Ethereum Hard Fork Istanbul has been successfully activated

On 8. December, the Istanbul Hard Fork the Ethereum Blockchain has been officially activated. The Update took place on Sunday at 00:25:09 GMT in Block #9.069.000. The first Istanbul Block was made by the Chinese mining pool spark pool mined.

The recent system-wide network Upgrade from Ethereum, called “Istanbul,” since yesterday morning, live. There are six Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) with the aim to improve the performance of the Blockchain and to open new paths for the development of Smart Contract-based decentralized applications (dApps) are implemented. In addition, the new Update allows you to improve the interoperability with the Privacy Coin Zcash.

Overall, Istanbul is already the eighth Hard Fork the Ethereum network, to, among other things, Constantinople, Spurious Dragon and Byzantium. A total of six critical Update contained in “Istanbul”:

  • EIP-2200 will change the calculation of costs for the storage of data in the Virtual machine (EVM) of Ethereum and Smart Contracts provide for the possibility for more functions to perform.
  • EIP in 1884, is the transaction costs of some of the EVM Opcodes change, “Spam-prevent attacks and the extent of the calculation in each Block to improve the balance”.
  • EIP-2028 will allow it to SNARKs and stark’s technology without the Knowledge of cost-effective on the Blockchain, which reduces the cost of the “call of the data within the expenditure”.
  • EIP-1344 will provide “the contracts, a way to keep track of the Ethereum chain, you are in”.
  • EIP-1108 will make SNARKs cheaper and more cost – effective scaling, and data protection technologies.
  • EIP-152 adds the possibility to check the Equihash Proof of Work (PoW) within a contract. This allows, in turn, Relay -, and Atomic-Swap transactions between Zcash (ZEC) and Ethereum.

Prior to the activation of Istanbul, some members of the Community had expressed concerns about the General readiness of the network for the upcoming Hard Fork. According to the data of ether nodes about 53 per cent of Parity and Geth Clients had not updated their Software to not less than 15 hours in front of the Fork yet. Just before the Fork, and even then, the situation has changed drastically. At present, 96.7% of the Ethereum Clients of Istanbul have successfully updated to support the Upgrade is now complete.

Judging by the comments on Twitter, the response from the Community on the activation of Istanbul, however, was mostly positive. Some users also noted that the reduced Gas costs, the Fork is implemented, has made the Review of some of the Smart Contracts much cheaper. Most commentators congratulated Ethereums founder Vitalik Buterin and the Core developers for a successful Start. Some called Istanbul, even the birth of the “Ethereum 2.0” and predicted it “the Moon” in anticipation of a rise in the price of Ether (ETH). This is, so far, remained out. The price for Ethereum (ETH) has increased since the Hard Fork just slightly and increased after the activation of the Istanbul of around 149 to 152 dollars.

Istanbul is only the first part of the planned, major Upgrades of Ethereum. “Berlin”is expected to go before the end of June 2020 in operation. It will contain some of the EIPs, which need more time for Tests. One of them is EIP-1057 – a contentious proposal that aims to implement the modified ProgPoW-algorithm to reduce the effectiveness of ASIC Mining devices in the ETH network.

Featured Image: Wit Olzewski | Shutterstock