After a delay of more than a month, ethereum's blockchain eventually forks and activates Constantinople.
This is an exciting time for the ethereum community. The Constantinople upgrade proposal eliminates significant technical barriers - so far - that have hampered the project's development. First, the Hard Fork paves the way for ethereum's widely delayed expansion roadmap. Secondly, it improves the network efficiency and cost structure of ethereum.
Understand ethereum economic policy
According to the proposed EIP 1234, as well as part of the five major upgrades to the Constantinople activation add-on, ethereum removes difficulty bombs, as described above. That means miners will be able to mine the ethereum block at a faster rate. It will result in a reduction in the bonus per block from 3 ETH to 2 ETH.
The purpose of EIP 1234 is to reduce the issuance of ether COINS. So far, ethereum has enjoyed an open-ended inflation model - the project has virtually no economic policy.
The owner of EIP 1234, compound Schoeden, said the upgrade will enable itf to stabilize its ether supply. At the same time, it delays the difficulty bomb. But critics argue that the smaller the miners' profit margins, the less likely they are to be bankrupted. They added that large miners with expensive ASIC machines would gain a monopoly over ethereum's network and make it more concentrated than before.
But according to cryptoeconomist alex krueger, forks aren't painful for many people.
"After Constantinople, assuming ETH is around $155, only professional miners with electricity above $0.075 can operate at a loss. Amateur miners, meanwhile, are not concerned with making or losing money. "
ETH, which breaks even on mining operations, pays $0.06 per kilowatt-hour of electricity, which is currently about $67 (estimates depend on operating costs other than electricity). For those who buy a used RX580 GPU and depreciate it within a year, the break-even price is $165 - --AlexKrüger（）
A more bullish ether
For those who speculate on the value of ether tokens, Constantinople is good news from an economic point of view.
Based on classic demand and supply theory, ethereum's local token ether could be a big driver. In the short term, at least, there will be more speculation about ethereum's ability to solve extended problems. On this basis, the "supply bleeding" killer solution in EIP 1234 will advocate for etheric holders with long-term investment potential.
Constantinople's launch is expected to raise the miners' break-even cost by $67 to $101. While it could push some small miners out of business, which could lead to a short-term downward trend as marginalized mining unions sell their legal returns, ether rates could normalize after the after-hours adjustment period.
"The break-even increase itself is not optimistic. "Prices don't follow break-even, and break-even doesn't represent the bottom line in encryption," krueger said. "However, once the initial [painful] adjustment period of mining has passed, the supply of mining with fewer miners will clearly be bullish."