A Fork in the Road to Serenity: Ethereum London Upgrade’s Role on the Way to Ethereum 2.0

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”- Yogi Berra (Hall of Fame New York Yankees Catcher)

A hard fork such as the one Ethereum’s London Upgrade is scheduled to undergo on August 4th means that there’s no going back. Unlike soft forks, which allow backwards compatibility, hard forks require all validators in a network to upgrade to the new underlying protocol in order to be operable.

Within the London Hard Fork there are five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) that are designed to keep Ethereum on a smooth path as it moves towards Serenity (Ethereum 2.0). EIP-1559 however has been the ‘talk of the town’ as it aims to address two of Ethereum’s plaguing issues; high gas fees and slow transaction times.

Its propositions to solve these problems consist of a base fee that will be added to each transaction and a new burn feature, which should reduce the quantity of ETH in circulation. These two collaborative mechanisms also promise to promote a deflationary aspect on the currency and a ‘block elasticity’ which would address short-term scaling needs.

The additional four EIP’s offer their own complementary improvements including user experience updates on smart contracts, gas refund evaluations, a framework for future network evolution, and a ‘difficulty bomb’ diffusion enabling developers more time to transition over to Ethereum 2.0.

Putting it into Perspective

With Ethereum 1.0 upgrade ‘Altair’ planned for October ‘21 and Ethereum 2.0 poised to launch in the beginning of 2022, the London Upgrade should serve as an important development to keep momentum rolling for the blockchain. It’s not full of ‘be-all, end-all’ solutions, however its support in assisting a functional transition to Ethereum 2.0 should not be slighted.