How will the new upgrade affect the Ethereum network on January 1, 2020?
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The Ethereum Foundation website has published details of another hard fork designed to delay activation of the difficulty bomb.
The update was called Muir Glacier - in honor of the famous glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in the U.S. state of Alaska. The name of the hard fork directly refers to the end of the Ice Age as from 1892 to approximately 1980, the glacier had retreated nearly 32 kilometers (20 mi). So, in the Ethereum network, the block creation time will also noticeably decrease - from the modern 17.5 seconds to the normal 11 seconds.
The Ethereum network update will be activated on block # 9200000, which is expected to be produced on January 1, 2020. The exact date is a subject to change due to variable block times and timezones.
The Muir Glacier upgrade has only one improvement proposal, EIP 2384. This EIP will only delay the difficulty bomb for another 4,000,000 blocks, or approximately 611 days. So the chain would be back at 20 second block times around July 2021. This is the same approach that the Ethereum development community used in the past on Ethereum (f.e. EIP 649 and EIP 1234)
In his message, the lead developer of the Ethereum Foundation, Hudson Jameson, asked node holders to update their software by December 30, 2019. So, if you are a node operator or a miner, you need to download the latest version of your Ethereum client. Also Ethernodes.org has provided node statistics and a countdown timer to the Muir Glacier upgrade.
If you use an exchange (such as Coinbase, Kraken, or Binance), a web wallet service (such as Metamask, MyCrypto, or MyEtherWallet), a mobile wallet service (such as Coinbase Wallet, Status.im, or Trust Wallet), or a hardware wallet (such as Ledger, Trezor, or KeepKey) you do not need to do anything unless you are informed to take additional steps by your exchange or wallet service.
One more important note is about the testing of the Muir Glacier upgrade. This upgrade will be activated only on the Ropsten network at block # 7117117. So, no other test network will deploy this. It would be deployed on the testnet on the same day as mainnet.
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Resources
https://blog.ethereum.org/2019/12/23/ethereum-muir-glacier-upgrade-announcement/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muir_Glacier
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2384
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-649
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1234
https://ethernodes.org/muir_glacier
https://medium.com/ethereum-cat-herders/ethereum-muir-glacier-upgrade-89b8cea5a210