The Ethereum community will likely be present process a tough fork at block quantity 2463000, which is anticipated to happen between 12:00 and 13:00 UTC on Tuesday, 18 October 2016. a countdown timer might be seen https://fork.codetract.io/,
What do I have to do, as a consumer?
Obtain the newest model of your Ethereum consumer:
What occurs if I do not take part within the onerous fork?
In case you are utilizing an Ethereum consumer that has not been up to date for the upcoming onerous fork, your consumer will likely be out of sync with the pre-fork blockchain as quickly because the fork happens. You’ll be caught on an incompatible chain following the previous guidelines and you can be unable to ship Ether or work on the post-fork Ethereum community.
What’s a tough fork in Ethereum-land?
A tough fork is a change to the underlying Ethereum protocol, which creates new guidelines to enhance the system. All Ethereum purchasers have to improve; In any other case they are going to be caught in an inconsistent chain following the previous guidelines. The decentralized nature of blockchain techniques makes onerous fork upgrades tougher. Arduous forks within the blockchain require collaboration and communication with the neighborhood in addition to the builders of the assorted Ethereum purchasers to make the transition go easily.
What occurs throughout onerous fork?
After consensus has been reached on what modifications must be included within the onerous fork, modifications to the protocol are written in numerous Ethereum purchasers, comparable to Geth, Parity, and Ethereum J. Protocol modifications are activated on a particular block quantity. Any node that has not been upgraded to the brand new rule-set will likely be left on the previous chain the place the earlier ruleset will live on.
Why do we want a tough fork?
Since September 18th (UTC), the Ethereum community has been underneath assault by a person or group, leading to giant delays in processing transactions. The community is at present filled with pending transactions as a consequence of which customers are getting delayed in processing their transactions. You may consider this as a Denial of Service (DoS) assault on the Ethereum blockchain.
Each operation carried out on the community is assigned a value, or fuel payment, by an Ethereum contract. Utilizing the ADD operation is much less computationally costly than performing advanced operations comparable to hashing a quantity utilizing SHA256. The attacker carried out the DoS assault by repeatedly calling sure operation codes (opcodes) of their sensible contracts, that are computationally tough for purchasers to course of, however very low cost so as to add to the community. To stop attackers from persevering with to flood the community with low-priced contracts with excessive computational prices, we’re rising the value of some operations.
Why are we doing two onerous forks and what would be the implications?
Each deal with completely different issues posed by onerous fork assaults. The primary onerous fork is meant to deal with pressing community well being points associated to low-cost operation codes. As described in Ethereum Enchancment Proposal 150, “EIP 150 Arduous Fork”, the primary onerous fork is scheduled to happen at block quantity 2463000 and can regulate the value of the low-cost opcode concerned within the assault. The second onerous fork is anticipated to deal with a variety of much less pressing issues such because the elimination of empty accounts, which have been utilized by attackers to flood the Ethereum community, and thereby improve the dimensions of the blockchain. The second onerous fork continues to be underneath dialogue.
After the second onerous fork is carried out, there’ll possible be a “clean-up interval” throughout which delays and difficulties processing and syncing transactions could proceed till the blockchain situation is totally decoupled.
How will EIP 150 have an effect on onerous fork contracts?
See the next remark: https://www.reddit.com/r/ewhereum/feedback/57p0bv/a_quick_note_on_how_the_call_gas_cost_increase/
The place can I discover extra technical particulars about what modifications the 2 new onerous forks will convey to the protocol?
Associated modifications to the Ethereum protocol are documented within the GitHub repository Ethereum Enchancment Proposal
The next two EIPs describe the present plans for upcoming onerous forks:
Many due to the Ethereum neighborhood for his or her endurance and understanding, and to all Ethereum builders throughout all purchasers and platforms, who got here collectively to supply enter, concepts, and contributions to assist forestall assaults and enhance the platform.