An upcoming planned hard fork in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will impose relatively simple technical changes to its consensus mechanism that will not split the chain, despite some turbulent undercurrents in the coin’s community regarding issues which have recently become difficult to ignore. Disloyalty and perhaps manipulation among miners, or just the possibility of such, has refocused the conversation ahead of the Nov. 15 fork. These issues have gone unaddressed in the “planned hard fork” coming tomorrow, a term which has been politicized to mean community strife and a chain split — but in this case, is something rather benign. The …

Team lead at the Ethereum (ETH) Foundation Péter Szilágyi has confirmed Dec. 4 as the expected date for the network’s forthcoming Istanbul hard fork. In two tweets posted on Nov. 7, Szilágyi indicated that Istanbul will commence at block 9069000. He provided Geth mainnet node operators with a link to a new maintenance release designed to begin the hard fork’s initialization. Geth is the name given to one of the two most popular clients used to operate nodes on the Ethereum network — the other being Parity, which will update upon the activation of Istanbul but is now in the …

The core development team of blockchain platform Æternity announced the release of the software of its latest hard fork, namely Lima. Æternity announced in a press release published on Nov. 5 that the introduction of Lima improves the network’s virtual machines, governance and naming system. The purpose of the update explicitly described in the announcement is to challenge Ethereum and other blockchain platforms. A virtual machine ten times more efficient The press release claims that Æternity is one of the most active blockchain developer communities measured by code activity. Core developers have now released the updated software and the majority …

The Aragon community has officially proclaimed itself against ProgPOW. ProgPOW is a proposed protocol change to the Ehereum network that would close the efficiency gap available to application-specific integrated circuits. In a tweet on Nov. 2, the official account of the Aragon project posted voting results, showing that a proposal to block changes to Ethereum’s mining algorithm had passed. ProgPOW would change the Ethereum network’s proof-of-work mining algorithm before the eventual switch to a proof-of-stake model as part of the Ethereum 2.0 roll-out. Aragon, which is an open-source software project for creating and managing decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), uses Ethereum …

Major Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain Qtum has gone through its first-ever hard fork today, updating the network to Qtum 2.0. Major network upgrade Qtum blockchain has had its first hard fork as scheduled, Qtum Official tweeted on Oct. 17. The hard fork happened at block 466,000, upgrading the Qtum network to unlock a number of significant features such as smart contract and block spacing improvements, as previously announced by the firm. According to Qtum blockchain explorer Qtum Insight, the number of blocks on Qtum blockchain has crossed the 466,000 mark, amounting to 466,621 at press time. Qtum blocks. Souce: Qtum Insight …

The chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) believes Ether (ETH) is a commodity — and that ETH futures trading is becoming a reality. Heath Tarbert, who overtook J. Christopher Giancarlo in July, revealed his stance toward cryptocurrencies and forked coins at the All Markets Summit on Oct. 10, Yahoo Finance reports. First CFTC guidance on Ether While the CFTC has been very clear that Bitcoin is a commodity, this is reportedly the first time that the authority has provided a vision for Ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. Tarbert said: “We've been very clear on …

The Ethereum network’s Istanbul hard fork is expected to break 680 smart contracts on the decentralized management platform Aragon. Jorge Izquierdo, CTO at Aragon One, said that the upcoming upgrade will result in the breaking of roughly 680 smart contracts, industry-focused media outlet Coindesk reported on Sept. 30. Izquierdo explained that the impetus behind the update is to further ensure frictionless functioning of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) built on the Aragon platform and address affected smart contracts. Izquierdo added that DAOs will no longer be able to receive Ether (ETH) from one another and continued: “The issue we’re going to …

Ethereum’s system-wide activation of the Istanbul hard fork has arrived two days early and caused a split of the Ropsten testnet. Huge miner pushing the non-forked chain On Sept. 30, the community manager of the Ethereum Foundation, Hudson Jameson, explained on Twitter that there are miners still relying on the old Ropsten testnet, while others are already mining on the new one. Cointelegraph previously reported that Jameson said that the testnet launch of the hard fork was scheduled to take place at the beginning of October. He added: “For anyone listening in who doesn’t know how this works, we pick …

EOS, the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, performed its first hard fork on Monday. The EOS update tracking tool maintained by the chain’s block producer, EOSNation, reports that EOS block producers (BP) signaled their intent to implement the update. According to the website, this is the largest upgrade that the network has seen so far, and the first one that required a hard fork. EOS Nation also claims that 29 of the 30 top BPs committed to upgrading at publishing time. Not the only major upcoming upgrade As Cointelegraph noted earlier this month, two more blockchains are awaiting notable upgrades. …

The Cointelegraph Analytics team have released a summary of the most anticipated upcoming events for major coins including EOS, Tron (TRX) and Neo (NEO). EOS to have its first hard fork on Sept. 23 EOS, the seventh-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is expected to have its first consensus upgrade on Sept. 23, as EOS block producers (BPs) have agreed to activate EOSIO v1.8 on the EOS mainnet on this date. According to EOS Nation, a major BP, the upcoming event is the largest upgrade to the EOS network since it was launched. It is also the first update to require …

The team behind Ethereum Classic (ETC) has activated the Atlantis hard fork aimed at the improvement of the altcoin’s functionality and compatibility with Ethereum (ETH). The news was announced in a Twitter post by ETC Director of Developer Relations, Yaz Khoury on Sept 12. Khoury congratulated the project with the development, saying: “Congratulations @eth_classic on the successful activation of the Atlantis Hardfork! Was one of the longest debates to reach consensus along with a lot of the immutability politics Learned a lot about the beauty of decentralization and a distributed community.” Going according to plan As such, ETC successfully performed …

Cryptocurrency exchange OKEx has announced support for Ethereum Classic’s (ETC) upcoming Atlantis hard fork. In a blog post published on Sept. 10, OKEx announced that the exchange will support ETC’s hard fork, estimated to take place between Sept. 12 and Sept. 13, 2019 at block height 8,772,000. OKEx warned in the announcement that during the planned period, users should deposit their ETC to OKEx in advance since the exchange will handle related technical issues. Users’ ETC accounts will not be affected. OKEx noted that it will resume services once the ETC mainnet is stable. Aiming to improve functionality As previously …