Ethereum Constantinople to Come in Mid-January

Ethereum core developers have agreed to launch the long-awaited Constantinople hard form at block 7,080,000 as resulted in a bi-weekly developers’ meeting last Friday.

The new agreement comes after the previous decision to delay Constantinople fork for late January 19 due to a “consensus issue” that took place during the upgrade trial on Ropsten testnet in October.

Given the block time of 14.3 seconds, as well as the number of remaining blocks of around 234,431, the Constantinople upgrade is likely to become active in around 38 days from press time or around January 14, 2019, according to the data from the Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan.

The upcoming Constantinople hard fork encompasses five separate Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in order to soften the transition from proof-of-work to more energy-efficient proof-of-stake consensus algorithm.

Once activated, the upgrade is supposed to fundamentally change the Ethereum blockchain, with the synchronous nodes update to the whole system.

Ethereum is a public, open-sourced blockchain platform that features smart contracts and its native cryptocurrency called Ether. It was launched on July 30, 2015, and Ethereum is now the third biggest cryptocurrency by market cap at around $9.7 billion.

Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was granted an honorary doctorate from the Switzerland’s University of Basel, the country’s oldest university, for “outstanding achievements in fields of cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and the design institutions.”

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Last November, analysts from the Northeastern University and the University of Maryland claimed that the alleged existing lack of diversity in Ethereum smart contracts threatens the whole Ethereum blockchain ecosystem.

Ethereum was trading at $98.41, up 10.05 percent. It was the biggest one-day percentage gain since November 28.

The move upwards pushed Ethereum’s market cap up to $10.17 billion or 8.71 percent of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Ethereum’s market cap was $135.58 billion.

Ethereum had traded in a range of $88.81 to $98.41 during the previous 24 hours.