The new protocol went live today at 12:33 pm UTC at block height 12,965,000. The London hard fork will guide the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559.
The London hard fork in the Ethereum network will bring several changes to transaction fees, gas refunds, and many more. With EIP-1559, the circulating supply of ether (ETH) will decrease because of burning the base fee.
The new fee structure is expected to make Ethereum less inflationary. The upgrade also includes EIP 3554 that will make mining more difficult. This will eventually help in the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
Binance, the largest crypto exchange platform by trading volumes, put a temporary halt at deposits and withdrawals on the Ethereum network. Some analysts believe that each transaction will make part of the tokens to be removed from circulation.
The London hard fork is part of Ethereum’s plan to launch its proof-of-stake protocol, the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0. After a successful activation on the Ropsten and Goerli testnets, the date for the mainnet’s launch was finally decided for August 4.
What are forks and how do they work?
A fork happens when the software of distinct miners becomes misaligned, and miners, in a unanimous way, have to choose which one of these versions of the blockchain to use. If there isn’t a unanimous consensus, there will be two different blockchains.
There are two ways to launch a new token: to create it from the beginning or to “fork” it. 2 blockchains can be generated and a unanimous decision to continue with one sometimes can’t be reached. One can continue as the first token, and the other can produce another coin.
Forks can be categorized as:
Hard forks are permanent separations from the former blockchain version. A major change is made to the software and is necessary for every user to use the updated blockchain. Those that continue running the old software won’t be integrated into the new one.
Soft forks are usually used to apply software upgrades. The new version of the blockchain is used to validate transactions. The miners still using the old software will anyway see the new blocks as legitimate. But the new blockchain won’t acknowledge the non-updated nodes.
