Ethereum Miners Reach Conclusive Decision to Hardfork

 Almost 60% of Ethereum miners have upgraded to support Ethereum’s historical hardfork, reaching a conclusive and final decision in alignment with the wishes of Ethereum holders who voted overwhelmingly in favor of the fork, with 87% supporting the restoration of stolen property to their rightful owners.

All big western pools held a vote, showing a new system of governance in the blockchain space. Overall, almost 80% of miners in all pools voted in favor, with 85% of miners on Dwarfpool, Ethereum’s biggest pool, voting in support of the fork.

In contrast, F2pool and BW, both Chinese pools, made a unilateral decision without holding a vote, concentrating power in the operators of these two pools, contrary to blockchain’s fundamental principle of decentralization and dispersion of power. Nonetheless, they too will most probably upgrade as it is now certain that almost 60% have upgraded to support the fork.

The fork chain will, therefore, be the longest and supported by all exchanges as far as it is known. The deprecated chain will be fully insecure as any miner can easily attack it. As such, it is unlikely to have a market or any value.

Vote Manipulation

There were some tense hours yesterday when Ethpool’s vote dramatically switched in a few short hours which led to a brief market sell-off. It coincided with a likewise increase in the pool’s hashrate, providing evidence to allegations of clear manipulation: 

  Ethpool’s operator squashed any uncertainty, making it absolutely clear they will support the fork: 

“[A]ccording to our voting policy stated in the announcement, we will support the hard fork.”

Conclusive Decision

With the decision now conclusive, all node operators need to urgently upgrade with default settings or, if asked to choose, should select the hardfork chain. The same applies to all non-pool miners. Failure to do so ensures that you are cut off from the network with your node or mining equipment becoming non-operational as far as ethereum’s network and almost all exchanges are concerned.

If you do not run a node or if you are a pool miner, no action needs to be taken except to refrain from transacting for about an hour after block 1,920,000, which is to be mined around mid-day in Europe, early morning in America or late evening in China on Wednesday the 20th of July 2016. If you must transact during that period make sure you wait for an excessively large number of confirmations just to be absolutely safe.

The hard-fork is, however, likely to be a non-event as the majority of miners are now conclusively in favor and their lead is sufficient to ensure the fork chain wins. All other miners will therefore probably upgrade today, if they have not already. As such, the transition is likely to be smooth.

That will end one of the most interesting episode in blockchain’s eight-year history, where a community quickly reacted, organized, and implemented a solution, averting a disaster, forming a new governance model, learning the lessons, and moving on to build cool new stuff at the bleeding edge of blockchain tech.   

 Author: Andrew Quentson