Ethereum Hardforks for 2024

In June 2016, hackers attacked the DAO crowdfunding platform, which Ethereum positioned as an innovative way to manage liquidity and invest. Attackers exploited vulnerabilities in the code to withdraw more than 30% of the funds raised (about $50 million in ETH) from the protocol.

However, the structure of the smart contract provided for assets to be locked for 28 days before the transaction was executed. During this time, the developers put together a proposal to upgrade the EIP-779 network, allowing the chain to be rolled back to its pre-hack state and funds to be withdrawn.

The hardfork was conducted on July 20 on block 1920000. Part of the community did not support the decision, which jeopardized decentralization. As a result, the network split into 2 chains. The original one received the prefix Classic. This is the first Ethereum fork.

Spurious Dragon

Another unscheduled upgrade was carried out by the team on November 22, 2016. The decision was made due to a security threat to the crypto network. Earlier in September 2016, the developers recorded several DoS attacks with spamming.

Spurious Dragon included several improvements that changed the size and pricing of codes, making the attacks financially unviable. At the same time, the developers implemented anti-replay protection and deletion of spam accounts created by attackers. This reduced the size of the network and sped up synchronization when users connect.

Constantinople

This Etherium hardfork is considered the most problematic in the project’s history. While trying to launch the update, the team encountered a large number of critical bugs that disrupted the blockchain. The activation deadline was postponed due to a security loophole discovered in the smart contract of the EIP-1283 offering.

At this time, there was an urgent need to reschedule the “complexity bomb” that had started to take effect. The developers didn’t have time to fix the bug, so EIP-1283 was removed from the update.

The Constantinople hardfork was activated on February 28, 2019 on block 7280000. In addition, the developers added the function of mutual verification of smart contracts using a unique line of code, and also reduced the gas fee for accelerated transactions. The team has started paving the way for moving to a consensus-based Proof-of-Stake algorithm.

The Merge

The biggest and most anticipated upgrade on the Efirium network occurred on September 15, 2022 on the 15537394 blockchain. The Merge changed the consensus algorithm from PoW to PoS and, accordingly, the way ETH coins are mined from mining to staking. This reduced the network’s power consumption by 99.9%. Ethereum researcher Justin Drake estimated a 0.2% reduction in value globally.

The Beacon Chain test chain was launched back in 2020. Users were able to steak from 32 ETH coins. The Merge merged the main blockchain with the new branch.

However, not all members of the community supported the upgrade. In August 2022, the ETHPoW token appeared on the old consensus mechanism. It was supported by the largest mining pools.

The main task set by the developers was to solve the problem of scalability and high commissions. The team promises to increase transaction processing speed up to 100 thousand TPS after all necessary updates are completed.

Shanghai

The withdrawal of ETH coins from staking was blocked until 2023. The feature was activated on April 13, 2023 by launching the Shanghai update. Earlier in February, the EIP-4895 proposal was tested on the Sepolia test network.

Contrary to expectations, this upgrade had almost no effect on network activity in Ethereum. On the contrary – JP Morgan recorded a decrease in the number of transactions. By September 2023, this indicator decreased by 12%. At the same time, the number of active wallets and the amount of blocked funds in DeFi protocols decreased by 20% and 8% respectively.

London

As part of the realization of the full transition to the PoS algorithm, the developers launched another update. The ETH London hardfork was activated on August 5, 2023 on the 12965000 blockchain. The team changed the model of transaction fee generation and the “complexity bomb” mechanism.

Proposal EIP-1559 divided the commissions in the blockchain into 2 parts: basic and priority. The first began to be burned to create an artificial shortage of coins. The second came as a reward to validators. This made it possible to launch the procedure for reducing commissions in Efirium. Experts estimate that the fees will decrease by 1.4% annually.

Dencun

The next major update took place on March 13, 2024. As part of Dencun, the team implemented several suggestions to improve the network at once, including:

• EIP-4844 – launching Proto-Danksharding to handle a new type of large size transaction. This reduced fees on L2 networks.
• EIP-4788 – improving the performance of crosschain bridges and staking pools.
• EIP-5656 – improved performance of the EVM virtual machine.
• EIP-1153 – reducing blockchain storage costs.

The improvements were planned for 2023, but were postponed due to technical issues in the test networks. After activation, the average commission in L2 networks decreased by 99.8% – to $0.0012.