Hard fork Istanbul successfully implemented on the Ethereum network

On Sunday night, at block 9,069,000, the third network update of 2019, Istanbul, was implemented.

Another one iteration of Ethereum 1.x (Berlin) will see the first changes in June 2019. The main transition of the network from PoW to PoS is expected in 2021. Hard fork went smoothly, as all customers agreed to the new software. At the time of writing the news, about 70% of nodes updated their software.

Istanbul's solution includes six Ethereum Improvement Suggestions (EIP) 152, 1108, 1344, 1844, 2028 and 2200.

According to a ConsenSys blog post, the update addresses issues such as:

Resistance to denial of service attacks (EIP 1344).

Interaction with equihash PoW cryptocurrencies such as Zcash (EIP 152).

Gas Costs (EIPs 1108, 2028, 2200).

Reduced transaction fees provided byEIP in Istanbul is designed to increase blockchain throughput and develop zero-knowledge privacy technologies such as zk-SNARK.

Note that some changes in the code affecteda way to send funds between decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), forcing users to manually transfer smart contracts from one structure to another.