Ethereum’s scalability can improve by 2,000 times over Ethereum Layer-1 after the Istanbul update
StarkWare, a project that is working to help blockchains scale, has stated on a tweet that Ethereum has extensive potential to expand due to its recent Istanbul network update.
According to StarkWare’s “measurements (not approximations, nor estimates),” Ethereum’s scalability can improve by 2,000 times over Ethereum Layer-1 after the Istanbul update. Particularly, it can handle 9,000 trades at 75 gas/trade as compared to 2,000 trades at 300 gas/trade, adding that Istanbul’s update is the main reason.
Ethereum undertook the Istanbul update in December 2019, in which six improvements were added to the network, including reducing the gas cost. Ethereum’s customers do not need to take any action unless informed otherwise by their service provider. On the other hand, miners or node operators have to upgrade their Ethereum client to the latest version to be able to run Istanbul on Rinkeby, Goerli, and Ropsten. And developers also need to review all EIPs to determine if their present smart contract is affected by any of them.
As AZCoin News reported on Jan 2, Ethereum’s Muir Glacier hard fork was activated at Block number 9,200,000, with only one improvement proposal, EIP 2384. The proposal aims to delay the difficulty bomb, a built-in algorithm of the Ethereum blockchain that could drastically increase the difficulty in mining a new block if left unaccounted for. The update is designed to delay the difficulty bomb for another 4,000,000 blocks, or approximately 611 days.
Most of the concern appears to be over prices rather than network performance as ETH is still down over 85% from its peak. At the moment it remains buried under the crypto winter ice below 143 USD but continued development and improvement should be the bellwether of change in 2020.
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