60% of Ethereum Nodes Not Ready for Istanbul Blockchain Upgrade

In four days’ time, Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain by its cryptocurrency market’s capitalization (the first being Bitcoin), will see what is known as the “Istanbul” hard fork. Quadency, a cryptocurrency trading platform, recently observed that according to cryptocurrency analytics sites, a majority of nodes running the blockchain, some 60%, are not ready to run Istanbul once the network goes live.

It is important to point out that there may not be consensus issues when Istanbul activates, as long as all businesses dealing with Ethereum (exchanges, DeFi operators, etc.) and miners/other maintainers of the network upgrade their nodes prior to the activation of Istanbul. The upgrades that will be implemented include EIP-152, which will give Ethereum some compatibility with the ZCash chain; EIP-1108, which will make zk-SNARKs on the network cheaper allowing for applications that are more private and scalable than their pre-upgrade counterparts; and EIP-2200, which will change how much it costs to store data in the blockchain’s Virtual Machine and will enable certain smart contract functions.

Timeline of Ethereum