On April 14, a new update to the Ethereum (ETH) network called “Berlin” is planned. The approximate release date of the Berlin update was announced after a meeting of Ethereum developers on February 19. In fact, this version was planned for last June, but the update was postponed due to some concerns about centralization.
With the new version Berlin, an update called a “hard fork” , in which the network is divided into two chains and one of the chains continues with the new version, will be carried out and many Ethereum Improvement Proposals, also called EIP, will be implemented. One chain will continue as the old version Proof of Work, and one chain will continue as the new version Proof of Stake.
With the Berlin update, developers are primarily focusing on efficiency in order to reduce the high gas fees that prevent the availability of the Ethereum network. In addition, the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s process of reading smart contracts will be improved and a few adjustments will be made to protect the Ethereum network against possible attacks (DDOS).
Berlin is an important step in the transition from Ethereum 1.0 to Ethereum 2.0. With this update, the network; It will move from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. In this way, the Ethereum network will become much more scalable and efficient. But the transition is expected to take a long time.
Ethereum is trading at 1544 USD as of February 23, 17:00, due to market withdrawals. Although Ethereum price was able to break the 2,000 USD band on February 21 and refreshed the record, it is subject to withdrawals due to high network fees (gas fee). Due to the high fees in the Ethereum network, the demand for competing networks such as Algorand, Avalanche, Polkadot, which stand out with their scalability and low transaction cost solutions, is increasing. If Ethereum can solve the problem of high fees, it can continue to maintain its throne in DeFi, decentralized finance. If the update goes smoothly, we can expect to see a positive movement in Ethereum prices.
