The much-awaited launch of Constantinople, the system-wide upgrade of Ethereum on the test network Ropsten has been delayed, as informed by the Ethereum core developers on Thursday.
The tweet by Peter Szilagyi, team lead at the Ethereum Foundation explain that the key reason for the delay is to offer more time to clients, enabling them to address a vulnerability found in one of the five Constantinople upgrades.
Via community decision, we've delayed the #Ethereum Ropsten testnet Constantinople hard fork by 1 epoch to block #4230000 (+5 days) to allow clients to implement, test and release an update to CREATE2, countering a recently found EVM DoS attack vector.https://t.co/q0bUyj3GfR
— Péter Szilágyi (karalabe.eth) (@peter_szilagyi) October 4, 2018
The delay would additionally, give space for Ropsten users testing other ethereum projects including off-chain scaling solution Raiden, in order to prepare for the subsequent network split that could happen upon Constantinople implementation.
The upgrades comprising Constantinople also known as a “hard fork,” include changes to block reward issuance, code execution, data storage and more. Ropsten testnet either needs to implement such changes simultaneously on it active nodes or risk splitting into two separate blockchains.
A developer for the Raiden network, Lefteris Karapetsas, thus stated on the ethereum’s public forum that causing a potential network split for even a temporary period would “effectively make testing almost impossible” for Ropsten, which is “rather close to mainnet release.”
The postponement is to avoid intentionally causing complications on the ethereum testnet. An alternative proposed by Alexey Akhunov, ethereum core developer suggests launching a separate temporary testnet to Ropsten and resolve obvious problems in the code there before presenting it for further testing by existing users of the Ropsten network.
Now, Constantinople on Ropsten is scheduled for October 14th, estimated to be block 4.23 million, as agreed to by core developers and testnet users together. Any further delay isn’t an option as the fourth annual developer conference, coined as Devcon is set for October 30 in Prague, which would be an even busier season for ethereum core developers.
Read more: In Two Months, Ethereum Classic DApp Has Doubled Its Popularity
Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.
