Two days ago, brand new code was released on GitHub that had a Constantinople activation time within it. The post reads that GETH, or ‘Go Ethereum (available on Coinbase),’ is a special release and a hard fork will take place on the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) (ETH) mainnet at block 7,080,000. This new hard fork is expected to take place around January 16th, 2019.

Ethereum (available on Coinbase) (ETH) Constantinople

#Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Constantinople mainnet hard fork scheduled for block #7080000, estimated around the 16th of January, 2019!
— Péter Szilágyi (@peter_szilagyi) December 7, 2018

Ethereum (available on Coinbase)’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, re-tweeted the tweet above on December 7th. Ethereum (available on Coinbase) core devs agreed to finally launch the Constantinople hard fork on that day. Constantinople comprises separate Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Improvement Proposals (EIPs). These separate proposals are geared towards softening the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

This change is long-awaited, and somETHing Ethereum (available on Coinbase) developers have been planning for years. PoS would fundamentally change Ethereum (available on Coinbase) (ETH) by means of a host of new upgrades. PoW has been under sTron (available on Binance)g criticism as it has been known to be far less energy-efficient than PoS.

Due to the fundamental change in the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) blockchain, all nodes must either update with the entire system or carry on running as a separate blockchain. A trial run of the hard fork was run on Ropsten back in October, and a consensus issue was found. This is what caused the delay in the hard fork until late-January.