The ETH core devs are delaying the hard fork to focus on the PoS merge, but if left unaddressed, the difficulty bomb will slow down the network, there will be time to deal with it later, so let’s get more in today read our latest Ethereum news.
While debating whether to immediately deal with the hard fork that can make the network sluggish, ETH core developers decided to focus on proof-of-stake merging, which is a risky thing, but they are willing to put up with it. The merger is Ethereum’s move from PoW to PoS, and while in the former miners use their computing power to validate transactions and earn ETH in return, POS involves ETH holders locking a portion of their coins and validating transactions, but also part of it will get reward. There’s even an element written into the ETH code to encourage the transition and ensure miners don’t refuse to come along after the difficulty bomb.
I personally don’t think this is a strong argument for keeping the bomb plan as is and forking hard at the last minute if needed. It’s undue stress on the devs in my opinion, but the main reason I think the devs have held back on agreeing on a bomb delay today is the visuals.
— Christine Kim (@christine_dkim) April 29, 2022
The Difficulty Bomb works by making it harder to mine blocks in the PoW chain, which means miners are needed to crack the crypto, and the predictable result is that mining becomes time-consuming and can become unprofitable. The developers created the bomb and can delay it, giving them more time to create the PoS network themselves by turning back the clock. By delaying it, they risk draining resources from the fusion. The developers’ preparatory work is in the testing phase and so they created a shadow fork of the mainnet where they copied the data of the ETH blockchain to a testnet to see how the network might work after the switch.
Tim Beiko argued that the meeting is best to reassess the difficulty bomb, noting that the ETH experience will not be impacted and that it will take a few weeks. The current average block time is over 13 seconds, and developers debated how long it will take network users to cope with it, as each slowdown creates more congestion. With the merge in reach maybe even half a minute isn’t a big deal and as a co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin written down:
“We have to weigh the pain of a hard fork with added delay versus the pain of living with 21 or 25 second blocks for a while, which we did and the world didn’t end.”
He added, on the optimistic note for a future when the bomb no longer exists:
“Ultimately, this is the last time the block time will be anything other than 12 seconds.”
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