It's Forktober already?

There has been a lot of drama surrounding Bitcoin this year leading up to the first major Bitcoin Cash hard fork on the 1st August. In this month, the Bitcoin blockchain is getting ready for the Bitcoin Gold fork, which I covered in this article and in November, there is yet another update planned (2x). With all this turmoil happening, one may easily overlook that there are exciting news coming up for the second most popular cryptocurrency - the Ethereum Metropolis update .

Fall 2017 marks the third of four planned stages in the Ethereum blockchain development roadmap. Part 1 of the Metropolis update is only a few days away, and it goes by the name Byzantium.

But what does the update actually contribute to the blockchain? - Let's have a look {◕ ◡ ◕}

Features - Sharks and Snarks

Here is a breakdown of the new features in this update:

zk-SNARKS

Smart Contracts

Clients

Bring Your Own Bombs

here

Mining

So when's the party?

The Metropolis hard fork is divided into two separate core releases named: Byzantium and Constantinople. We are currently about to witness the first part of the fork. The Ethereum team have spent their September running extesive test sets in order to ensure a smooth transition. It was initially uncertain how long the testing will take and so the Byzantium release was scheduled for a timeframe between the late September and the end of October.

If all goes as planned, we can assume that Byzantium will go live on the 17^th October 2017. Codetract released a nice ticker where you can follow the update live.

What does this mean for me?

Unlike the bitcoin hard forks that traditionally generate a lot of media traction and emotional debates, the Ethereum forks are discussed less widely due to their humble nature. Indeed, this hard fork is exactly what the name suggest - just an update. It will happen silently and transition unnoticably to regular ETH users.

I you hold ether tokens - kick back and relax: Your tokens are getting more secure and the blockchain more robust against potential threats and malfunctioning contracts. With the implementation of zk-SNARKS, Byzantium is bringing Ethereum to a whole new level of privacy and anonymity. The new ease of executing trades with Zcash is an extra perk. You can look forward to a faster network with lower fees.

Image sources:

https://unsplash.com/photos/zU-_CGMvGp0