Ethereum (ETH) Shoots 5% As Developer Announces London Hardfork Upgrade Date

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Etheruem (ETH) is up 4.83% in the last 24-hours once again moving past $2300 levels. At press time ETH is trading at $2342 with a market cap of $272 billion.

The recent price uptick in ETH comes as developer Tim Beiko announced that the much-awaited Longdon hardfork upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain is less than a month from now. The launch of the London hardfork will happen next month on August 4 with block 12,965,000.

This is an optimistic timeline as Beiko said that most of the clients have approved it already. Besides, the developer expects no serious objections going ahead. However, the final decision for the same shall be made at the core developer meeting coming Friday.

The London hardfork is part of the roadmap that will lead to the future implementation of the Proof-of-Stake Ethereum 2.0. Before deciding upon the final release, developers have successfully implemented the London hardfork on Ropsten and Goerli testnets.

Major Changes With EIP-1559 Implementation

As per the proposed changes, the London hardfork will bring five Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIP). The most notable among them is the EIP-1559 implementation.

The EIP-1559 brings along a new gas fee model that makes the Ethereum blockchain deflationary. It introduces a “base fee” structure in order to control the rapid surge in ETH gas fee. Ethereum miners have objected to the EIP-1559 implementation as it seeks to burn part of the gas fees which could reduce the miner revenue significantly.

However, this decision has been welcomed by ETH investors/traders as well as DeFi players who conduct major transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.

Another major development would be the EIP-3554 implemented that delays Ethereum’s difficulty bomb to December 1. This mechanism shall severely increase the difficulty of mining on the Ethereum blockchain. Thus, it will effectively freeze the Ethereum Proof-of-Work model as we shit to the Ethereum 2.0 PoS.

Expectations are that the London hardfork implementation can significantly boost the NFT market cap by around 10x.