A bright future looms ahead for all cryptocurrencies in the coming years. Especially Ethereum seems to be having a pretty good day today. With the price up by over 14%, it is evident the community anticipates some big changes. With sharding and Casper on the horizon, this sentiment is more than warranted. It is still up to the developers to deliver on their initial promises. That may prove to be rather difficult, although things are progressing nicely on the testnet.
The year 2017 has been pretty solid for Ethereum. More specifically the price surpassed $1,000 for the first time last year. Ensuring this momentum carries over into the future will be rather challenging. Like any other cryptocurrency in the world, Ethereum needs to keep evolving over time. New features will be introduced in the near future. Two of the biggest developments are known as sharding and Casper.
Big Changes are Coming to Ethereum
More specifically, the deployment of sharding seems to be near. Splitting the Ethereum blockchain data into smaller parts will introduce some interesting changes. This new feature will roll out across four different stages. The first of these stages is almost complete, with stage two scheduled to finalize in early March 2018. Once that is completed, the team will effectively perform real-life tests of this technology. The community will keep a very close eye on these proceedings moving forward, for obvious reasons.
Additionally, Ethereum developers make some good progress on Casper, To most people, this concept is known as the impending switch to proof-of-stake. It is also a brand new consensus algorithm which is currently undergoing severe stress testing. Vitalik Buterin seems quite pleased with how things are progressing in this regard. The work is far from done, though, but the initial results seem rather promising. Casper will not be deployed anytime soon though, which is only normal.
As a result of these positive changes, the Ethereum price is on the rise again. With a strong 14% gain over the past few hours, there’s a genuine interest in this altcoin. Once all the changes have been adapted properly things will get very interesting. For now, the testing phase will continue until further notice. There are no hard deadlines to adhere to as of right now, which isn’t a bad thing. Everyone wants a properly vetted and working solution, even if it takes a bit longer to be implemented.
