Ethereum: the Muir Glacier update has been announced - The Cryptonomist

A few hours ago, Ethereum’s team announced that Muir Glacier, the next update of the blockchain network, will take place in early January 2020, to be precise at block 9,200,000.  

This update will not require users to do anything, be it on wallets or on various services such as exchanges.

Muir Glacier mainly concerns those who have a blockchain node, who will have to download and update versions of their client.

This new upgrade comes after Istanbul, which was successfully activated in early December. Muir Glacier will be focusing on and integrating the EIP 2384 which improves the difficulty bomb, i.e. the mechanism that adjusts the mining difficulty of the PoW (Proof of Work) system.

At present, this difficulty is increased after reaching 100,000 new blocks (on the Bitcoin blockchain it happens every 2016 blocks, i.e. every 2 weeks), whereas this update brings it to 4 million blocks, i.e. every 611 days.

Progress on the Miur Glacier update of Ethereum

According to the information we can see on Ether Nodes, most exchanges are not ready for the update this stage. Probably, since there is still a week left, the various platforms will focus on updating after the Christmas holidays.

All that remains now is to wait for the countdown to the end of the year and for the arrival of the new update that should bring the long-awaited PoS (Proof of Stake) on the Ethereum blockchain on January 3rd.