On June 30, the Gray Glacier hard fork was held on the Ethereum network at block #15,050,000. The main and only goal of the update was the distance on the time horizon of the activation of the “complexity bomb”.
We are talking about the original code fragment of the Ethereum protocol, the implementation of which exponentially increases the complexity of mining. This was done because it would make it unprofitable to work on the network on the Proof-of-Work algorithm as we move to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
This isn’t the first time developers have suffered a “complexity bomb”. In June, this happened again with the Gray Glacier update, which is connected with the planned transfer of the main network to the PoS algorithm (The Merge). After the update, the increase in mining difficulty has been pushed back by 700,000 blocks, or, according to calculations, by approximately 100 days (until approximately the beginning of October).
Inside the team, they plan that The Merge update will take place as early as August. Vitalik Buterin shares this opinion. However, the co-founder of Ethereum admits that it is possible that the transition will be postponed in the fall if “potential risks” arise.
The upgrade of Gray Glacier took place in the form of a hard fork, which caused the requirement from node operators to update the software accordingly.
“If you are using an Ethereum client that has not been updated to the latest version, it will be synced to the pre-fork blockchain as soon as the update occurs. You will be stuck on an incompatible chain following the old rules and will not be able to send ETH or operate on the network,” the developers warned in an announcement on June 16th.
Recall that in June, the Ethereum team successfully transferred the Ropsten test network to the PoS algorithm. At the same time, the network was among the test blockchains that the developers decided to close. Only Goerli and Sepolia testnets will remain.