Ethereum's Constantinople Hard Fork Explained, Plus My Personal Take
2 min read · · Korean original
Hello, this is Bitpunk. Today I'd like to talk about Constantinople, the Ethereum hard fork coming this October. Ethereum is currently in Metropolis, the third stage of its white paper. Metropolis is split into two hard forks. The first, the Byzantium hard fork, took place on October 16 last year at block 4,370,000. The second, the Constantinople hard fork, is scheduled for this coming October.
Metropolis and the Constantinople Hard Fork
Ever since CryptoKitties launched and clogged the Ethereum network, Ethereum's scalability problem has become a major issue for developers. (Meanwhile, some coins launched claiming they would solve this scalability problem. A notable one that got a bit of a pump is none other than Zilliqa.) Anyway, this hard fork looks set to solve the scalability problem to some extent. The gist of Constantinople is to improve the efficiency of the Ethereum network (faster speeds, lower costs), adjust mining rewards, and switch the network's consensus algorithm from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
Ethereum's Four-Stage Roadmap
In 2017, Ethereum laid out a four-stage roadmap: 1. Frontier, 2. Homestead, 3. Metropolis, and 4. Serenity. You can think of Frontier as the early stage of the network, when Ethereum was being developed and mined. Homestead is the stage where the Ethereum ecosystem really starts to be built, and Metropolis is the stage aimed at bringing Ethereum to the mainstream. As I mentioned above, the Constantinople hard fork belongs to the third stage, Metropolis. And finally, Serenity is the stage where, once Ethereum is fully complete, the kingdom of Vitalik Buterin arrives and peace settles in.
Not a Forecast, Just My Very Personal Take
You could say this hard fork brings us close to the end of the roadmap's third stage. It makes me wonder how Ethereum's price will swing before and after the hard fork. Personally, I don't think EOS can overtake Ethereum, and I wonder whether there might even be a moment when Ethereum passes Bitcoin's market cap to take first place.
Of course, EOS is still chasing Ethereum with frightening momentum, but it's also true that its upward trend has slowed down a lot. On top of that, Ethereum truly lives up to its reputation as the place where the most DApps are still running. Meanwhile, the active tweeting of Ethereum's developer, Vitalik Buterin, is worth keeping an eye on. His comment on the recent controversy over Huobi backing Chinese BPs really stuck with me: "I figured it would happen, but I didn't think it'd happen this soon!"
