Ethereum’s (ETH) Next Hardfork is Coming at the End of February

The much anticipated Constantinople hardfork of Ethereum was initially planned for the middle of January, however a serious bug was discovered shortly before the time of the fork, so it was postponed. The new date for for Ethereum’s latest network hardfork system upgrade is around 27-28 February (end of the month) or more specifically at block number 7,280,000 (200,000 blocks later than the originally planed block). The hardfork will be in two parts, the first one will include all five EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) including the problematic EIP 1283, that was the reason to postpone the fork initially, and the second part will be used to remove the problematic EIP 1283. So after the Constantinople and Petersburg hardfork (the two parts we are talking about) the Ethereum network will have the following 4 EIPs active – 145, 1014, 1052 and 1234.

The improvements to the Ethereum network that the new hardfork will bring are numerous and they focus on improving salability, speed and efficiency of the blockchain. There is however a change that is also important to the economics of the Ethereum network and one that is especially important for miners. EIP 1234 is going to adjust the block reward, so after the fork miners will be getting just 2 ETH coins per block instead of the 3 ETH that they are getting at the moment. There isn’t much needed from you to do in order to be ready for the hardfork if you are using or mining Ether, just make sure you update any local wallet or client that you might be running. Also make sure to not make any transactions around the time of the hardfork in order to avoid any possible issues with delayed transactions and lost coins, though normally such problems are not very likely.