Ethereum upgrade goes live on second try

A big upgrade for decentralized app platform Ethereum has gone as planned on Thursday. 

After a failed try in January, which was postponed just one day before the scheduled upgrade date due to a security issue, Ethereum has now been upgraded to a new version called Constantinople. Another, smaller upgrade called St. Petersburg, was rolled out as well to mitigate the security issue found in the original Constantinople code. 

Constantinople brings a number of improvements to Ethereum's efficiency and speed (read a detailed overview here). But, most importantly, it paves the way for a major future upgrade called Casper. That upgrade, sometimes also called Ethereum 2.0, is scheduled to go live later this year and bring an immensely important switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, among other changes.  Read more...