The Ethereum community might be present process a tough fork at block quantity 2,675,000, which can probably 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 take a look at community might be present process a tough fork at block #1,885,000.
As a person, what do I must do?
Obtain the newest model of your Ethereum shopper:
What occurs if I don’t replace my shopper?
If you’re utilizing an Ethereum shopper that isn’t up to date for the upcoming laborious fork, your shopper will sync to the pre-fork blockchain as soon as the fork happens. You may be caught on an incompatible chain following the outdated guidelines and you may be unable to ship ether or function on the post-fork Ethereum community.
Importantly, in case your shopper will not be up to date, it additionally signifies that any transactions you make will nonetheless be vulnerable to replay assaults.
What if I’m utilizing an online or cellular Ethereum pockets like MyEtherWallet or Jaxx?
Ethereum web sites and cellular purposes that permit you to retailer ether and/or make transactions are operating their very own Ethereum shopper infrastructure to facilitate their companies. Usually, you do not want to do something in the event you use a 3rd occasion internet based mostly or cellular Ethereum pockets. Nevertheless, you must nonetheless examine together with your internet or cellular Ethereum pockets supplier to see what actions they’re taking to replace for the laborious fork and if they’re asking their customers to take different steps.
Specifically, you must be certain that transactions are generated with the brand new replay-protected EIP 155 scheme.
What do I do if my Ethereum shopper is having bother syncing to the blockchain?
Ensure you have downloaded the newest model of your Ethereum shopper.
Why are we proposing to laborious fork the community?
“Spurious Dragon” is the second laborious fork of the two-round laborious fork response to the DoS assaults on the Ethereum community in September and October. The earlier laborious fork (a.okay.a “Tangerine Whistle”) addressed immediate network health issues due to the attacks. The upcoming laborious fork addresses necessary however much less urgent issues similar to additional tuning opcode pricing to forestall future assaults on the community, enabling “debloat” of the blockchain state, and including replay assault safety.
What modifications are part of this difficult fork?
The next Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) describe the protocol modifications applied on this laborious fork.
- EIP 155: Replay attack protection – prevents transactions from one Ethereum chain from being rebroadcasted on another chain. For instance: If you happen to ship 150 take a look at ether to somebody from the Morden testnet, that very same transaction can’t be replayed on the principle Ethereum chain. Essential be aware: EIP 155 is backwards appropriate, so transactions generated with the “pre-Spurious-Dragon” format will nonetheless be accepted. Nevertheless, to make sure you are protected towards replay assaults, you’ll nonetheless want to make use of a pockets resolution that implements EIP 155.
Remember that this backwards compatibility additionally signifies that transactions created from different Ethereum based mostly blockchains that haven’t applied EIP 155 (similar to Ethereum Basic) can nonetheless be replayed on the principle Ethereum chain. - EIP 160: EXP cost increase – adjusts the value of `EXP` opcode so it balances the value of `EXP` with the computational complexity of the operation, basically making it tougher to decelerate the community by way of computationally costly contract operations.
- EIP 161: State trie clearing – makes it potential to take away numerous empty accounts that have been put within the state at very low price because of earlier DoS assaults. With this EIP, ’empty’ accounts are faraway from the state at any time when ‘touched’ by one other transaction. Elimination of the empty accounts enormously reduces blockchain state measurement, which can present shopper optimizations similar to sooner sync instances. The precise removing course of will start after the fork by systematically performing `CALL` to the empty accounts that have been created by the assaults.
- EIP 170: Contract code size limit – modifications the utmost code measurement {that a} contract on the blockchain can have. This replace prevents an assault state of affairs the place massive items of account code might be accessed repeatedly at a set gasoline price. The utmost measurement has been set to 24576 bytes, which is bigger than any at the moment deployed contract.
DISCLAIMER
That is an emergent and evolving extremely technical area. If you happen to select to implement the suggestions on this publish and proceed to take part, you must 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 surprising bugs. By selecting to implement these suggestions, you alone assume the dangers of the results.