- Decision to defer is collective from the entire Ethereum community.
- Delay has been blamed on an encountered Ethereum Virtual machine [EVM] Denial of Service [DoS] attack vector.
- Upgrades include modifications to block the issuance of rewards, data storage and code execution.
The Ethereum Core development team has deferred plans to unveil Constantinople, ETH’s eagerly awaited system-wide upgrade, on the test network. The initial plan was to release Ethereum Constantinople Hard Fork on October 8, 2018.
DoS Attack Vector to Blame for the Delay
The Core developers responsible for the upgrade of the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency announced the delay on Thursday, October 4, 2018. The team leader Péter Szilágyi posted a tweet explaining that the decision was collective from the entire Ethereum community.
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 (@peter_szilagyi) October 4, 2018
The core developer explained the main reason for the delay as being an encountered Ethereum Virtual machine [EVM] Denial of Service [DoS] attack vector. Szilágyi said the delay will allow users to “implement, test and release an update on the CREATE2 Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP), to counter the DoS attack vector.
Szilagyi noted further that businesses and individuals that already run “nodes” or computer servers that support the Ethereum network will have to deal with a vulnerability they spotted in one of the five Constantinople upgrades.
Eric Conner, another member of the Ethereum community had on September 15, 2018 announced that the Constantinople Hard Fork would hit the Ropsten Testnet on October 8, 2018. According to Conner, once the hard fork hit the Testnet, they would implement it on the main chain a few days after the Ethereum Devcon 4 event that will happen from 30th October to 2nd November 2018.
Upgrades comprising Constantinople include modifications to block the issuance of rewards, data storage and code execution among others, which upgrades require a hard fork. The active nodes in the Ropsten testnet would have to execute such changes concurrently or risk ending up with two separate blockchains.
Constantinople Hard Fork to Blaze a Trail
Lefteris Karapetsas, a principal developer of the Raiden network, stated that causing a network split for even the slightest period on Ropsten would make testing next to impossible for their project, which remains “rather close to MainNet release.” The fresh release date for Constantinople on Rosten has been set for October 14, 2018, and will happen on the block 4.23 million, as was agreed by the testnet users and core developers together.
The Constantinople hard fork was first announced in July during a stakeholders meeting that sat to address issues affecting the blockchain and cryptocurrency space focusing specifically on further upgrades.
The development team says they have necessitated the creation of the hard fork to usher a new era of blockchain usage. The community believes Constantinople will be a cost-effective MainNet besides being more efficient.
