What is the Ethereum "Muel Glacier" upgrade and what do we need to do? (Full text of the upgrade announcement)

The Ethereum network plans to implement a planned upgrade at block 9.2 million , which is expected to occur on Wednesday, January 1, 2020 . The specific time depends on the block production speed of the network and the time zone where the node is located.

Please upgrade your nodes before December 30, 2019 to be prepared.

https://ethernodes.org/ at https://ethernodes.org/muir_glacier provides statistics on the number of nodes that are ready to activate the Muir Glacier upgrade, and a countdown to the Muir Glacier upgrade.

https://etherscan.io/ also provides a countdown on the https://etherscan.io/block/countdown/9200000 page.

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You can also monitor the status of the network upgrade in real time on the http://forkmon.ethdevops.io/ webpage (this page will be updated when the upgrade is about to happen).

What does "Muel Glacier" mean

"Muel Glacier" is the code name for this network upgrade. Earlier network upgrades had also been code-named " Istanbul ", " Constantinople " and " Pseudo Dragon ".

As an Ethereum user (currency holder), what do I need to do?

If you are using:

• Centralized exchanges (such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance)
• Web wallets (such as Metamask, MyCrypto, and MyEtherWallet)
• Mobile wallets (such as imToken, Coinbase Wallet, Status.im, and Trust Wallet)
• Hardware wallets (such as imKey, Ledger, Trezor, and KeepKey)

You do not need to do anything unless your exchange or wallet service reminds you to take additional action.

As a node operator (or miner), what do I need to do?

Please download the latest version of the Ethereum client you are using:

• geth client v1.9.9
• Parity client v2.5.12 stable version
• Besu client v1.3.7
• Nethermind client v1.2.6
• ethereumJS client v4.1.2
• Aleth client v1.8.0

Note: The Harmony (ethereumJ) client has been discontinued, and it no longer supports the Istanbul upgrade. Besu is a client written in Java that can be used to synchronize the Ethereum mainnet.

What's in this upgrade?

The Ethereum Cat Shepherd Organization has written a blog explaining why we are upgrading the network and what this upgrade is about. The following is an excerpt from their blog post :

"Ethereum Difficulty Bomb" refers to part of the difficulty adjustment mechanism of the proof-of-work algorithm used by Ethereum. The original intention of the difficulty adjustment mechanism is to stabilize the network block production time by adjusting the mining difficulty of mining new blocks. If the block production time is too short (less than 10 seconds) or too long (more than 20 seconds), then the The mechanism will increase or decrease the difficulty of mining accordingly.

The difficulty bomb adds a value to the mining difficulty that increases only with the increase of the block height and does not change with the block production time. The value increases every 100,000 blocks and never decreases. At the beginning, the amount of difficulty increased by the difficulty bomb is small, so it has no obvious effect on the block production time; and the increase in the difficulty of this part is also very slow, but its growth is close to exponential growth. So when it comes to a timing, it will suddenly increase the difficulty of the network and reduce the block output speed suddenly. This is what we call the "Ice Age".

…

Recently, on October 5, 2019, the difficulty bomb began to show its impact at the block height of 8.6 million, increasing the average block production time. At the block height of 8.9 million, the block production time increased to 14.3 seconds. "The average block production time will surge every 100,000 blocks. It is expected that in December 2019, the block production time may be close to 20 seconds; by February 2020, the block production time may rise to 30 seconds. This will make The entire chain becomes slow and difficult to use. "

To avoid delaying the Istanbul upgrade, everyone decided to use another independent fork to deal with the difficulty bomb problem. This is the origin of the "Muel Glacier".

…

"Muel Glacier" will contain EIP 2384 to delay the difficulty bomb.

The EIP proposes to postpone the difficulty bomb by another 4 million blocks for approximately 611 days. The bomb removal method is the same as that used by us.

Although some advocated that the difficulty bomb should be changed or even removed, because the time available for decision-making was short, the core developers decided to take similar measures to the previous several treatment methods, and more thorough measures were left for later.

Previous upgrades to handle difficulty bombs include EIP 649 and EIP 1234 .

thank!

Thank you very much to the Ethereum community and all the developers of the Ethereum client and platform. Thank you for your dedication, talent and contribution.

Disclaimer : Blockchain is an emerging and rapidly developing high-tech field. If you decide to follow the suggestions in this article, please make sure you understand the implications of these suggestions for you. You should be aware of the risks, including but not limited to the risk of unexpected software errors. When implementing these recommendations, you are solely responsible for the results. This article and its recommendations in no way constitute sales terms in any sense, nor do they constitute guarantees in any sense, including, but not limited to, warranties for the Ethereum network and the Ethereum clients mentioned here.

(Finish)

Attachment: Ethereum difficulty bomb explodes and dismantles

Original link: https://blog.ethereum.org/2019/12/23/ethereum-muir-glacier-upgrade-announcement/ Author: Hudson Jameson Translation: A Sword

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