Ethereum's Difficulty Bomb: All Smoke, No Fire?

[bbc.reporter]

If there was no Ethereum Classic, then the Ethereum Foundation's planned transition to Casper will have no big risks. But it is there with a strong development team behind it. If in case Casper does not work as planned what would happen to the platform now? Will the things that were built in it like Augur be ported to Ethereum Classic?

Another question is will the Ethereum Foundation delay the transition? I speculate they will delay it indefinitely because they cannot take that risk. The next question is what other risks are they taking by diffusing the difficulty bomb?



Time bomb

But, two things could go wrong with ethereum's big switch.

One would be if Casper does not work as planned. In this case, ethereum could simply delay the switchover. The second is if miners continue mining the old chain. But ethereum has always had a plan for that – something called the 'difficulty bomb'.

Baked into ethereum shortly after the network launched, the difficulty bomb was created to make mining a block increasingly difficult over time. The slowdown is set to happen gradually at first, but will spike upward after the launch of Casper.

When mining requires more work, miners are not able to produce as many blocks. The block time gets longer and, as a result, miners earn less and less revenue. Eventually, the network just becomes unusable.

More in the full article http://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-difficulty-bomb-smoke-no-fire/

[str4wm4n]

I just read this article today and personally think the Difficulty Bomb is a work of absolute foresighted genius!

[JeffBrad12]

If there was no Ethereum Classic, then the Ethereum Foundation's planned transition to Casper will have no big risks. But it is there with a strong development team behind it. If in case Casper does not work as planned what would happen to the platform now? Will the things that were built in it like Augur be ported to Ethereum Classic?

It will not. In my opinion, if that case will be similar with the bitcoin after the bitcoin will have reached maximum supply in the future. I mean the right decision is about the transaction fees to keep the network still usable.

Another question is will the Ethereum Foundation delay the transition? I speculate they will delay it indefinitely because they cannot take that risk. The next question is what other risks are they taking by diffusing the difficulty bomb?

Vitalik has said there was no deadline about the PoS implemented. The next risk it's about the centralized chain, I mean with the difficulty bomb, will make the miner's income will be less a lot. More miners will think to migrate to other coins, More nodes will be shut down and look like the decentralized of the coin will be less.

[topesis]

I think this is simple, the miners will move over their gear to another network, Zcash and ETC are likely candidate, what I want to see is how Ether is going to hold on to its presence value, since Casper is designed to be rich get richer design. We should not also forget that Rootstock is on the way and might benefit from this move.

[Herbert2020]

Time bomb

But, two things could go wrong with ethereum's big switch.

One would be if Casper does not work as planned. In this case, ethereum could simply delay the switchover. The second is if miners continue mining the old chain. But ethereum has always had a plan for that – something called the 'difficulty bomb'.

Baked into ethereum shortly after the network launched, the difficulty bomb was created to make mining a block increasingly difficult over time. The slowdown is set to happen gradually at first, but will spike upward after the launch of Casper.

When mining requires more work, miners are not able to produce as many blocks. The block time gets longer and, as a result, miners earn less and less revenue. Eventually, the network just becomes unusable.

More in the full article http://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-difficulty-bomb-smoke-no-fire/

very interesting, thanks for sharing this here.

and as for the changes in ethereum, they have always been thinking about their own benefits and how they can make money from every move. i think the change will come when they feel like there is no more room for pumping the coin in the traditional way and when they want to increase the price more.

and that day may not be so far with ethereum price going down as we speak and with bitcoin price rising and crushing all their FUD that was said in the past 2 months that led to their pump.
i believe Vitalik is holding the switch off as a last resort, to switch and give the coin a new life and pump it again. and the good thing with etehereum is that it is centralized so they don't need any kind of consensus, we saw how they forked last time and it can happen at any other time in the future too.

[bbc.reporter]

@Herbert2020. I cannot see a good reason why you think a centralized Ethereum without needing consensus is good. Come to think of it if they transition to Casper, how much ETH does the Ethereum Foundation control? If the want to keep it in their control then they may have more than 50% of ETH held by the people associated with them. How is that good for a platform that claims code is law?

[Money Maker Shaker]

every day a new shenanigan from ethereum guys comes to light and people are still buying it overpriced and lose their money as it gets dumped.

you'd think they have learned after the first couple of dumps and money loss!

[Chikito]

eth will decline for several months, what happens in eth the original transaction this year is very stretched, some ico almost collected at least 70K eth / ICO. USD displacement of bitcoin to penetrate the ETH nearly 50 million $ because crowdsale ICO . the possibility of mid-september eth will have a price of 80 $ , after several ICO using smartcontrack . no harm if we are waiting for the price of eth down to 20 $ for selling at 80 $ .