On December 7, 2018, Ethereum developers held their bi-weekly meeting to finalize on Constantinople, one of their major upgrades on the network. Following this forthcoming upgrade, Bitbox has declared its support for the new Ethereum hard fork.

Bitbox, which is Lines’ (a popular messaging platform) cryptocurrency exchange platform, will manage any technical-related issues that may arise with the Constantinople hard fork.

Constantinople is Ethereum’s most anticipated hard fork. There are five diverse EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) that will be implemented through the hard fork. These proposals will perpetually adjust the blockchain through a host of new upgrades that are backward-incompatible.

Constantinople is set to occur at the block height of 7,080,000. The block height will most probably be attained starting from the tenth to the sixteenth of January. Currently, there are 104407 blocks to go at an average block time of 14.48 seconds. It means that everything is on track and will probably activate on January 16th at 7 am UTC or even before the scheduled date, depending on the completion of the target block.

Once the upgrade is complete, then by default all Ethereum nodes will need to do the same. However failure to upgrade means, the Ethereum nodes shall otherwise continue operating a separate blockchain that is based on the previous version. It also goes to show that, any dissimilarity to the fork may lead to the formation of two parallel blockchains.

A similar improvement happened after the DAO hack which led to the creation of Ethereum Classic.

Considering the likelihood of a chain split, Bitbox has guaranteed its users that, they are still entitled to any airdrops throughout the hard fork period.

According to a statement by the Ethereum developers, Constantinople will continue providing the end users with all the services they were experiencing before without fail.

The developers declared that upcoming hard fork is only a maintenance and optimization upgrade that should not affect any of the services. It will work to improve the fee structure and the blockchain’s economic policy. The improvement will, therefore, pave the way towards the achievement of its goals in a highly scalable platform.

The forthcoming Constantinople hard fork has already been making a great effect on the trading volume of the coin in the last few weeks of 2018.

Since the beginning of December 2018, Ethereum has witnessed a growth of about 80 % of its value and the rate is growing higher each passing day.

Currently, according to Coinmarketcap.com, the ETH is trading at $153.5. The figure has knocked down Ripple by far to reclaim its position as the 2nd largest coin whose value in the market is nearly $16 billion.

This is considered great news because now some major cryptocurrency exchanges that list ETH have also pledged their support to the hard fork. Recently, Binance, a large crypto exchange already announced its support on the same. Like Bitbox, Binance will manage all technical needs for all users who hold Ether in their Binance accounts.

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