Hitting at block number 9,069,000, the systemwide upgrade is the network’s third in 2019, following February’s St. Petersburg and Constantinople hard forks. The months-long process culminated at 0:25 UTC on Sunday. Another iteration of Ethereum 1.x, Istanbul is the network’s eighth hard fork overall with the first code changes being approved in June 2019. (Eth 2, the network’s major transition to proof-of-stake (PoS), is expected in 2021.) Being non-contentious, all ethereum clients – which host and independently upgrade the ethereum protocol themselves – have agreed to the new software. Istanbul includes six ... (full story)