Ethereum Activates Major Update Named "London"

Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, has recently announced its much-awaited ‘London’ hard fork which is supposed to come with major changes in both transaction procedures and crypto mining issues. The change took place at 12:30 coordinated universal time or 8:30 Eastern Time.

The London upgrade was eagerly awaited by investors all around the world as experts had warned about volatility as an immediate aftermath of the change. Both Ethereum (ETH) and ERC20 tokens were blocked from transactions from Wednesday night for the impending change.

Among the problems it promised to change were the scaling and the high transaction fees sometimes the investors had to pay. In recent times, the growth of non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance has put more and more strain on Ether’s blockchain and therefore the main purpose of the upgrade was to smoothen the rough ends.

One of the most important things that the upgrade does, is to decrease the volatility of the platform. The upgrade contains five changes to the coding using the Ethereum Improvement Proposals or EIP.

The investors, after the implementation of EIP 1559, would have to participate in a ‘first-price auction’ where they would place a bid with a miner. This will drop the ‘gas price’ where the users had to use their best guess to guarantee their names in the transaction chain.

According to Auston Bunsen, the co-founder and CTO of QuikNode, a blockchain infrastructure company, “Fifteen-fifty-nine is meant to create an ecosystem that encourages lower gas fees. Sometimes people are willing to pay a lot to get into a block. Fifteen-fifty-nine seeks to remediate this issue by creating a base fee.” This means that the whole process of deciding a transaction fee will depend on the traffic with the new upgrade.

Another change made in the code is the doubling of the block that Ethereum uses for its transactions. But the programming of the block is done in a way that the block will always want to operate in its 50% capacity but it will surely stabilize gas fees. However, investors can still get ahead of the queue by using tips.

Another change in the code, according to people in the know, will start the end of cryptocurrency miners. The change will mean that ether that goes to the miners will be burned and would not be allowed to be brought back to the stream. While reports of deflationary pressure are floating, the consensus is that this will leave the miners with only a couple of ways to earn money and that is through winning a block and earning a reward from the newly minted ether or live off tips from people who want to jump the line.

Another EIP, coded 3554, is thought to start the process for Ethereum 2.0. This currency is supposed to switch from ‘proof-of-work’ mining system to ‘proof-of-stake’ mining system which will let the users use their cache to both verify and mint new tokens.

Ethereum brought the deadline of this switch forward from early 2022 to December 2021. This underlines that either the miners have to upgrade their software before the date or they will become irrelevant as it will make Ethereum unmineable, bringing about a huge change for not only Ether but also the entire crypto market.

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