The Ethereum Developers Have Begun to Test the Constantinople Hardfork’s Code The implementation and testing of the code for the next major upgrade of the Ethereum network called Constantinople has already begun. The corresponding statement was made at a meeting of key network developers on Friday, July 27. Constantinople will be the second stage of the Metropolis hardfork and is expected to increase efficiency and reduce transaction fees in the Ethereum network. It was also confirmed today that its activation would have take place before the Devcon4 conference, which would be held from October 30 to November 2 in Prague. Although the exact number of the hardfork block has not been confirmed yet. In addition, an approximate roadmap for this backward incompatible upgrade was proposed, according to which the code implementation will last until August 13, after which two months will be devoted to testing. In particular, the test network focused specifically on Constantinople will be launched. As it was stated at today’s meeting, the developers were working on the implementation of four suggestions improving the network (EIP). A leading developer of Geth Peter Silagy noted that most changes were already implemented. In particular, he was talking about EIP 210, which reorganizes the storage of block hashes, and EIP 145, which increases the speed of arithmetic operations in Ethereum virtual machine (EVM). They are also working on EIP 1014, responsible for adding new status channels, and EIP 1052, new opcode which helps compress the amount of data in interacting contracts. At the same time, two other offers are being discussion. One relates to the possible delay of the complexity bomb, the other is aimed at improving the mechanism of calculating the cost of gas. Recall, the first part of the Metropolis hardfork called Byzantium took place in October last year. Earlier in July, a new proposal was reported, according to which, simultaneously with the implementation of the delay of increasing complexity from 3 ETH to 2 ETH, the reward for finding the block can be reduced. |
