Ethereum’s long-awaited Constantinople upgrade that is now purportedly resulting in a hard fork is soon underway. Originally, the major upgrade was to be finalized in August 2018, then tested for 2 months and released in October.
However, upon vigorous testing, several bugs were found in the upgrade’s programming, and the fork was postponed until January 2019. The exact date of the hard fork is yet to be confirmed, but we do know that the fork will take place after block number 7080000 is mined.
According to sources familiar with the technicalities, the current average block time is around 15 seconds and today we have 44 061 blocks to go until we reach block 7080000. Therefore, calculations put the Constantinople hard fork to happen on Wednesday, January 16.
13 Exchanges Support Constantinople Hard Fork
With the expected hard fork date in mind, 13 crypto exchanges have officially announced that they will be supporting Ethereum’s hard fork.
Among the first exchanges to announce support was OkEX, who officially announced to their customers:
“We will support the Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople hard fork and will take a snapshot of all the OKEx accounts at the block height 7,080,000 (which is estimated to occur between Jan 14 – 18).”
Another exchange quick to announce their support was Huobi, who stated:
“Huobi Global will support the Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople hard fork. During the upgrade, if there are any airdrops, Huobi Global will distribute them to users after receiving the airdrops. It is recommended that you deposit ETH to Huobi Global since Huobi Global will help you deal with any technical problems regarding the hard fork.”
As well, the London based crypto exchange giant, CEX.IO announced that they are making the necessary technical adjustments to support Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork and ensure their customers’ funds are kept safe.
Other exchanges that have announced support for the upgrade include Bittrex, Binance, OKCoin, IDAX, Koinex, BitMart, Cryptopia, BiBox, HotBit, EtherFlyer, BitForex, WazirX, Exodus Wallet, Catex, Indodax, TOK, and ABCC.
There may be other exchanges that announce support as we come closer to the date, but this is what we at IIB have managed to gather thus far. We will try and keep this list updated as more exchanges announce support.
Final Thoughts
An important thing to take note of is that Ethereum’s Constantinople hard fork is expected to be non-contentious, meaning that everyone will be in agreement to take the Ethereum blockchain on its new path.
Unlike Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork back in November 2018, where a war between the 2 chains harmed the entire crypto ecosystem, Ethereum’s fork is expected to be a peaceful transition, as if nothing happened. ETH holders do not need to prepare for this update and can just ride it out.
However, if you do wish to participate in Ethereum’s hard fork, all exchanges are urging holders of ETH to allow sufficient time for deposits to be processed before the fork, and some exchanges will even halt ETH deposits prior to the fork.
Also, major crypto exchange Binance stated that there is a slight chance that other Ethereum hard forks will take place at the same time of the Constantinople hard fork.
To prepare for this, Binance gave out the following message:
“Should there be any other hard forks or airdrops during the Constantinople hard fork period, we invite these respective project teams to contact us at [email protected] for further discussion.”
