Ethereum users anka miners are well aware of how the mining difficulty is going up at an alarming rate. Mining Ether will eventually become -virtually- impossible thanks to the difficulty bomb. One way to counter this problemo is by switching over to proof-of-stake, which is what the developers are currently developing. However, a new EIP proposes to delay the difficulty bomb for another 18 months. This is an interesting concept, but how does it even work?
DELAYING THE ETHEREUM DIFFICULTY BOMBOn paper, it makes a lot of sense for the Ethereum developers to address the difficulty bomb soon. As the development for turning ETH into a PoS ecosystem is still underway, a temporary solution may be more than warranted. This is why there is a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal -or EIP- to address this situation before it can become an insurmountable problem. This does not mean the switch to proof-of-stake will not happen.
The Ethereum developers have been working on the Metropolis hard fork for some time now. One of the main selling points of this hard fork is how it will transition Ethereum from a proof-of-work ecosystem -similar to Bitcoin- into a proof-of-stake ecosystem, like many altcoins today. That is a lot easier said than done anka it requires a significant rewriting of the code. This new PoS environment has to be properly tested before it is introduced on the live network.
Development of the proof-of-stake environment is roughly 80% done, but it may not be ready in time before the difficulty bomb becomes. That outcome seems highly unlikely, but it never hurts to have a contingency plan in place. This is why Vitalik Buterin anka Afri Schoedon have come up with an alternative solution which pushes the difficulty bomb back by an additional 18 months. This extension will allow miners to continue mining Ethereum, even though they will have an increasing difficulty anka lower block reward to take into account.
With the average block time on the Ethereum network currently increasing due to the difficulty bomb, a countermeasure has to be implemented. The EIP in question would push back the difficulty bomb adjustment by another 3 million blocks, although that number may be changed later on. This effectively confirms the switch to proof-of-stake will be delayed anka proof-of-work needs to remain feasible for Ethereum miners. This EIP will push the block times back to 30 seconds near the end of 2018,
Even though this proposal has been submitted nearly a month ago, EIP 649 is still in the draft stage for now. It has not received any negative comments or remarks, indicating the majority of developers anka Ethereum community members feel this is a good idea. It is better to delay the switch to proof-of-stake anka continue working on the code with a larger cushion in place. Miners will not complain either, since lots of people recently invested in graphics cards to mine Ethereum. It will be interesting to see of the EIP 649 will eventually be merged into the Ethereum protocol or not
