Difficulty Bomb Delay Timeline
Updated: Jun 8
Difficulty Bomb Delays Up to Date
EIP | Hard Fork Date | K = Block number | Links & Resources |
EIP- 649 | Byzantium 16/10/2017  | 300,000 | |
EIP-1234 | Constantipole 28/2/2019  | 500,000 | EIP TECHNICALS ETHEREUM FOUNDATION POST |
EIP-2384 | Muir Glacier 2/1/2020  | 9,000,000 | |
EIP-3554 | London 5/8/2021  | 9,700,000 | |
EIP-4345 | Arrow Glacier 9/12/2021  | 10,700,000 | EIP TECHNICALS ETHEREUM FOUNDATION POST |
EIP-5133 | Gray Glacier 29/6/2022  | 15,050,000 |
Functions of a Difficulty Bomb in Ethereum Network
The difficulty bomb was designed in the early days of Ethereum.
It is a mechanism that was designed solely to freeze the proof of work consensus mechanism. When it detonates, it raises the difficulty of the network to levels that makes it unprofitable for the miners to mine for blocks and secure the transactions. It forces the miners to shift to the long-awaited Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. Proof of Stake is a consensus mechanism which does not rely on mining rigs or computational power to secure and maintain the mainnet. It requires stakers to stake 32 ETH
The Merge is the second biggest event in the history of crypto. The Ethereum community ( core developers, investors, miners, validators, builders, and coordinators) have been anticipating this particular event since 2017. It's the fusion of the Execution chain and Beacon chain into a single canonical chain. Where the fork choice rule is upgraded to proof of stake.