Ethereum completes its fifth hard fork, Byzantium, with a fraction of the fuss of Bitcoin.
Ethereum’s (ETH) troubled but uncontentious Byzantium is officially here as the cryptocurrency’s fifth hard fork.
As creator Vitalik Buterin celebrated with other developers Sunday, Byzantium fought off last-minute bugs and calls for delays to have a stable issuance.
Hard fork celebration! pic.twitter.com/mL1ZyJOYeA
— Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) October 16, 2017
The move was notable in its lack of contention, with no significant community arguments resulting from Byzantium’s creation.
Similarly, ETH prices remained relatively stable both before and after the fork’s execution, rising around $40 October 13 and maintaining new levels since.
This takes ETH towards the upper end of its price spectrum, which this year saw all-time highs of around $410 and a July low of $146.
Despite the frenetic growth of investment in Ethereum this year, Byzantium is part of a package of improvements to the protocol that has been in development since 2015.
Known as Metropolis, its roadmap currently extends to an unknown date in 2018, when a further hard fork, Constantinople, will activate.
“Metropolis is a planned Ethereum development phase that includes two hard forks: Byzantium and Constantinople. Byzantium is occurring at block number 4.37mil. Constantinople does not currently have a release date, but is expected in 2018,” a blog post from late last week confirms.
