The Ethereum network will undergo some changes in the coming months. It is expected that several more hard forks of the code will be released. Constantinople is the next big update, and its code is already being tested by the developers.

What Is Constantinople?

Keep in mind that the community is always cautious every time Ethereum (ETH) goes through a hard fork. Not because the developers are incompetent, but because of the Ethereum Classic (ETC) debacle that took place some time ago.

Constantinople: This latest update is part of the ongoing series of hard forks that will pave the way for a new era of ETH. Making the mainnet cheaper and more efficient is not something you can do overnight. It requires a lot of testing, code rewriting and feedback gathering.

It will be activated sometime before the October Devcon4 ethereum conference, according to stakeholders during a developers meeting on 27 July.

Constantinople is the second part of a series of two-part improvements, following in the footsteps of Byzantium, which was activated October 2017.

That said, an exact block number has not yet been confirmed in which the code would become operational for the change incompatible with the previous one.

What’s Developed For Now?

A flexible roadmap for maintenance has been suggested. Under that roadmap, the implementation phase continues until August 13, after which there will be two months of testing, including the launch of a specific Constantinople testnet.

Some of the updates that have reached the implementation phase include EIP 210, which reorganizes the way block hashes are stored in ethereum, and EIP 145, which increases the speed of arithmetic in the ethereum virtual machine (EVM). Two other updates – EIP 1014 for the addition of ethereum status channels, and EIP 1052, a new operating code that compresses how contracts interact – are also being worked on by developers.

Two other notable changes remain to be discussed, including a possible delay in the ethereum difficulty bomb and an EIP that could improve the functioning of gas pricing.

Conclusions

Ethereum is a highly technically oriented network, and each successful hard fork will help the ecosystem mature as a whole. Constantinople paves the way for a more efficient version of Ethereum and, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum is implementing these changes without months or years of delay.

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