The Ethereum difficulty bomb is delayed
Literally today, the latest news came from the Ethereum team, the developers announced that they intend to transfer the hard fork, which should complicate the cryptocurrency. Now we will analyze this event in detail and highlight its significance for our work with you. So let’s get started.
What is a bomb of difficulty?
For those who do not quite understand the definition of “complexity bomb,” a little theory is needed. Each cryptocurrency is built on mining, in one form or another. There are various transaction processing algorithms, but all of them should gradually become more complicated. Evenly increasing the load on the equipment and making it difficult to obtain cryptocurrency, the developers guarantee equal conditions for all market participants. This phenomenon, when new complicating algorithms enter the cryptocurrency, is called the “complexity bomb”.
Ethereum, like other digital currencies, is also becoming more complex. In the case of ETH, an increase in mining difficulty occurs every 100,000 blocks. Each bomb of the complexity of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm encourages the community to actively support the transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). This is logical, because one day the system will become so complicated that it will not work to extract cryptocurrency even on the most powerful equipment. That’s why Ethereum is actively preparing to launch the PoS algorithm. However, we deviated a little from the topic.
What exactly happened to Ethereum?
On January 2, 2020, a hard fork will enter the network, which will slightly change the code of the coin. The update will occur on block #9200000. So the date may change somewhat. The update release time depends on the block production speed. However, before innovations, as a rule, miners load their equipment more actively in order to bring the output of new changes closer.
Thus, developers lay off a bomb of complexity with the possible subsequent removal of this technology. The creators of the coin understand that now their currency is going through difficult times and it is silly to complicate its extraction even more. That’s why the cryptocurrency will remain at the previous complexity of another 4 million blocks, after which, quite possibly, the complexity bomb will be completely canceled.
Vitalik Buterin previously stated that in his opinion a complexity bomb would “destroy Ethereum”. He predicts that if you do not cancel this feature until 2021 and switch the network to PoS algorithms, users will refuse to mine ETH. The absence of miners will certainly cause unforgivable delays between transfers. And this is detrimental to cryptocurrency.
Note that at the moment, the complexity of calculations within the framework of Ethereum is already quite large. The complexity value is 17, 15 seconds. Which is why it is not worthwhile to additionally load the equipment of miners.
What do ETH owners do?
It is better to update all used software before December 30 of this year. Thus, in the new year, everyone will be ready for a hard fork called Muir Glacier. Each Ethereum user is looking forward to the start of the so-called “Ice Age”. By this we mean the beginning of the transition from PoW to the PoS algorithm. This historical event we will describe in our news feed.
The transition to ETH 2.0 is expected very soon. In order not to miss this event, follow all the news of the crypto industry with us. We publish only interesting and relevant material. Thank you for your attention. Good luck!
