Ethereum London Hard Fork: What Went Wrong? Core Devs Review It

Reynaldo Marquez

3 years ago

3 mins read

Ethereum Institutional Interest is Rapidly Growing; Here's What On-Chain Data is Showing

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Ethereum pushes further into previous highs north of the $3,000. The second cryptocurrency by markets cap recently received a major upgrade, implemented via the “London” Hard Fork.

This changed the network’s entire fee model and, according to some experts, has attracted new investors into the market. Thus, the main cryptocurrencies by market cap have seen renew bullish momentum.

In a recent call, Ethereum Core developers discussed the hard fork and talked about their priorities for the coming months. Core developer Tim Beiko summarized the main points discussed on the call and the roadmap for the next six months.

In a previous post, Beiko said that the hard fork went “smoothly” overall. However, client teams highlighted certain aspects of the pre and post-London process.

It is a bit early to make a final call given that we're still early in the merge work itself, but definitely something we will follow up on in the coming weeks/months.

— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) August 20, 2021

First, the client teams said that the “speed and lack of clear success metric” for the testnet to mainnet deployments have been an issue. Ethereum client teams feel the process is “quick”, “somewhat forced”, and with a lack of agility to react to problems.

Thus, they proposed 4 solutions to improve this issue. First, developers and clients should agree on a specific period that a testnet must meet to be declared successful and implemented on a mainnet.

In addition, they proposed to pre-defined the path to be taken if a problem or bug is encountered. Once a fixed has been implemented, the testnet would need to run for more weeks to declared it successful.

To complement the above proposition, the client teams believe an “automated alert” system could be implemented to operate if an issue is found on a testnet. Alongside a “checklist of required infrastructure for testnet forks”.

The Road To Ethereum 2.0, Merge On The Horizon

Once the Ethereum London Hard Fork was rollout on the mainnet, Beiko said, client teams found it hard to see the changes “actually implemented” besides those described in the EIPs.

Thus, they also proposed to “leave enough time” for client teams to explore the tooling and infrastructure aspects of a hard fork. In that way, they can “help design the non-consensus interfaces”.

Despite that the hard fork, and probably its more important update, EIP-1559, were successfully introduced, developers agreed that they will make more improvements over time. Ethereum core developer Beiko said:

Every team mentioned that, in addition to the consensus changes introduced by the merge, they have a lot of work to do on their clients to improve performance, modularize their architecture to support proof of stake, and onboard new developers.

Core developers and client teams agreed to postpone the difficulty bomb, the increase in the network complexity of puzzles for its Proof-of-Work chain, and add “other one-line changes”. Other EIPs will be rollout on the mainnet after the Merge.

The latter refers to the event that will allow the beacon chain, the network’s Proof-of-Stake blockchain, to be combined with its Proof-of-Work blockchain. Beiko added:

(…) there was some conversation on the call about what to do about the various EIPs which are “pending”. We discussed potentially adding them into the first fork after the Merge, but it’s something we need to do more serious planning around.

At the time, Ethereum (ETH) trades at $3,264 with a 6.5% profit in the 24-hour chart.

Ethereum ETH ETHUSD — ETH on a rally in the daily chart. Source: ETHUSD Tradingview

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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