• Ethereum Hard-Fork which was estimated to occur today delays till 8th December 2019.
• Zcash, the privacy-centric cryptocurrency gains 13.4% ahead of Ethereum’s Istanbul Hard fork due to increased interoperability.
• Vitalik Buterin introduces the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain explorer in preparedness for future upgrades.

The Ethereum Istanbul hard fork is one of the many hard forks that Ethereum would go through to finally shift to PoS or Ethereum 2.0. The upgrades include a series of improvement protocols.

The estimated date of the Istanbul Hard Fork as reported by the Consensys Lab was 6th December 2019. The block height, however, has not been reached yet. The hard fork countdown now indicates an estimated time of 44 hours at press time (8th December 2019).

The delay can be attributed to the fall in the transactions in Ethereum. the graph below suggests that around 22nd to 23rd, the daily average saw a decrease.

The drop can be seen as a positive improvement in the network to deter spams. The Istanbul update will “alter the cost of various opcodes to prevent spamming blocks and improve overall denial-of-service attack resilience.” Hence, the bad players in the network might be quitting. Nevertheless, the transactions might also have decreased due to the preparedness for the network upgrade.

Post the event, Zcash will enjoy interoperability with the Etherum network. The price Zcash recorded a high at $31, yesterday.

Apart from Zcash, some of the other cryptocurrencies which run on the same Equihash protocol include Ethereum Classic [ETC], BTC hard fork Bitcoin Gold [BTG], Komodo and so on.

Nevertheless, the new EIP 1108 proposal will “assist a number of privacy solutions and scaling solutions on Ethereum” itself. Moreover, Zcash is currently testing the lowest range in its price history. Hence, the sustainability of the pump could be a question here.

Vitalik Buterin also introduces the blockchain explorer for Ethereum 2.0. It shows the network data which includes the Dapps, staking, transactions and various other features of the network.

Financial and Crypto Market Analyst, Mati Greenspan notes,

This one is a rather minor upgrade on the roadmap to Ethereum 2.0 and is meant to improve security, network costs, and interoperability with other blockchains.

Moreover, the network continues to project a growth path with increased adoption and reduced inflation. Hence, with the tech upgrades, if it continues to dominate the space, we could see an upside to the price as well.

What do you think about the short term price action of Ethereum? Please share your views with us. 

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Ethereum Istanbul Hard Fork Delays by Two Days - Here's How its Panning Out

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The Ethereum Istanbul hard fork is one of the many hard forks that Ethereum would go through to finally shift to PoS or Ethereum 2.0. The upgrades include a series of improvement protocols. 

Nivesh Rustgi

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