The Ethereum Classic blockchain was overwhelmed by hostile computing power, causing a huge threat.
As a representative of small mining pools, Brian Venturo from Atlantic Crypto Mining said:
secondary title
Will Ethereum Miners Fight Back?
As the upcoming Constantinople hard fork will reduce the rewards of Ethereum miners, mining companies including Pratscher and Venturo have already begun to prepare for the next upgrade called "ProgPoW", which is expected to prevent ASIC professional mining machines in the network and ensure the competitiveness of GPU mining.
So far, it is unclear whether such optimization changes will be implemented in this Constantinople update. In fact, as early as January this year at the Ethereum Developers Conference, developers had "exploratory" communication, but discussions on the proposal did not reach a consensus. However, even so, the developers are still very confident and firmly believe that with the second layer expansion, some technical work will be completed in the next few months, and the Serenity upgrade in the final stage of Ethereum will be more clear.
With these factors in mind, there is a mood of “cautious apprehension” in the Ethereum community about the upcoming Constantinople upgrade. Alexey Akhunov from Turbo Geth said:
"I'm a little nervous about this Constantinople hard fork upgrade, because it's hard to guess how likely it is that things will go wrong."
According to Alexey Akhunov, in the worst case, a problem with the updated difficulty bomb algorithm could lead to network outages. In addition, some developers believe that the blockchain consensus is the biggest problem with this upgrade. Taylor Monahan from MyCrypto revealed that her biggest concern is that scammers will use this Constantinople upgrade to defraud people of their funds.
However, the developers believe that they have taken all possible steps to ensure that the upgrade is not affected by potential risks, and that the difficulty bomb is not only negative. For example, even if some nodes are not upgraded and still use the old Byzantine software, the difficulty bomb will come into play at this time, making these unupdated software unusable for the next few months, if they still want to be in the Ethereum area To continue transactions on the block chain, it must be upgraded. For these reasons, Taylor Monahan believes that this Constantinople upgrade will definitely have a good effect, adding:
"Everyone's hard work will be rewarded. Through more affordable smart contracts, more efficient operation codes, and opening up more contract interactions, more people will benefit from this Constantinople hard fork upgrade (even They don't realize it now)."
