The Ethereum network will be undergoing a scheduled upgrade soon called “Arrow Glacier,” a change that aims to mimic the “Muir Glacier” upgrade. Essentially, Ethereum’s Arrow Glacier changes the parameters of the network’s Difficulty Bomb delay to June 2022. This will give the Ethereum network another six months until it leads to the “Ice Age” proof-of-stake (PoS) transition.
Arrow Glacier Aims to Postpone Ethereum’s Ice Age
At Ethereum block height 13,773,000 the network will implement the Arrow Glacier upgrade which aims to postpone Ethereum’s Difficulty Bomb. The bomb mechanism has been around since 2015 and makes the network’s mining difficulty increase over time. This will result in the Ice Age. The Ice Age is a time when blockchain production of proof-of work (PoW), stops and it becomes 100% dependent on consensus proof-of stake (PoS).
The Difficulty bomb was to occur in 4,000,000 blocks, or 611 days following the Muir Glacier network upgrades. Arrow Glacier will move the bomb further back to June 2022. This will provide ethereum PoW mining another six months until June 2022. When the Difficulty Bomb happens, the mining difficulty will become too high and PoW miners will have to stop working.
Arrow Glacier will occur between now and Wednesday December 8th 2021. “The Arrow Glacier network upgrade, similarly to Muir Glacier, changes the parameters of the Ice Age/Difficulty Bomb, pushing it back several months,” Ethereum developers expain. “This has also been done in the Byzantium, Constantinople and London network upgrades. No other changes are introduced as part of Arrow Glacier.” The announcement adds:
Difficulty Bombs are only for proof-of-work networks. It is therefore limited to the Ethereum mainnet, Ropsten test and Ropsten. With the recent progress towards Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake, it was decided to only delay the bomb on mainnet for now and to try and run the proof-of-stake transition on Ropsten before the bomb goes off on that network.
Ethereum Hashrate Taps All Time High. Ether Will Be the Second Most Profitable Coin To Mine in 2021
Ethereum network participants waited a while for the Ice Age PoS transition. However, ethereum miners are enjoying the PoW incentives. During the early morning hours of December 7, Ethereum’s hashrate reached 1 petahash per second (PH/s). The recorded metric is the highest the hashrate has ever been and currently Ethereum’s processing power is coasting along at 900 terahash per second (TH/s).
Ethereum (ETH), which is the most profitable cryptocurrency, can also be mined today, after kadena mining (KDA). At $0.12 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and today’s ether exchange rates, a 1,500 megahash per second (MH/s) machine can get around $91 per day. Mining ethereum with the most profitable ether mining rig is 68.85% more profitable than mining bitcoin (BTC) with today’s best performing SHA256 bitcoin miner which gets a touch over $28 per day in profits.
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