Before releasing the Berlin upgrade on April 14, there will be three major testnet releases in the coming weeks. The Berlin upgrade will also bring along four major Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs) with new transaction types and gas costs.
On Monday, March 8, the Ethereum community announced and released its timeline for the upcoming Berlin upgrade. The first testnet for Berlin – Ropsten – will go live ahead today on March 10. As per the official announcement, Berlin upgrade will go live on the Ethereum mainnet at block 12,244,000, or April 14.
However, depending on the block time variability, the exact date for the Berlin upgrade might change. Once Ropsten goes live today, the other two testnet networks – Goerli and Rinkeby – will go live next week on March 17 and 24, respectively.
To receive the upgrade, Ethereum node operators should switch to the Berlin-compatible version for the three testnets. The official announcement notes:
“Ethereum node operators should upgrade their nodes prior to the fork block on the networks they want to participate in. Due to block time variability, it is recommended to update several days before the expected date.”
The announcement further notes that EthereumJS and TurboGeth will not have client releases ready for the first testnets. However, they will be available prior to the release of the mainnet.
Also, ETH coin holders, exchanges, and wallet service providers won’t have to do anything on their part to accommodate the upgrade. Let’s take a look at the four major Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs) to be implemented as part of the Berlin upgrade.
EIPs Coming Along with Ethereum Berlin Upgrade
As said the Berlin upgrade on Ethereum mainnet will implement four major EIPs. This includes:
- EIP-2929 increases some gas costs
- EIP-2565 lowers the cost of ModExp precompile
- EIP-2930 has a transaction type with optional access lists.
- EIP-2718 introduces a new transaction type
The long-awaited Berlin upgrade will follow the Istanbul and Muir Glacier upgrades that happened in December 2019, and January 2020 respectively. On the other hand, Ethereum’s London hard fork is also likely to go live ahead this year in July 2020.
It will also implement the EIP-1559 fee market protocol that will more or less standardize transaction fee across the network. Thus, it will prevent situations like the rampant surge in average transaction fee. Unlike the current scenario, the EIP-1559 implementation will release the transaction fee directly to the network instead of the miner. Thus, a large number of miners have opposed this move.
On the other hand, the Ethereum 2.0 developments have kickstarted. After going live in December 2020, investors have staked more than 3.3 million ETH coins so far with the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contracts.
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