Ethereum performs a hard fork, successfully delays the difficulty bomb

Ethereum has just completed its Muir Glacier hard fork — a new solution that successfully delayed the project’s difficulty bomb. The difficulty bomb, which threatened to freeze the network due to major difficulty increase, was now delayed by another 20 months, and it should not become a problem again for quite a while.

The bomb came as a bit of a surprise as it emerged several months earlier than expected. It surprised the developers by bringing the Ice Age that was not supposed to happen for quite some time.

As a result, the team came up with a new hard fork known as Muir Glacier, which was successfully pulled off earlier today.

According to what is known, Muir Glacier has placed another 4 million blocks between the current block and a block which will activate the time bomb once again. This translates to approximately 611 days, which the developers plan to use in order to find a permanent solution for the issue.

So far, the biggest problem regarding the time bomb is predicting how it will affect the network, due to its unpredictability and complex mechanism. So far, developers came up with two potential solutions — making the difficulty bomb more predictable, or removing it completely.

Details about the difficulty bomb

The bomb was originally introduced back in August 2015, and its presence guaranteed a hard fork within 16 months from the moment of its introduction. It came as a new concept that doesn’t reduce the rewards that miners get (like Bitcoin halving does), but rather, it increases the time needed to mine the block.

However, this approach could also lead to the network being frozen, as transactions could not be processed due to the increased difficulty. This was its intended function, as it should have ‘encouraged’ the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0, and force the community into an agreement, or risk the failure of the project.

It has been over four years since then, and Ethereum 2.0 has yet to arrive, currently scheduled to occur in the Q1 2020. Meanwhile, the difficulty bomb saw several delays. the latest of which has just been implemented. This also led to a lot of criticism of the project, accusing it of over-promising and under-delivering. Even the developers agree that the difficulty bomb was a mistake.

Still, if all goes as planned, the bomb should not be a problem for much longer, and ETH might finally reach its second phase soon.