Ethereum Istanbul hard fork is arriving soon, and all’s not well in the ETH world! A report has revealed that close to sixty per cent (60%) of the ETH clients have not updated and this includes even some major players.
Ethereum Istanbul hard fork is due to release in three days on the 8th of December 2019. So, this development is nothing short of a shock for the community. A vast majority of the ETH Network clients have not moved onto the latest version that is supported by the upcoming hard fork release. There are multiple reasons behind this lag in upgrading.
Why aren’t clients ready for Ethereum Istanbul hard fork
As per data compiled by the Ethernodes analytical tool, approximately forty-one per cent (41.2%) of the clients are ready for the Ethereum Istanbul Hard Fork system-wide upgrade. Other indicators also report the figure to be around forty per cent mark.
The Teth, Ethereum Java and Multigeth implementations have not created versions that support the upcoming upgrade. So, these will not be able to perform on the Istanbul update on the network. Around a month ago, the process of client upgrade started when Besu client was released.
Many providers, including Etherchain, Infura and Etherscan, have moved on to new pastures successfully. But the story remains similar in mining pools and other services providers. ZhuZhu, MyEtherWallet and MiningPoolHub have not reported any progress so far.
There’s no going back from Istanbul
What makes the situation grim is that Ethereum Istanbul Hard Fork is not backwards compatible. This means that if a client has not updated, the node client will automatically sync to the previous version pre-fork blockchain. The new ETH will not be compatible with this blockchain, and the user won’t be able to send/receive ETH anymore.
Interestingly, the Istanbul Hard Fork represents the final version of Ethereum 1.0. It will provide an update to facets like data storage, mining algorithms, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
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