Ethereum developer proposes August 4 for London mainnet upgrade

On July 6, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko proposed August 4 as the date for the upcoming "London" mainnet upgrade.

The proposal would set the switchover to London at block 12,965,000. As of publication time, Ethereum has just passed block number 12,775,000.

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Anthony Sassano, co-founder of research platform EthHub, said that a final decision on the date will be made at a core developers meeting on July 9. Beiko indicated he wished to have client releases ready by then.

The Ropsten, Goerli and Rinkeby testnets have been rolling out the upgrade over the past several weeks. London follows the Berlin upgrade, which went live in April. 

London will delay Ethereum's mining difficulty bomb — a move to make the network significantly harder to mine — and resulting "ice age" until December as the network's long-awaited move to proof of stake has yet to get fully off the ground. Other EIPs included in London aim to simplify the way transaction fees are priced.

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Kollen Post is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things policy and geopolitics from Washington, DC. That includes legislation and regulation, securities law and money laundering, cyber warfare, corruption, CBDCs, and blockchain’s role in the developing world. He speaks Russian and Arabic. You can send him leads at [email protected].