Ethereum ETH: St. Petersburg Hard Fork
In less than 24 hours, the world’s second largest blockchain by market capitalization is expected to activate its sixth and seventh system-wide upgrades, at which point its global user base will be asked to make two near-simultaneous changes to its code.Known as Constantinople and St. Petersburg, both upgrades will be implemented as “hard forks,” or upgrades that add new rules to the ethereum software that are incompatible with past versions. Both will also take place at the exact same block number – 7,280,000.
What is a hardfork?
The cryptocurrency mainnet operates according to certain rules. To improve network performance or correct errors, changes are periodically introduced into it. A hard fork represents changes that are not compatible with previous versions of software supporting the cryptocurrency network. In order to continue to mine the cryptocurrency, miners need to update the software.
In some cases, as a result of a hard fork, a completely new cryptocurrency may appear, as happened with Bitcoin Cash and EthereumPoW.
