Ethereum network hosts Istanbul hard fork

The planned Istanbul hard fork on the Ethereum network has officially taken place.The update took place at block #9069000 at 00:25:09GMT on Sunday, December 8th.

The block on which the hard fork took place found the Chinese mining pool SparkPool.

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The completed upgrade is designed to providecompatibility of Ethereum with Zcash cryptocurrency, will increase the scalability of solutions based on zero-disclosure proof technology (SNARKs and STARKs), change the cost of gas of various operating codes (opcodes) in order to complicate spam blocks and increase the network's resistance to DoS attacks.

As previously reported, most Parity and Geth clients were still not ready for this massive upgrade.

At the time of the update, the overall availability of the network was slightly less than 50%.

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Ethereum's Eighth Hard Fork Is Another Step Towards the Proof-of-Stake Consensus Algorithm

Included in Istanbul EIP’s

EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) -suggestions for improving the Ethereum protocol, which are submitted for discussion by developers before each hard fork. In preparation for Istanbul, six such proposals were approved:

EIP-152is a proposal that introduces a new precompiled contract that implements the F compression function used in the Blake2 cryptographic algorithm.The goal is to create interoperability between the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Zcash or other cryptocurrencies based on the Equihash protocol.

EIP-1108– is aimed at reducing the pre-compiled cost of gas (commission for the execution of smart contracts), which in turn will have a positive impact on the development of a number of solutions in the field of privacy and network scaling.

EIP-1344is a proposal to use a chain ID to prevent transactions replay attacks between different blockchains.Until now, there were no clear specifications for setting a chain ID for a particular network, and everything was determined manually by the customer operators and communities of a particular network.

EIP-1884– this proposal is aimed at increasing the cost of gas for certain opcodes, which, against the backdrop of the rapid growth of the Ethereum network, began to consume more resources (CPU, memory, etc.).According to the developers, in this way it will be possible to achieve a better balance between gas consumption and resource consumption.

EIP-2028– The proposal aims to reduce the cost of gas when calling on-chain data from the current 68 units per byteThis will increase the throughput of the network, as it will be possible toPut more data.

IP-2200– offers a structured definition of gas metering changes for the SSTORE opcode.This will create additional opportunities for the use of contract storage systems, reducing unnecessary fees.

The second part of the upgrade (Berlin) is expectedwill happen before the end of June 2020. It should include proposals that require more time for testing, for example, EIP-1057, a considerable controversy - a modified ProgPoW mining algorithm aimed at reducing the influence of ASIC devices.

Ultimately, as the developers hope, byBy completing both parts of the upgrade, the Ethereum network will become faster, cheaper, and more scalable. They expect all this to be achieved without compromising the decentralization and flexibility of the network.