Ethereum hard-fork activated

The anticipated protocol update for the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency has been activated at 05:22 UTC, 16.10.2017.

The big Ethereum hard-fork, nicknamed Metropolis, was divided into two parts after some development issues emerged, and the first part — Byzantium — is the one that’s been enabled. The second part, Constantinople, is yet to be released. Even before the release, it was noted how Byzantium is welcomed by the vast majority of the community in comparison to Bitcoin’s SegWit and, especially, SegWit2x.

Byzantium and Constantinople will help to improve the speed of the network, reduce the costs of transactions and upgrade the defence mechanisms against hackers.

Developers are still monitoring the changes the update caused but it is already clear that no minority forks occurred. The leaders of the development team are celebrating their success quite non-digitally:

This image was posted by V. Buterin on his Twitter