Ethereum Foundation announces Muir Glacier, urges nodes to upgrade

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Updated on Mar 11, 2020

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Ethereum's network is about to receive yet another upgrade in a bit more than a week.
The new upgrade, Muir Glacier, is scheduled to arrive at block 9,200,000, which will likely be mined on January 1st.
The Ethereum Foundation issued a warning for the network's miners, urging them to upgrade their nodes before this date.

Ethereum recently activated its Istanbul upgrade, which saw a number of nodes deactivated due to the fact that they did not get prepared in time. Now, with the new upgrade, Muir Glacier, approaching, the Ethereum Foundation once again urges nodes to prepare.

According to the Ethereum Foundation’s recent announcement, the Ethereum network will receive Muir Glacier upgrade at block number 9,200,000, which is expected to arrive on January 1st, 2020.

This means that miners have around nine more days to prepare and upgrade their nodes to the latest version of Ethereum client. The Foundation’s official blog post notes that those who use exchanges such as Kraken, Binance, or Coinbase, a web wallet service such as MyEtherWallet, Metamask, or MyCrypto, a mobile wallet like Status.im, TrustWallet, or Coinbase Wallet do not have to take any additional steps. The same is true for those who use hardware wallets such as Trezor, Ledger, or KeepKey.

Ethereum’s time bomb affected the upgrade schedule

As mentioned, the upgrade is likely to take place on January 1st, although its exact time, and even date, are subject to change due to different block times. Originally, the upgrade was expected to take place on January 6th.

Many likely remember that Ethereum’s Istanbul upgrade came only a few weeks ago when ETH hit block number 9,069,000. The upgrade brought six distinct changes, however, none of them tackled the issue of Ethereum’s time bomb. Initially, the time bomb was not supposed to become noticeable before mid-2020. However, as the blockchain started speeding up, it emerged in October 2019, causing the ETH developers to come up with a new upgrade, which is going to be Muir Glacier. The new upgrade will delay the bomb for another 4 million blocks.