Metropolis: Ethereum Takes A Step Forward With the Byzantium Update

Earlier today in a developers conference, Ethereum creator, Vitalkin Buterin, emphasized the importance of remaining conservative and taking the necessary time to fully implement the Metropolis update.

“Were not in an emergency situation,” Buterin said.

Buterin’s suggestion was partly made in order to incentivize miners to adopt the hard fork more successfully. This is due to the fact that the difficulty increase intended to push miners into swapping onto a different chain has not become too high, and blocks will remain mine-able throughout October.

Although the Metropolis update has been long anticipated, steady progress has been made to ensure a smooth and seamless follow-through in the blockchain’s forking process.

Just recently, developers updated the Ethereum community, announcing the further postponement of Byzantium — the next leg up in the Metropolis upgrade.

The user-activated hard fork for Byzantium will now occur at block number 437,000,000, or October 17 according to current block production metrics. Byzantium was originally planned to be activated on October 9th.

Buterin wanted to push the release date towards the final days of October, but had to set it for an earlier date due to a developers conference scheduled for the beginning of November.

Nonetheless, unless something goes wrong during the testing phase, the October 17th deadline will remain set in stone, according to developer Hudson Jameson.

However, the testing phase for Byzantium already began last Tuesday, and so far everything has been running as expected — the blockchain even successfully verified its first private transaction immediately after the hard fork.

Coordinated efforts will continue on the Ropsten Network in order to ensure that all Ethereum clients are adopting the upgrade smoothly with as a little hiccups as possible.

For more updates on the long anticipated Ethereum upgrade, along with cryptocurrency market and blockchain tech. news, follow @TheCoinEconomy on all social media platforms. (TradingView, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, StockTwits.)

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