The second largest digital currency (by cap) will have another round of upgrades sometime this year and/or early next year with “Metropolis” and “Serenity”. Designed to pave the way for a much better functionality and address the scaling problem, Metropolis and Serenity could be the long awaited white knights that will trigger the “flippinning”.
Ethereum will end up having 7 network upgrades in total, five of which have already taken place. Below is the timeline:
Source: //www.nextbigfuture.com
Potential Benefits Include:
Price Rally
Historically, Ethereum’s price rallies resulted from these upgrades. After the launch of Homestead in March for example, Ethereum jumped by 150% from around $12 in mid-February to a new high of $30 end of March.
Ease of use
Right now, Ethereum is practically difficult to use. To the average Joe and Jane, it’s like driving the first Ford GT in the 1900’s (see previous post on this topic: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@sandalphon/digital-currency-past-present-future-lessons-from-the-past). But when all's said and done, the Metropolis update will allow better ethereum applications to be created.
Scalability
Raiden is expected to solve Ethereum’s scale challenge. Currently, Ethereum can process a max of 15 transactions per second, Bitcoin can do about 7 while visa handles 40,000 transactions per second. Raiden is a technology that leverages off-chain state networks to extend Ethereum with some nice properties for asset transfers:
• Scalable: it scales linearly with the number of participants (1,000,000+ transfers per second is possible);
• Fast: Transfers are confirmed and final within the fraction of a second;
• Confidential: Single transfers don’t show up in the global shared ledger;
• Interoperable: Works with any token that follows Ethereum’s standardized token API;
• Low Fees: Transaction fees can be 7 orders of magnitude lower than on the blockchain;
• Micro-payments: Low transaction fees allow to efficiently transfer tiny values.
Disclosure: I do not intend to provide investment advice through this article and does not represent that the securities or services discussed are suitable for any investor. Investors are advised not to rely on any information contained in the article in the process of making a fully informed investment decision.