After the London Upgrade Ethereum developers are now working on another upgrade, the Arrow Glacier upgrade, as they try to make Ethereum more efficient.

Developers are now working to delay on a periodic task known as ‘difficulty bomb’ that will become obsolete after Ethereum 2.0 takes full effect since once it transits to a proof-of-stake consensus model it shall do away with crypto mining.

Ethereum upgrades as Ethereum 2.0 upgrade nears

The London hard fork changed the Ethereum fee structure and introduced deflationary pressure as the network gears up to switch to the proof-of-stake mechanism.

Since 2015 when developers started creating the Ethereum network, the bomb has been ticking. Arrow Glacier’s main purpose is to stop the bomb from going off and give developers more time to work on the network until it fully transits to Ethereum 2.0.

Currently, Ethereum uses the same consensus mechanism as Bitcoin and it is the proof-of-work consensus mechanism that requires mining to power and maintain the network thus consuming a lot of computer power.

Developers are working to make sure that they steered Ethereum away from proof-of-work. As long as the network remains proof-of-work, the code (difficulty bomb) will make it hard for people to mine ETH and slow down the network.

As a result, developers have been forced to go back to the drawing board and delay the bomb from going off again like the London hard fork in August delayed the detonation of the bomb until they finish with the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

However, there is still hope that soon the upgrades will no longer be required after the network turns to a proof-of-stake mechanism.

The coordinator of the network’s core developers, Tim Beiko wrote:

“Hopefully, this is the last time the difficulty bomb is delayed before Ethereums to proof of stake!’’