A look at the latest Ethereum (ETH) updates and those yet to come

shirina476

Ethereum is regularly updated to improve the technical capabilities of the network. These are mainly carried out through hard forks.

Ethereum's next upgrade, Shanghai, will allow staking token withdrawals . We should also see a significant update to introduce sharding sometime in 2023 or 2024.

Previous Ethereum updates have changed the network's fee structure (London) and consensus mechanism (The Merge).

Ethereum has introduced many major updates throughout its life. Discover some of their most recent and critical hard forks, and what to expect in the future.



Ethereum has a long and exciting history when it comes to upgrades. Since its birth, we have seen numerous changes that have improved its functionality. It is one of the aspects that makes the network popular among users and developers alike. If you own ether (ETH) or are simply curious about the world of cryptocurrencies, you have a lot to gain by understanding the origins of the network, its current state, and where it is headed in the future.



What are Ethereum upgrades?
Ethereum upgrades implement technical changes to the Ethereum network. These can improve scalability, alter the gas tariff model or affect the technical capabilities of the network. To make changes, a process is followed that involves the development and review of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) by the community and the development team.

Most Ethereum upgrades require hard forks
The most important updates will involve a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain. This means that the new code implemented in an update is incompatible with the old code. To participate in the new update, users running nodes must update their software. Nodes and validators running the older software will not produce valid blocks with the latest update. A soft fork, on the other hand, allows validators and nodes still running the old code to create and verify blocks, even after the upgrade.

Hard forking is necessary for updates with significant changes, as it ensures that all users on the network use the new code. This allows the user base to effectively agree on new updates. If an upgrade were not popular with the hard fork system, most would stay with the original blockchain unchanged.

For example, the update that Ecuador Mobile Number List converts Ethereum to a Proof of Stake (PoS) network would not work if some validators were allowed to continue with Proof of Work (PoW) . Any validators that continued to use the old PoW mechanism would remain on the old, obsolete blockchain and be separated. This already happened previously on Ethereum with the DAO hack. Most users switched to a hard fork that reversed the hack, but many did not agree with the change, staying on the old version of the blockchain and renaming it Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Major Ethereum Updates
La Beacon chain
The Beacon chain upgrade (December 1, 2020) was the first step in the migration from Ethereum to PoS. The chain was introduced as Ethereum's new coordinating blockchain to create and validate new blocks while rewarding ETH to validators. Locked ETH staking was also introduced alongside the Beacon chain. Upon the creation of the new chain , the original Ethereum PoW would merge to become one.

Ethereum merge
The Ethereum merger (September 6, 2022) saw the merger of the original Ethereum PoW blockchain with the new PoS Beacon Chain. All smart contracts and transactional data moved to the Beacon Chain, successfully completing the switch to PoS.
               

Fragmentation
The implementation of sharding (expected in 2023/24) will be a major update to increase the scalability of Ethereum. Exact plans are still in development as the team reacts to improvements in scalability technology.

There are several options. The first is to use fragmented blockchains like the RAM of a computer. They will offer data storage to the main chain through a scaling process, allowing it to increase its transactions per second (TPS). The second is to execute code and process transactions on the fragments themselves. Each shard would have its own stored smart contracts and account balances which it would then share with the entire Ethereum network.