coincodex.com
Key highlights:
- Ethereum's Berlin upgrade went live at block 12,244,000
- The upgrade wasn't controversial and implemented four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs)
- Users of the OpenEthereum client experienced issues after upgrade, as the client wouldn't sync past block 12,244,294
- OpenEthereum clients have identified the issue and published a fix
Berlin upgrade goes live at block 12,244,000
Ethereum was successfully upgraded through the Berlin hard fork earlier today, as the upgrade went live at block 12,244,000. The upgrade implement 4 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), namely EIP-2565, EIP-2929, EIP-2718 and EIP-2930. For more details on what each of these individual EIPs entails, you can check out Ethereum.org’s writeup on Berlin.
The Berlin upgrade was not controversial in the Ethereum community, and the EIPs included in it provide benefits like reduced gas costs for specific types of transactions, the ability to support new transaction types, and improved resiliency against denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
London, a much more controversial upgrade, is expected to happen in July. The London upgrade is going to implement EIP-1559, which will introduce a fundamental rework to Ethereum’s fee market. Under EIP-1559, the base transaction fee will be burned, and users will be able to add a miner tip to their transactions in order for them to be processed faster.
EIP-1559 could have a negative impact on the bottom line of Ethereum miners, and the proposal is being opposed by some major Ethereum miners. The group opposing EIP1559 also includes Sparkpool, the largest Ethereum mining pool.
The Berlin hard fork caused some headaches for OpenEthereum users
While the Berlin hard fork wasn’t controversial in itself, it did cause some headaches for users of the OpenEthereum client. OpenEthereum, which was previously known as Parity Ethereum, is used by around 12% of Ethereum nodes, according to Ethernodes.org. It is the second most popular Ethereum client behind Geth (82.7%).
The OpenEthereum client wouldn’t sync after block 12,244,294, causing some businesses who rely on OpenEthereum to put their services on hold. For example, popular Ethereum block explorer Etherscan wasn’t able to provide up-to-date information on Ethereum transactions. Exchanges like Coinbase and Bitstamp temporarily disabled ETH and ERC-20 withdrawals.
Thankfully, OpenEthereum developers were able to identify the issue relatively quickly and have already published a fix.
The OpenEthereum issue has been resolved: https://t.co/dgb0StkPcE.
— OpenEthereum (@OpenEthereumOrg) April 15, 2021
Thank you @mhswende, @sorpaas, @nethermindeth, @turbogeth, @go_ethereum and the developers and community for the support that made this fix possible in an incredibly short time period.