Ethereum Readies Ammunition to Take its Price to New Highs

Ethereum, the second largest coin of the crypto street, might be battling to keep it price up and solve its congestion and speed issues, but it definitely has news brewing that could be structurally positive for the coin in the long run.

Ethereum to welcome Constantinople while Bitmain Launches Ethereum mining pool

In October this year, Ethereum is gearing for its largest upgrade which could be the $29 Billion Blockchain’s Biggest Test Yet. This upgrade, which is named as Constantinople, is designed to increase efficiency in the Ethereum network and decrease transaction costs. Constantinople is also a stepping stone towards Ethereum’s bigger goals; a series of changes that improve transaction speed and scale. Currently, Ethereum’s network, like Bitcoin’s, suffers from a few major problems: high energy consumption (through mining), centralization of mining pools and lack of access to mining hardware.

Ethereum’s long-term project, Casper, aims to address these issues. Constantinople lays the groundwork for Casper, which aims to shift Ethereum from a proof-of-work (POW) system to a proof-of-stake (POS) system. This upgrade could be a dream come true for Ethereum but it will not come easy. System-wide upgrades require every software used to upgrade to new rules near-simultaneously, meaning there are coordination difficulties that need to be overcome to ensure the code continues to operate as designed. Ethereum is also faced with a “difficulty bomb”.

“Ethereum’s “Difficulty Bomb” refers to the increasing difficulty level of puzzles in the mining algorithm used to reward miners.”

In 2019, the difficulty bomb will make it much harder to mine ether (and therefore process transactions). Ethereum’s biggest challenge is whether to delay the bomb or rush the upgrades through before it hits. One thing’s for sure, Ethereum is poised for a hell of a ride in the lead up to October.

While this is Ethereum’s own positive update, Bitmain-backed mining pool BTC.com is expanding its offerings to include Ethereum and Ethereum classic, the company announced Thursday. The move is part of an effort to “help Ethereum scale its mining infrastructure,” the announcement stated. Bitmain’s project director Zhong Zhuang said that the firm hopes

“to expand Ethereum’s network by relaying … rewards through our [Full Pay Per Share] system,” which rewards miners for participating in the pool.”

Notably, the new pools will include GPU and CPU mining options, the release indicated, despite the fact that Bitmain released its first Ethereum-focused application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for Ethereum earlier this year.

Also, read: NASDAQ Ready to List & Trade Bitcoin, Ethereum & other Cryptos by 2019

CBOE to launch Ethereum futures by end of 2018

While everyone is looking for BTC ETF and its approval, in a remarkable leap forward for the Ethereum community, and the overall cryptocurrency, CBOE, the largest options, and futures exchange in the U.S., told market makers that the debut of Ether futures is getting close. The exchange is, however, waiting on additional clarity from the CFTC.

This fresh development with potentially far-reaching consequences could take place by the end of 2018,

To help jump-start that process, CBOE is reportedly basing the upcoming ether futures on the underlying market of the cryptocurrency platform Gemini, founded and run by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

CBOE is already exploring the Ethereum cryptocurrency with a $29 billion market value in a number of different ways. It has also built related products in the background while waiting for additional clarity.

Will the positivity of News flow be awesome for Ethereum a lot of people would want to wait and see how does Ethereum upgrade Constantinople goes forward? If it goes smoothly we can see a strong upside on the coin. Again a wait and watch situation for Ethereum community and investors

Will Ethereum be able to deliver successfully on these announcements and defeat Bitcoin to be number 1 cryptocurrency? Do let us know your views on the same.