By An initial test of Ethereum’s upcoming software upgrade Constantinople recently failed to deliver the desired results leaving a wave of repercussions within the company’s developer ecosystem.
The $20 billion blockchain was expected to see a system-wide change take place this year with a code release that was to implement five new improvements but might very be delayed now following a failure activation on the test-network Ropsten this past Saturday.
After a meeting that took place with Ethereum’s open-source dev team last Friday, it was suggested that Constantinople could be live by as early as November. Of course, this was halted after Saturday’s failed activation attempt which revealed some unexpected issues lying within the code.
A bug was discovered by a security lead of the Ethereum Foundation by the name of Martin Holst Swende. This bug resulted in two different versions of the same software upgrade to run on the test network.
However, a patch to fix this bug was has been identified but ETH developer Lane Rettig explains that the investigations into the test events of Constantinople are currently ongoing:
“We should take our time to understand what went wrong and how to avoid issues like this in the future – not just the low-level code issue but all of the related issues (the mining issue, communication issues over the weekend, how it wasn’t caught by the tests, etc.) There’s a lot of forensics still to be done.”
Rettig went on the confirm that the plans for Constantinople’s rollout could very be delayed as a result, explaining:
“If an upgrade causes a fork on the testnet, we should put the mainnet release on hold for some minimum period of time.”
A fixed date for the release of Constantinople is yet to be set, Griff Green, Ethereum community lead stated that mainnet activation could only take place sometime in 2019.
“I would expect it to get delayed to 2019, the blockchain doesn’t take holidays, but developers do,” Green said. “If I were to make a wager on a prediction market I would put my ETH on late January, early February.”
Ethereum’s core devs have agreed to regroup this Friday across a live-streamed call where they’ll discuss their plans moving forward after the failed test activation.
Working On Weekends Is No No:
In a recap of what took place this past weekend, Constantinople was set to go live on main Ethereum’s test-network at block number 4,230,000. Miners, however, failed to upgrade their software in time with the launch.
This, according to Schoedon, happened “much earlier than expected on a Saturday,” stating that many developers were not even aware or available for the change adding:
“Never fork on weekends.”
Of course, this was the issue. For the hard work to have run successfully, all nodes or rigs run by miners had to be upgraded in a near-simultaneous fashion to that of the new software.
After an open call between Ethereum devs took place on social media where the test was decided to be moved forward, a second chain split took place on the network due to discrepancies in the Constantinople code between two ETH clients, namely Geth & Parity.
Brian Venturo a miner who actively contributes to the Ropsten testnet had this to say on the matter:
“It looks like the consensus failure was driven by changes to the SSTORE opcode in EIP-1283 that were implemented differently between Parity and Geth.”
One of Constantinople’s core features is new code under Ethereum improvement protocol (EIP) 1283 which will change the way that smart contracts get stored on the Ethereum network as well as reduced the costs to smart contract devs who update stored contracts.
But, the iteration of Parity’s EIP 1283 designed in the Constantinople code contained refund mechanisms which resulted in a “noticeable disagreement regarding [Ropsten] block 4,230,605” as well as the cost for the deployment of the smart contract.
After these discrepancies were discovered by the ethereum core devs, an agreement was made between the parties to patch Parity’s code in an effort to align it with the code supported by Geth & attempt an additional re-sync to the correct Ropsten chain.
All A Test?
Many see the failed test as a positive for the overall development. Rettig, who saw the attempted rollout of Constantinople as having achieved its purpose tweeted:
“We broke Ropsten, but it’s a testnet, and it will be fixed, and this is precisely the point of releasing to a testnet first. It’s really fun, exciting, and reassuring to see this process play out as designed.”
Other core developers share Rettig’s sentiment with the security lead at the Ethereum Foundation stating the following on a public Glitter channel:
“evidently a good test,” stating that the Ropsten’s tempory forked state on Saturday was nothing to “lose any sleep over.”
Alexey Akhunov, another ETH core developer also wrote in the same channel:
“smooth processes are good for efficiency…they can [instill] a false sense of security,” adding that, “breakages…make people more alert.”
Afri Schoedon, release manager for Parity explained that the plan for ETH devs going forward is to implement the necessary bug fixes for relevant clients & ultimately “bring them all together on the Geth Ropsten chain again.”
Schoedon added:
Once this is done, hopefully around Devcon, we can continue testing Constantinople on Ropsten…and eventually agree on a main network fork date.”
Finally, he confirmed that he thinks the most likely outcome will indeed be a 2019 release date:
“I see January 2019 as realistic fork date, but only if the clients will be patched, all tests are ready (and pass), and [there] are no further issues discovered on Ropsten.”
Could this delay be a blessing in disguise for Ethereum or will this cause more downward action for the top 10 coin? Let us know your thoughts.
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