Ethereum has achieved what some said was impossible. A controversial hardfork has just successfully completed.
At block 1,920,000 a split occurred which lasted barely seconds:
The Moment Ethereum Achieved an Historical Hardfork
Ethereum’s price jumped yesterday when the fork became fairly certain. It continued to rally today with price enjoying an astonishing increase once the fork was successfully completed:
Price Jumps as Ethereum Successfully Hardforks
After a month of heated debate, Ethereum’s community quickly came together with an incredible 87% of Eth holders voting in support of the hardfork. Miners likewise showed an overall 80% vote in favor. The entire ecosystem, including all businesses, miners, and node operators, upgraded in just three days. The clients were coded and released in just over one week.
The incredible speed of the community’s reaction to one of the biggest attempted thefts in the digital currency space shows immense skill in Ethereum’s development team and a community that overwhelmingly shares the same principles.
The clean resolution to the attempted heist was possible due to a new, decentralized, governance model where those with stake in the system cast their decisive votes. For the first time in history, a decision was made based on incorruptible, fully transparent, trivially verifiable blockchain voting which lasted for weeks. This was complemented by a miners vote with hashpower where an attempt at manipulation was instantly obvious and therefore had no effect.
This is a new era in the digital currency space. A new dawn, where the mainstream is embraced, not shunned, where businesses and corporations are welcomed, not disparaged, where even banks can join.
There will be much to discuss in the coming days and months, including how to make contracts safer, how to incorporate fail safe mechanisms, whether the manner the decision was made can be improved, how to assure businesses they can be certain of immutability based on the assumption 51% are honest actors and much more.
Today, however, is the time to celebrate an historical, defining and monumental event in the digital currency space and perhaps the wider world as blockchain tech was advanced just a bit further, showing its full potential to improve the world while addressing the other edge of any tool that man has made.
Featured image from Shutterstock. Images from EthStats and Tradeblock.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/author/andrew-quent/