THELOGICALINDIAN - The amend gives Ethereum addition 20 months until its abutting Ice Age
The Ethereum Muir Glacier adamantine angle was auspiciously completed, already afresh dabbling the mining “difficulty bomb” that threatens to benumb the network.
Defusing the Bomb?
Muir Glacier (EIP-2387) was initially proposed because of an aberration in the access of the adversity bomb. As said by Tim Beiko, a artefact administrator alive at Ethereum:
Muir Glacier gives the bomb’s agglutinate addition 4 actor blocks, or about 611 days. This is meant to accord developers added time to acquisition a abiding solution.
One of the better issues with the adversity bomb is that it’s “very difficult to simulate or adumbrate its aftereffect on the network.” The account of this alternation is because it’s congenital alongside a “complex mechanism” that calculates block times.
The amend suggests two continued appellation solutions to the adversity bomb — amend it to accomplish it added anticipated or abolish it entirely.
Understanding Ethereum’s “Ice Age”
Ethereum first introduced the adversity bomb in August 2015, “which alluringly guarantees a hard-fork point in the abutting 16 months.”
Unlike appointed accolade halvings on bill like Bitcoin and Litecoin, Ethereum’s adversity bomb increases the bulk of time it takes to abundance blocks. Not alone does this account block rewards to plummet, but accustomed abundant time it would additionally accompany the arrangement to a arrest as transaction times and fees added exponentially — as intended.
The band-aid was meant to animate a alert advancement to Ethereum 2.0 and force the association into agreement, acceptance those that disagree to “fork off,” as Ethereum Classic did in October 2024.
The Difficulty Bomb Gets a Longer Fuse
Four years later, Ethereum’s proof-of-stake alternation (dubbed Ethereum 2.0) has yet to barrage due to altered engineering challenges. Currently, Ethereum 2.0 is tentatively scheduled to barrage in the aboriginal division of 2020.
These delays accept pushed the dificulty bomb aback three times back 2015. First in 2018 with the Byzantium adamantine fork, a additional time in February 2019 as allotment of Constantinople, and now a third time with Muir Glacier.
Growing Criticism of Ethereum Development
Ethereum is seeing ascent criticism. Continual delays of ETH 2.0 and alternating development mishaps accept contributed to a appearance that the project’s administration is inept.
One archetype of this amateurishness was the emergency delay of the Constantinople adamantine fork. Just hours afore its implementation, a aegis vulnerability was apparent that batty the appointed fork. Muir Glacier is addition example, area one poor admiration after-effects in addition potentially chancy fork, with every angle introducing an befalling for article to go wrong.
In all, this has resulted in sentiment that Ethereum tends to “over affiance and beneath deliver.”
Even Ethereum developers themselves accept started to booty notice. Speaking to the Ethereum developer community, Joseph Delong, a chief software architect at ConsenSys said:
Others catechism the arete of the adversity bomb altogether. If the absorbed of the adversity bomb, which can be always delayed, was to set a borderline for proof-of-stake, again what’s the point, asked crypto adventure backer Tuur Demeester.
Despite the criticism, the accident of abortion has been averted, for now.
