Ethereum upgrade; Second time’s the charm -

The much anticipated big upgrade for Ethereum; the decentralized app platform has gone as planned on last Thursday.

A first try was made back in January earlier this year but this upgrade had to postponed after some security issue. Ethereum has now upgraded its software to a newer version named Constantinople.

In addition to this original main update, a smaller version of the upgrade by the name St. Petersburg has also been launched to fix the security issue in the original code of Constantinople.

Constantinople and the changes it brings:-

With the new Constantinople upgrade, it brings a multitude of improvements in the speed and efficiency of Ethereum. While the speed and efficiency are much-needed improvements for Ethereum software, the main feature is the path that Constantinople opens up for the future upgrade by the name “Casper”.

This new future upgrade will rename Ethereum as Ethereum 2.0 and is also scheduled to be live later sometime this year. The main feature that this new upgrade will bring is the easy switching from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

St. Petersburg and its feature:-

After the launch of Constantinople, the minor upgrade St. Petersburg also went live. This underwent as one of the main features for the Constantinople to find out any of its security issues.

The main upgrades for Blockchain based systems can be a little bit difficult from the normal software as they actively need the user to be on the network and switch to the newer software version. These upgrades, which are often referred to as Hard Forks, are not switch timely, they can result in the Blockchain to get split. With this, some user will remain on the old Blockchain while some will be on the newer version.

Both Constantinople and St. Petersburg were activated for Ethereum users at around 8 PM UCT on Thursday night. Since the update went live, nearly 3800 bocks have been mined and everything related to Hard Forks is going according to the plan.

As for the price of Ethereum, it has seen a slight decrease in the period of the last 24 hours. The price has fallen by 1 percent and is currently at 136.81 dollars.