Ethereum Hard Forks: Ethereum Classic, EtherZero, Metropolis Review

Cryptocurrency forks are considered a rare occurrence in the world of cryptocurrencies.others result from extreme situations.

There are two types of forks: soft fork and hard fork.In turn, the hard fork – it is the implementation of changes to the cryptocurrency protocol that render older versions of that protocol invalid. If the older version continues to run, it results in the creation of a new network. Ethereum has such examples, and we’ll talk about them further.

Hard Forks Ethereum

Ethereum Classic, EtherZero and Metropolis – the main three forks of Ethereum.

Ethereum classic

Ethereum Classic – it is the first fork of Ethereum, and also the most controversial of all the hard forks on the ETH network.

At some point, the Ethereum development team noticed that the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that Ethereum used was hacked.

The team's decision to implement a hard fork that wouldrecovered all the stolen coins received quite a negative reaction. The Ethereum community was then divided into two camps. Many people disagreed with the hard fork. They viewed this change as a violation of the core meaning of the word "decentralized." This group of people believed that the only way to get a truly decentralized cryptocurrency – it's about not getting involved and just going with the flow, because once the developers take action, it will cause a ripple effect and become a loud statement for the future.

As a result, Ethereum developers made a decisionimplement a hard fork, as a result of which one cryptocurrency was divided into two. Most people who disagreed with the Ethereum team ultimately stayed with the old version, which is now known as Ethereum classic.

EtherZero

EtherZero – another famous forkEthereum. It is not as extreme as Ethereum Classic and is aimed at improving the network rather than revolutionizing it. EtherZero is designed to increase the speed of transaction transfer on the Ethereum network. Additionally, this fork intends to make these transactions completely free.

There is an opinion that this is a very bold statement.EtherZero is also a fork based on “Proof of Work” – this means that the only truly effective way to extract it – GPU usage. Although it is worth mentioning that in the future it is planned to introduce a masternode (“Proof of Stake”).

Metropolis

Metropolis– it is the current fork of Ethereum.This fork is part of a plan to improve the existing Ethereum blockchain. So, Metropolis consists of three stages. The “Constantinople” phase is currently active (Byzantium is considered completed).

There are several key features that are striving to improve during this hard fork.

First of all, during the fork of Ethereummany privacy features will be completely revised. New features will be updated and will guarantee greater privacy during transactions.

Another big change that the Ethereum Metropolis fork aims to implement, – it is a consensus-based "Proof of Stake" system instead of the current "Proof of Work".

 

 

Output

All three of the hard forks were very important momentsin the development of Ethereum. Ethereum Classic was the most controversial, although – this hard fork sparked serious philosophical discussions in cryptocurrency communities around the world. This is the first time that the topic of decentralization has become so widely mentioned and discussed.