Ethereum’s (ETH) next hard fork, dubbed Constantinople, will be postponed until early 2019, developers confirmed in a meeting on October 19.
Initially hard fork was planned for November this year, but developers opted to postpone the hard fork push after several bugs were found in the code that was released on a test network. Now aiming for sometime in late January or February, developers agreed that moving ahead with the hard fork next month would be unwise.
“I keep getting the feeling that we’re trying to rush this and I would second that we should breathe and see what happens,” – developer Afri Schoeden said during the live-streamed meeting.
Constantinople features five backward-incompatible changes to the network, from minor code optimizations to more controversial changes like one that would reduce the amount of new ETH created with each transaction block.
The delay could have implications for other proposed changes as well. Martin Holste Swende, security lead at the Ethereum Foundation, said there could be time then to add code for another proposal, dubbed “ProgPow,” into Constantinople.
ProgPow is aimed at shoring up ethereum’s resistance to the specialized mining hardware, which many think could price out smaller mining operations that use GPUs to mine – and could trigger some centralizing effects.
“If we do decide that Constantinople isn’t until January or February, then I would probably try to push for including ProgPoW into Constantinople,” – Swende said.
ProgPoW was discussed in earlier core developer meetings but it was decided that the code couldn’t be rushed into Constantinople and instead – if it was met with consensus – be added to ethereum by way of another hard fork shortly after Constantinople.
Still, Hudson Jameson, the communications officer for the Ethereum Foundation, said at the meeting that developers already had a lot to do to prepare the network for the mainnet – or live blockchain – release of Constantinople.
