Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two most major cryptocurrencies are each scheduled to go under a hard fork in the following days. While Ethereum’s one is much more imminent, bitcoin is a much bigger cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization so it’s to be expected that both events will have a lot of attention drawn upon them.
Ethereum’s hard fork
The hard for that’s scheduled for Ethereum is part of a greater development plan dubbed as ‘Metropolis’ by the cryptocurrency’s developers. Metropolis is a plan including two hard forks, with the first, named ‘Byzantium’, being set to take place at a block number of 4.37mil. This means that the fork is set to activate after said block is mined, around 6:00 UTC of October 16.
The most important developmental aspect of the fork include a variety of upgrades as mentioned in the official blog of Ethereum:
Addition of ‘REVERT’ opcode, which permits error handling without consuming all gas (EIP 140)
Transaction receipts now include a status field to indicate success or failure EIP 658)
Elliptic curve addition and scalar multiplication on alt_bn128 (EIP 196) and pairing checks (EIP 197), permitting ZK-Snarks and other cryptographic mathemagic™
Support for big integer modular exponentiation (EIP 198), enabling RSA signature verification and other cryptographic applications
Support for variable length return values (EIP 211)
Addition of the ‘STATICCALL’ opcode, permitting non-state-changing calls to other contracts (EIP 214)
Changes to the difficulty adjustment formula to take uncles into account (EIP 100)
Delay of the ice age / difficulty bomb by 1 year, and reduction of block reward from 5 to 3 ether (EIP 649)
While it might seem hard to stomach all these updates, a dumbed-down version of the above list would include the following more trivial and important aspects:
Integration of Zcash’s cryptographic engine for zero-Knowledge proofs with the aim of increasing the anonymity of transactions.
Improved security from 'masking' that will allow Etheruem users to determine the addresses for which they hold the private keys.
Simplified smart-contract programming with adjustment of gas for bill setting.
A mining adjustment called a 'difficulty-bomb' making mining exponentially more difficult.
Users are of course advised to upgrade any Ethereum related software they might be using in order for their clients to be compatible with the upcoming fork. Those interested in simply watching the hard fork can simply do so by having peeking at the countdown set by CodeTract and perhaps watching the news.
Software developed by the official development team of Ethereum is already updated ahead of the fork. This is of course, due to the Constantinople hard fork being a planned update, with its official announcement being made earlier this month. The concept behind the update was teased since long ago by Ethereum developers though.
Most notably, the notion to at some point stop mining altogether and instead switch to a proof of stake mechanism for the distribution of coins was hinted since the currency’s inception. This update (among other things) was conceptualized and is not set to come to life through the metropolis upgrade plan.
What’s worth remembering is that Ethereum has already undergone under another hard fork. Back when TheDAO smart contract was hacked, leading to hackers taking control of coins worth millions in USD, Ethereum developers stepped in and released an update reversing the damage that had be done by allowing for the coins to be re-distributed to their rightful owners.
That hard fork wasn’t planned ahead of time before the hack had taken place and was met with some content in spite of its purpose being in the interest of parties that were part of the Ethereum economy at the time. Ethereum Classic was created at the time of the fork, following the original chain prior to the hack and it was followed by parties in disagreement with the foundation’s decision to fork Ethereum on such grounds.
In summary, the recent Ethereum hard fork was teased by developers since long ago. The user community has come to accept its premise, and developers are also doing their part by bringing their concept to life slowly, bundled with several additions enhancing and upgrading the existing platform. There doesn’t seem to be much content among users and the fork could very well be uneventful.
Bitcoin’s Hard Fork
Bitcoin fork is also a plan set to bring upgrades to the cryptocurrency’s infrastructure. However, this the fork that’s looming bitcoin isn’t approved by the currency’s core development team. The proposed hard fork is moved by what was dubbed the New York agreement for SegWit2Mb or SegWit2x.
This was a bid from big mining hashrate operators and bitcoin-related venture to support a potential hard fork for bitcoin to enable SegWit and double the block size in order to address the currency’s scaling issues. However, contrary to Ethereum’s fork, it’s very contentious with even the bitcoin core developers and bitcoin.org recently denouncing the move to such a hard fork.
In bitcoin’s case, the potential of a fork for SegWit2x could lead to a chain split, under which different coins could be created after a certain block. Similarly to what happened with the Bitcoin Cash split after August 1, holders of bitcoin could end up with yet another coin in their possession.
The SegWit2x fork is happening further ahead in time, taking place approximately around October 17. Support for the 2x fork hasn’t been one sided. Some major services have announced that in the event of a hard fork taking place, they would support a potential coin coming out of it by giving their users access to it, similarly to how things happened with the Bitcoin Cash fork. There is an a countdown created for the 2X fork created by bashco.
That of course, doesn’t mean that it is to be entirely disregarded. While bitcoin services and software is likely to keep functioning uninterrupted in the event of a fork, users should keep an eye out in the event that support shifts towards a certain chain. Because, although unlikely as it is evident by indications (or lack of thereof) for support, it’s possible that SegWit2x in the event of the Bitcoin Core chain being contested by the vast majority of users.