Ethereum’s Constantinople Is Getting Closer, Late February Release Date Expected

Ethereum’s Constantinople upgrade, which would bring performance and maintenance upgrades through the implementation of several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), seems to have its launch date finally fixed, following a delay last month when an auditing firm found bugs in its code. The release is now slated for late February.

Constantinople’s deployment last month, 2 days before the bug was found, resulted in the issuing of several hotfixes – not everyone got the message, and some miners found themselves mining on an invalid chain.

This time, the hard fork will arrive at block 7,280,000 – and this time the Ethereum Foundation will communicate with miners better.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Hudson Jameson, who handles developer relations for the Ethereum Foundation, said,

I suspect it will go as planned. The block number has been set and [the upgrade] is hard coded in the clients now so it’s going along fine.

One solution for the developers was to exclude the problematic EIP (EIP 1283) from the launch of Constantinople. The idea is to introduce 2 hard forks at block 7,280,000 – one implementing Constantinople, and another to remove the EIP in question. The developers also say that testing has finished for the upgrade.

Chief Operating Officer Matthias Egli of the firm that found the bug, ChainSecurity, puts in simple terms,

One says Constantinople gets active at block number [7,280,000] and at the same block number Petersberg gets activated, which takes precedence over Constantinople and immediate supersedes it.

An additional feature that will be implemented is the ability to make changes to a smart contract over multiple transactions, if certain conditions are met. “A corner case,” called SKINNY CREATE2, this EIP will facilitate “deterministic deployment.”

This news comes as Ethereum overtakes Ripple (XRP) yet again, the 2 tokens repeatedly trading places for the 2nd and 3rd most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap.  Meanwhile, users on the prediction market platform Augur are placing their wagers on when Constantinople will be launched, with a minority expecting it to launch in March.