Ethereum developers are working on testing and implementation of the next hard fork Constantinople. The update will make the ethereum network more efficient and less costly in terms of fees. Constantinople is a second part of Metropolis hard fork. It’s accepted to be activated before October’s Devcon4 ethereum conference taking place in Prague on October 30 to November 2. A roadmap for the upgrade has also been suggested. Under that roadmap, the implementation stage continues until August 13, after which there will be two months of testing, including the launch of a Constantinople-specific test network. Right now developers are working on the implementation of four improvements of the network (EIP). Péter Szilágyi, the head developer of Geth, stated that most of the updates were already put into places. Some of the upgrades that have reached the implementation stage include EIP 210, which reorganizes how block hashes are stored on ethereum, and EIP 145, which increases the speed of arithmetic in the ethereum virtual machine (EVM). They are also focused on EIP 1014 for the addition of ethereum state channels, and EIP 1052 new op-code that compresses how contracts interact. There are two other improvements currently under discussion including a possible delay in ethereum’s difficulty bomb and an EIP that could improve how gas pricing works. |
