Ethereum plans to activate Istanbul Mainnet on December 4, 2019.
In a previous article, we listed the dates of the next stages for the Ethereum blockchain updates, which should lead Ethereum to go from proof of work to proof of stake.
The Istanbul hard fork is ahead of schedule as indicated in this article, Ethereum developers have decided to activate the Istanbul mainnet that could take place on December 4.
The decision was made following an Ethereum developer meeting on Oct. 25, Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #73 that you can see on the Ethereum Foundation Youtube channel.
December 4 was proposed by Danno Ferrin, blockchain protocol engineer at ConsenSys studio who is working on the Ethereum project, and who proposed to activate the Istanbul mainnet at block number 9 056 000.
Danno Ferrin who said in a chat room reserved for Ethereum developers:
“From what I calculated… to a block of 14 seconds multiplied by its 245 544.5 blocks, which sets midday UTC to block 9 055 928.5.
I would therefore propose 9,056,000 as the target of the main block of the Istanbul Mainnet.
Please, check my calculations.”
In case of technical problems, which often happens in IT, the developers plan to shift by one month the activation of the Istanbul mainnet, early January 2020 then.
Danno Ferrin explains that in case of technical problem, it will take 4 weeks to make the necessary developments for this shift.
There have already been postponements and delays in the update and improvement of the Ethereum blockchain, which must absolutely increase its capacity due to the increasing demand from new decentralized applications (DApps) using Ethereum blockchain technology.
Many keep in mind the CryptoKitties application that showed the limits of the Ethereum blockchain with just a single DApps meeting a bit of success.
Vitalik Buterin had himself declared that the Ethereum blockchain is full and has reached its limits!
Activation of the Istanbul mainnet also opens the door to Ethereum staking by passing in proof of stake mode.
32 Ethereum tokens should be the number of Ethereum tokens to own to participate in Ethereum staking which will therefore pay participants with ETH tokens.
Moving from POW to POS is an important step for a blockchain like Ethereum, 2020 should be the year of Ethereum staking.
And especially, upgrading the Ethereum blockchain that would allow it to confirm its leadership position among blockchains compared to new competitors like EOS, Tezos, TomoChain or Tron who highlight the fact that their blockchain can perform much more transactions per second than the Ethereum blockchain but often at the expense of security…
First step therefore, December 4, if the activation of the Istanbul mainnet takes place on the Ethereum blockchain in order to move on to the next step of updating and improving the performance of the Ethereum blockchain.
