Ethereum Developers Set to Release ETH 1.x “Berlin” Hard Fork in January After Delays
The Berlin fork stands as a hard fork of the current ETH 1.x proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain. This system-wide upgrade includes low-level changes to improve the original mainchain while ETH 2.0 is still under development. At first, the planned launch was to be in July but pushed back to summer thanks to a perceived need for higher client diversity, alongside clients and employees experiencing burnout.
Geth Ruling The ETH Nodes
In particular, devs highlighted Geth, which stands as one of 11 client specifications. Even so, 79% of all Ethereum nodes operate on it, having gained 5% since December last year. As such, developers have a serious concern that some critical bugs could develop thanks to the rolling updates to ETH 1.x, which itself is gearing towards a complete transition to a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm.
Péter Szilágyi stands as the team leader for Geth and gave a statement last Friday about the matter. He highlighted that it’s critically important that this update is done right, seeing as Geth is the majority of the network. Szilágyi stated that the ETH team couldn’t afford to not be correct about this matter.
Rushing Could Lead To Disaster
As a result, the update needed to be delayed to ensure that the entire thing will operate smoothly. With the five languages listed by the Ethereum foundation, 11 clients in total, a small niche or nuance for the one client can quickly turn into a catastrophic bug if not appropriately investigated.
Ever since, the process of including various Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and determining which one will end up in the hard fork, has seen a significant shift.
Changing Of EIP Lineups
At the original launch plan in June, Berlin was scheduled to add three EIPs. The first was EIP-2315, which held simple subroutines for the EVM. The second was EIP-2537, which would add BLS12-381 curve operations. Lastly, EIP-2929 would see gas cost increases when it comes to state access opcodes.
Now, however, things have changed. EIP-2537 will now not be included within the Berlin update. EIP-2537 will make it possible for the ETH 1.x and the ETH 2.0 blockchains to speak with each other, thanks to similar cryptographic setups.
The remaining EIPs will see a new life, as it will now be included within the YOLO v3 short-run testnet, which is set to release within the next few weeks.
It should be noted that EIP-1559 and other important EIPs that would restructure the transaction model of Ethereum will now no longer be included within the Berlin update.
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