The Ethereum community will probably be present process a tough fork at block quantity 2,675,000, which can doubtless happen between 15:00 and 16:00 UTC on Tuesday, November 22, 2016. A countdown timer might be seen at https://fork.codetract.io/. The Morden check community will probably be present process a tough fork at block #1,885,000.
As a consumer, what do I have to do?
Obtain the most recent model of your Ethereum consumer:
What occurs if I don’t replace my consumer?
If you’re utilizing an Ethereum consumer that isn’t up to date for the upcoming exhausting fork, your consumer will sync to the pre-fork blockchain as soon as the fork happens. You’ll be caught on an incompatible chain following the outdated guidelines and you can be unable to ship ether or function on the post-fork Ethereum community.
Importantly, in case your consumer isn’t up to date, it additionally implies that any transactions you make will nonetheless be vulnerable to replay assaults.
What if I’m utilizing an online or cell Ethereum pockets like MyEtherWallet or Jaxx?
Ethereum web sites and cell functions that mean you can retailer ether and/or make transactions are operating their very own Ethereum consumer infrastructure to facilitate their companies. Typically, you do not want to do something should you use a 3rd social gathering internet primarily based or cell Ethereum pockets. Nonetheless, it’s best to nonetheless examine along with your internet or cell Ethereum pockets supplier to see what actions they’re taking to replace for the exhausting fork and if they’re asking their customers to take different steps.
Specifically, it’s best to be sure that transactions are generated with the brand new replay-protected EIP 155 scheme.
What do I do if my Ethereum consumer is having hassle syncing to the blockchain?
Ensure you have downloaded the most recent model of your Ethereum consumer.
Why are we proposing to exhausting fork the community?
“Spurious Dragon” is the second exhausting fork of the two-round exhausting fork response to the DoS assaults on the Ethereum community in September and October. The earlier exhausting fork (a.ok.a “Tangerine Whistle”) addressed rapid community well being points as a result of assaults. The upcoming exhausting fork addresses vital however much less urgent issues resembling additional tuning opcode pricing to forestall future assaults on the community, enabling “debloat” of the blockchain state, and including replay assault safety.
What adjustments are part of this difficult fork?
The next Ethereum Enchancment Proposals (EIPs) describe the protocol adjustments carried out on this exhausting fork.
- EIP 155: Replay assault safety – prevents transactions from one Ethereum chain from being rebroadcasted on an alternate chain. For instance: Should you ship 150 check ether to somebody from the Morden testnet, that very same transaction can’t be replayed on the principle Ethereum chain. Essential observe: EIP 155 is backwards suitable, so transactions generated with the “pre-Spurious-Dragon” format will nonetheless be accepted. Nonetheless, to make sure you are protected in opposition to replay assaults, you’ll nonetheless want to make use of a pockets answer that implements EIP 155.
Remember that this backwards compatibility additionally implies that transactions created from different Ethereum primarily based blockchains that haven’t carried out EIP 155 (resembling Ethereum Basic) can nonetheless be replayed on the principle Ethereum chain. - EIP 160: EXP value enhance – adjusts the value of `EXP` opcode so it balances the value of `EXP` with the computational complexity of the operation, basically making it harder to decelerate the community by way of computationally costly contract operations.
- EIP 161: State trie clearing – makes it attainable to take away a lot of empty accounts that had been put within the state at very low value on account of earlier DoS assaults. With this EIP, ’empty’ accounts are faraway from the state every time ‘touched’ by one other transaction. Removing of the empty accounts significantly reduces blockchain state dimension, which can present consumer optimizations resembling quicker sync occasions. The precise removing course of will start after the fork by systematically performing `CALL` to the empty accounts that had been created by the assaults.
- EIP 170: Contract code dimension restrict – adjustments the utmost code dimension {that a} contract on the blockchain can have. This replace prevents an assault situation the place giant items of account code might be accessed repeatedly at a hard and fast gasoline value. The utmost dimension has been set to 24576 bytes, which is bigger than any at present deployed contract.
DISCLAIMER
That is an emergent and evolving extremely technical house. Should you select to implement the suggestions on this put up and proceed to take part, it’s best to ensure you perceive the way it impacts you. You need to perceive that there are dangers concerned together with however not restricted to dangers like sudden bugs. By selecting to implement these suggestions, you alone assume the dangers of the results.
