Two days ago, brand new code was released on GitHub that had a Constantinople activation time within it. The post reads that Geth, or ‘Go Ethereum,’ is a special release and a hard fork will take place on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet at block 7,080,000. This new hard fork is expected to take place around January 16th, 2019.

Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople

#Ethereum Constantinople mainnet hard fork scheduled for block #7080000, estimated around the 16th of January, 2019!

— Péter Szilágyi (@peter_szilagyi) December 7, 2018

Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, re-tweeted the tweet above on December 7th. Ethereum core devs agreed to finally launch the Constantinople hard fork on that day. Constantinople comprises separate Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). These separate proposals are geared towards softening the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

This change is long-awaited, and something Ethereum developers have been planning for years. PoS would fundamentally change Ethereum (ETH) by means of a host of new upgrades. PoW has been under strong criticism as it has been known to be far less energy-efficient than PoS.

Due to the fundamental change in the Ethereum blockchain, all nodes must either update with the entire system or carry on running as a separate blockchain. A trial run of the hard fork was run on Ropsten back in October, and a consensus issue was found. This is what caused the delay in the hard fork until late-January.

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Back on December 10th, Buterin went on one of his famous multi-tweet Twitter rants. In this particular 15 tweet rant, he discussed non-financial applications of blockchains.

9. Blockchains of the future with proof of stake and sharding will be thousands of times more efficient, and so the efficiency sacrifices of putting things on a chain will become more and more acceptable.

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) December 10, 2018

The Ethereum co-founder believes that PoS and sharding will make blockchains thousands of times more efficient.

Ethereum Hacks

On the same day of the Twitter rant, ZDNet released a report on the increase of hacks targeting Ethereum. Recently, hackers have begun scanning the network and are identifying mining rigs and Ethereum wallets with an exposed port 8545. By doing this, hackers can gain control of the mining rig or crypto wallet and direct funds elsewhere.

It seems hackers aren’t concerned with the dropping price of Ethereum (ETH).