📝 Hi, I’m 𝟏𝟎, this is the popular science series of #BlockchainDevelopmentHistory, this issue’s content: Ethereum difficulty bomb.
With the September 2022 upgrade, Ethereum successfully switched from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) as its consensus mechanism, and the difficulty issue no longer plagues the network.
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1. What is the Ethereum Difficulty Bomb?
The Difficulty Bomb is a mechanism designed to be automatically triggered at a specific block height to promote the transition of the network from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). This mechanism, embedded in 2015, gradually increases the difficulty of mining, prolongs the time it takes to generate blocks, and eventually mining becomes less and less profitable.
At that time, miners will have no choice but to update their nodes, otherwise the chain will be forked due to the change in the protocol. To put it bluntly, the difficulty bomb is to accelerate Ethereum's transition, reduce energy consumption, and ensure that the network can be upgraded smoothly. And most importantly, it also enhances the decentralized characteristics and promotes the transition of the network to a more environmentally friendly and efficient PoS mechanism.
2. What impact does it have on mining?
Once Ethereum's block time is extended, miners have a hard time. The time to verify transactions was already tight, but now they have to wait a little longer, and their income has also decreased a lot. The electricity price has dropped, and miners can still barely survive, but the profit is still falling, and everyone is beginning to lose the motivation to mine. In the final analysis, the difficulty is getting higher and higher, the hardware must keep up, the power consumption is also rising, and the operating costs are rising sharply. If you want to continue to do it, the money you can make is getting less and less, and PoW mining is not attractive anymore.
What is more serious is that more and more miners are withdrawing due to high costs, resulting in a decrease in the decentralization of the network, threatening security and transaction confirmation speed, and ultimately affecting the health and overall value of Ethereum.
The effective way to solve this dilemma is to transition to the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism of Ethereum 2.0, and the difficulty bomb is the key factor forcing the community to accelerate this transition. If not dealt with in time, the longer block time will seriously affect the network performance, and it is urgent to adjust through hard forks and other means to restore a stable mining environment.
3. Historical Background and Evolution of Ethereum Difficulty Bomb
Ethereum's difficulty bomb was originally conceived to promote a smooth transition of the network to Proof of Stake (PoS). In 2015, although Ethereum did not immediately start this mechanism, it set a gradual difficulty increase schedule in order to give miners enough time to adapt.
However, as time goes by, the triggering time of the difficulty bomb has been repeatedly delayed. Each "hard fork" update has continuously delayed its arrival, so that the development team has more time to polish the PoS protocol. With the advancement of Ethereum 2.0, the difficulty bomb has gradually become a challenging and strategic node, which not only promotes technological upgrades, but also ensures the sustainability and decentralization of the Ethereum network.
4. Tail
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