Constantinople: Understanding why the Ethereum upgrade matters

The Ethereum network is unique in a number of ways. It is a smart contract platform, a tool to provide programmable money as well as a cryptocurrency. Since its inception, Ethereum has had plans set to address its shortcomings, especially as its user base grew and the needs of its community evolved. Each major upgrade represents a step along that upgrade path.

In order to understand how Constantinople fits into the greater plan for the Ethereum network, it is important to consider the stages which are defined in its road map

Overall, Ethereum has four major points in its launch roadmap. These are Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and culminating in Serenity. Metropolis, therefore, is the third release of the Ethereum Network.

Constantinople is an essential part of the Metropolis release and is composed of five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).. As outlined by its lead developers, Ethereum is set to go through four stages in order to reach the stage where it includes all the features that will allow it to function effectively in its quest to be the ‘world’s computer’.

The developers originally explained their plans for this stage stating: "Metropolis is when we finally officially release a relatively full-featured user interface for non-technical users of Ethereum, and throw the doors open. We expect this launch to include a Dapp store and several anchor tenant projects with full-featured, well-designed programs to showcase the full power of the network. This is what we are all waiting for, and working towards."

Once the Ethereum network reaches the fourth and final point of its development plan, Serenity, it is expected that it will have remedied, most, if not all of the challenges that plague public blockchains. Many have taken to referring to this point as ‘Ethereum 2.0’ as it will bring with it significant changes to many of the underlying mechanisms and rules which the network is governed by.

The motivations

In Ethereum’s case, (like most blockchains) the prevailing are security and scalability. Since the rise of CryptoKitties in 2017, the issue of Ethereum’s scalability has come into sharp focus, with the collectable cats game proving so popular it nearly brought the network to a standstill. Today, the number of Dapps on Ethereum continues to grow and currently numbers at 2259 with 1,351,000 active users. As a result, network speed suffers.

Additionally, Ethereum achieves consensus through a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism. While originally conceived as a robust network security mechanism by its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, the rise of ASICs, as well as the ‘hashrate for hire’ phenomenon, has created an unstable and potentially dangerous situation for networks operating PoW.

Though Nakamoto did reference the threat of a 51 percent attack, it was long considered very unlikely due to the significant financial input, as well as large scale coordination, that it was thought was required to successfully launch this type of attack.

However, several digital currencies have recently fallen victim to 51 percent attacks – including Vertcoin, and a January attack on Ethereum Classic (ETC) where criminals reportedly made over $1.1 million.

Thus, in order to reduce the risk of centralization and negate the potential for a 51 percent attack, the Ethereum community decided to implement a memory intensive proof-of-stake system called Casper. However, because the network needs to maintain its stability and continue to support its users, the move to Casper will happen in a number of steps.

What’s in Constantinople?

Constantinople is part of the steps required to effect changes to the underlying code, such as the move to Casper, in order to finally get to the Serenity checkpoint. As stated earlier, the upgrade is composed of five EIPs.

EIP 145 is the first of these. It introduces bitwise shifting. This will be implemented as opcodes native to the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine). It is expected that this way of coding will be more efficient for effectively processing transactions on the Ethereum network as it reduces both the amount of gas required as well as the instructions needed per action.

EIP 1283 is concerned with the gas costs charged to users, especially as it pertains to storage and developers. It is grounded on EIP 1087. If implemented, it will reduce excessive gas costs. EIP 1052 focuses on the optimization of the Ethereum network through large scale code execution.

EIP 1014 is one of the most discussed proposals included in the Constantinople upgrade. Designed and lodged by Vitalik Buterin, it features a scaling solution. The EIP proposes to effect scalability on the Ethereum network by introducing state channels and off-chain transactions. EIP 1234 is the last addition to the basket. It simply brings the block mining reward down from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block. Moreover, it will also delay the "difficulty bomb" for 12 months. EIP 1234 is an important step in the path to Casper.