Ethereum Arrow Glacier Upgrade

Owned by Matthew (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 06, 2021
2 min read

Introduction 

Ethereum’s ‘Arrow Glacier’ upgrade is due to launch when the chain reaches block number 13,773,000, which is predicted to occur on Wednesday, December 8, 2021. This upgrade’s purpose is to push the difficulty bomb until summer next year to keep the chain safe from freezing a.k.a the “ice age”. This is to give more time to developers to work on the next major upgrade “The Merge” that is scheduled for 2022.

What is Ice Age / Difficulty Bomb? 

 Ethereum's "Difficulty Bomb" refers to a mechanism that, at a predefined block number, increases the difficulty level of puzzles in the Proof of Work mining algorithm resulting in longer than normal block times (and thus less ETH rewards for miners). This mechanism increases the difficulty exponentially over time and eventually leads to what is referred to as the "Ice Age" - that is, the chain becomes so difficult to mine that it grinds to a halt and stops producing blocks (freezes). This mechanism has been introduced in Ethereum in order to stimulate network upgrades. Whenever there is a hard fork, the legacy chain will have a difficulty bomb which will make it unusable in the future.

Evaluation Process

MidChains Evaluates:

  • What is changing with Arrow Glacier

  • The impact of the changes

What is Changing?

The only change (EIP) is:

EIP-4345: Difficulty Bomb Delay to June 2022

The EIP proposes to push the bomb back for a total of 10,700,000 blocks, an increase of 1,000,000 blocks since the last pushback, in London. The bomb will likely show up in June 2022.

Node operators need to upgrade their nodes to latest version prior to the fork. MidChains will upgrade its Ethereum nodes with geth version 1.10.12 on Sunday, December 5th. This will ensure we are not behind on blocks when the new network upgrade becomes active and transition to the new chain will be seamless.

 

Status page: https://github.com/ethereum/execution-specs/blob/master/network-upgrades/mainnet-upgrades/arrow-glacier.md  

Impact Analysis

MidChains has already upgraded the Ethereum nodes to support the Arrow Glacier fork. All deposits made during the forking at block 13,773,000 are expected to be processed without any impact and proceed on the authentic Ethereum chain.

Vendors

Curv confirmed their nodes where upgraded already.

Chainalysis KYT is not dependent on nodes, the addressing mechanism is not changing so there is no impact.

Clients will not experience any impact on their funds post chain upgrade.

 

What are the regulatory implications: None.
Maturity / Market Capitalization:  The surviving asset’s root is ETH so the legacy carries forward
Security and Operation: No change
Traceability / Monitoring : The Arrow Glacier upgrade will not have any affect on address, so the tracing will not differ.
Exchange Connectivity and Demand : No impact
Type of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) : Remains ETH
Innovation and Efficiency: No change