Ethereum London Hard Fork
This blog post will cover:
- When is it going to happen?
- What is the main focus of the London update?
- What should Ethereum users do?
Ethereum is going step by step to develop, or in other words it is going through a number of hard forks. Each stage provides a solution to one of the problems, and brings it closer to the ideal platform. Let’s talk about the upcoming London hard fork. Well, what's the news out there?
When is it going to happen?
At the moment Ethereum's London Hard Fork is scheduled for August 5, 2021, and will go alive at block 12,965,000.
What is the main focus of the London update?
As it was said above, every next hard fork solves one of the major problems of the Ethereum network. London hard fork concentrates on fees.
Fees
First of all, the feature, which is known as EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) 1559, will help to control the fees of the network. There are two main types of them: gas and transaction. For the first type it is important to slow down its growth. While moderation of transaction fees will make the network more attractive to new clients.The other effect of the London update is the shortage of Ether supply. ETH does not have a total supply, as opposed to Bitcoin. That makes it less interesting as a store of value. To understand how this may be possible it is important to see what fees consist of. There are two parts: base fee and tip. The London update will give an opportunity to take some ETH out of supply. This is what will happen with Ether spent on the basic fee. The tip is what users pay to make transactions’ speed higher. This will remain as it is.
Speed
It is a well-known fact that Ethereum has a limited amount of transactions per second. It can handle about 30 transactions per second. The more users the network has the worse are the consequences of this problem. According to Vitalik Buterin’s plan Ethereum 2.0 should have a capacity of 100,000 transactions per second. The London update will bring the network one step closer to an opportunity to solve scalability issues.
What should Ethereum users do?
First of all, mind that this hard fork concerns only the testnets. Thus, users of the mainnet will not be affected.If you are a Ropsten miner or Goerli or Rinkeby validator, you need to make sure that you have the latest version of the client, then you need to change your gas limit target to twice what it is now.In case you are a non-validating or mining node operator, the only thing you need to do is to make sure that you use the latest version of the client.
The upcoming London update will significantly change users’ interaction with the Ethereum blockchain. It's hard to make Ethereum price predictions yet, but the update could affect the ETH price, too. Lower fees and higher speed will make the experience of working with the Ethereum network more comfortable for a bigger number of people. And this will bring Ethereum one step closer to achieving its global aim.
