Activation of Istanbul hard fork in Ethereum testnet is scheduled for early October

Hudson Jameson, Ethereum Foundation's community manager, said Istanbul’s hard fork will be activated on the test network on October 2, according to CoinDesk .

Initially, the testnet upgrade was planned for September 4. Nevertheless, the update had to be postponed due to the large number of proposals for improving Ethereum (EIP), as well as the unavailability of the Parity team . To date, the developers have already decided on the block number on which Istanbul will be activated in the test network.

“However, this can happen a day or two earlier or later than the designated date, depending on how quickly the blocks are created ,” Jameson said.

Of the approximately 30 proposals discussed by developers , only six are approved for inclusion in the upcoming Istanbul hard fork. The implementation of eight other EIPs will take place later, during a major upgrade of the system called Berlin.

Activation of Istanbul in the Ethereum core network should take place before November, after the Devcon conference, which will be held October 8-11 in Osaka, Japan.

“One of the lessons learned from the previous Byzantium hard fork is that you should not try to focus on the test and main networks at the same time. Let's start with the hard fork in the testnet and see how this happens , ”said one of the representatives of the Ethereum startup Infura.

According to Jameson, given the results of the audit conducted by Least Authority, the implementation of the new ProgPoW mining algorithm will take place later, during the Berlin hard fork. This will happen no earlier than the first quarter of 2020, if the next security problems are not found.

Recall, Istanbul will be the eighth hard fork in the Ethereum network . It is expected that the first part of the hard fork will expand the possibilities of interacting with the Zcash cryptocurrency, help protect the network from replay attacks, and will also contain other important updates. The second stage of the update includes changes that at the current stage still require refinement and testing.

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