Ethereum Ice Age
(Redirected from Difficulty bomb)
Basics
- This is a difficulty adjustment scheme (the “difficulty bomb”) that was put in place to ensure that everyone has an incentive to move to the new blockchain once the upcoming Ethereum hard-fork towards PoS is implemented. It was introduced on the 7th of September (2015-09-07), and it's programmed to raise difficulty exponentially and thus slow down the network.
- It's impossible for miners to keep up with the increase of difficulty which would raise block time and it would make the blockchain freeze, hence the name Ice Age.
Delays
- However. Since it was implemented, Ethereum developers have asked for (and hard forked) delays twice. And according to EthHub #90 (2-12-2019):
"Ethereum Mountain Glacier Hardfork announced. This hard fork addresses the impending Ice Age (difficulty bomb detonation) on the Ethereum Mainnet and includes a commitment to solving the problems with the ice age more permanently in the future. The hard fork is expected to go live mid-January 2020."
It will delay the ice age by 2 years.
- The Muir Glacier network upgrade (2-1-2020) "went off without a hitch at block number 9,200,000 and the difficulty bomb has now been delayed by ~2 years."
Alternative Proposals
- EIP2515: Replace difficulty bomb with difficulty freeze. FromGitHub (2-2020):
"The difficulty Freeze is an alternative to the Difficulty Bomb that is implemented within the protocols difficulty adjustment algorithm. The Difficulty Freeze begins at a certain block height, determined in advance, and freezes the difficulty. This does not stop the chain, but it incentivizes devs to upgrade at a regular cadence and requires any chain split to address the difficulty freeze.
The difficulty Freeze is a mechanism that is easy to predict and model, and the pressures of missing it are more readily felt by the core developers and client maintainers. The client maintainers are also positioned as the group that is most able to respond to an incoming Difficulty Freeze."
