It seems that Christmas is coming earlier for users of Ethereum. The blockchain behind the second-largest cryptocurrency is about to see what is known as the “Istanbul” hard fork or blockchain update, which is one of the network’s few-and-far-between and important named upgrades.
According to Etherscan, an Ethereum-centric data and information platform, Istanbul will activate on Block #9069000, expected to take place around 30 minutes away as of the time of writing this.
But this may leave you wondering, what exactly is Istanbul?
Well, it’s an upgrade that will introduce a number of key changes, six to be exact:
For a more technical and in-depth explanation, you can visit Ethereum’s Istanbul Fork — Technical Explanation by Luit Hollander, a developer at popular Ether-centric wallet MyCrypto.
Oddly, it appears that a majority of nodes are still not ready to support the update. EtherNodes
, a website tracking nodes running Ethereum, notes that 50% (1263) of the nodes running the geth client are not ready to adopt Istanbul, while 53% (439) of the Parity clients are not ready as well. In aggregate, 50.6% of Ethereum full nodes are not yet ready to embrace the blockchain upgrade.Photo by Simon Abrams on Unsplash