Ethereum’s Ice Age, also known as Difficulty Bomb, refers to the increasing hashing difficulty in the mining algorithm used to reward miners with Ether (ETH) on its blockchain. This piece of coding artificially slows down the production of blocks on Ethereum’s blockchain and therefore functions as a deterrent for miners who might choose to continue with proof of work (PoW) even after Ethereum has transitioned to proof of stake (PoS).
In an Ethereum improvement proposal at the end of November, Ethereum developer James Hancock wrote that the proposed Ethereum Muir Glacier hard fork would push back the mechanism, known as Ice Age.
Ethereum developers have proposed a hard fork, named Muir Glacier, that should address the impending Ice Age, which could cause a significant slowdown on the Ethereum mainnet.
Ice Age is unnecessarily complex and confusing
However, according to Hancock the existing implementation of Ice Age is unnecessarily complex and confusing to communicate to the community. He adds that any updates to the design should be able to model the effect on the network in a straightforward way that is easy to predict when it occurs. Currently, Hancock does not believe this is the case.
Hancock further points out that Ethereum’s upcoming hard fork would push back the mechanism “as far as is reasonable”, to give developers the time to decide whether to update Ice Age so that its behavior becomes predictable or to remove it entirely. He added:
“This fork would give us time to address the community to understand their priorities better as far as the intentions of the Ice Age, and give time for proposals for better mechanisms to achieve those goals.”
ETH block propagation at least twice as fast
In November, blockchain advisory and product development firm Akomba Labs conducted a test on the Ethereum network that showed it could make block propagation at least twice as fast. Test findings showed that the average block propagation performance dropped from 360 milliseconds without running BloXroute’s Blockchain Distribution Network to 172 milliseconds with it.
Ethereum’s Istanbul Upgrade Arrives Early, Causes Testnet Split
Ethereum test network Ropsten has forked into two separate chains following the activation of system-wide upgrade Istanbul.
“It appears there are two different chains mining the Ropsten test network. There are miners mining on the old Ropsten chain and miners mining the new one”, explained Ethereum Foundation community manager Hudson Jameson, adding in a tweet:
“This is what testnets are for! Be aware that Ropsten will be unstable until this all plays out.”
Originally expected to activate on Oct. 2 at block height 6,485,846, Istanbul was released two days earlier than planned – on Sept. 30 at roughly 3:40 a.m. UTC.
The reason for this according to Jameson was due to unusually fast block confirmation times.
Normally, miners on a proof-of-work blockchain like ethereum and test network Ropsten are required to manually upgrade their software in order to ensure the smooth continuation of a single chain.
According to Hudson, the majority of miners on the Ropsten blockchain did not upgrade to the latest software, since the time of the hard fork caught many developers off guard. This has resulted in a split of the test network between those mining on the upgraded chain and those mining on the outdated chain.
Last October, a similar event occurred after the activation of ethereum’s previous system-wide upgrade, Constantinople, which resulted in a temporary chain split on the Ropsten network lasting a few hours.
“The complicated part about proof-of-work test network is getting coordination between miners”, Jameson said in a call Monday afternoon. “Right now, we’re trying to run some miners to get Ropsten on the correct Istanbul chain.”
Jameson added that issues with the Ropsten network so far appear to be the result of poor miner communication, not flaws in the Istanbul upgrade code.
As such, how this temporary chain split will ultimately affect the activation of Istanbul on the ethereum main network is still to be determined. Ethereum core developers will have a call on Friday, Oct. 4 to discuss Istanbul’s testnet activation.
