The world’s second-largest blockchain community is taking things steady ahead of Monday’s highly anticipated upgrade. At present, there is no indication that any market participant will reject the Byzantium upgrade once Ethereum hits block 4,370,000, which is scheduled to occur around 6:00 UTC.
ETH/USD Price Levels
Ether prices rose by as much as 4% on Monday morning before paring gains later in the session. At press time, the ETH/USD is trading around $342.00, according to Bitfinex, for a market cap of $32.5 billion.
Ethereum’s value has risen by a third since Sept. 15, reflecting a broad rally in the cryptocurrency market. The ETH/USD is expected to continue rising this week as the bulls eye $380.00 and beyond.
On the other hand, ether remains under heavy selling pressure versus bitcoin following the latter’s record-breaking rally. The ETH/BTC exchange rate is currently trading at 0.063.
Hard Fork Countdown
Developers are counting down blocks to signal the upgrade, which means that it can occur at any time. Hard forks are based solely on block number instead of a specific time. Although this is a logical way to orchestrate an upgrade, coordination isn’t always so easy.
Investors can keep track of how many ether blocks have been mined using the Singapore-based CodeTract.
The Byzantium upgrade is part of the much larger Metropolis protocol designed to make the blockchain lighter and more efficient. This will not only boost network privacy, but make it easier for decentralized applications (dapps) to proliferate on the platform.
Hacked.com has kept a close eye on the hard fork all week long. Last week, we reported that developers are mostly optimisticabout the upcoming fork. This weekend, we covered a DoS bugthat was found on the Geth software and provided an updateon the Ethereum Foundation.
Geth, which is Ethereum’s most popular client, issued the following reminder on Saturday:
“Please upgrade before block 4_370_000!”
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