Byzantium

Ethereum new core release is called Byzantium which was an ancient greek colony in early antiquity that later became Constantinople and Metropolis Istanbul.

Byzantium, the first part of ethereum’s Metropolis upgrade is scheduled to implement on the 4.3 millionth block . It has officially launched on testnet. Actual Byzantium hard fork is likely to occur sometime around October 9. This will be followed by Constantinople.

Key changes of Byzantium:

Reduction in miners’ block rewards from current 5 eth to 3 eth. A key goal of this reduction is to facilitate the transition from proof of work to proof of stake base on casper consensus algorithm. This is done with the aim of reducing external resources required for mining thus reducing the large amounts of electricity consumed in the process.

Zk-snarks (zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Argument of Knowledg)

These “Zero Knowledge Proofs” will allow the Ethereum Blockchain to perform anonymous transactions. The idea of zk-snarks is that they allow verification of the correctness of computations, without a verifier having to execute those computations, or even learn what was actually executed. Using zk-SNARKs, a verifier can confirm that a computation happened correctly, with ‘zero-knowledge’ of the computation.”

Programming made easier for solidity The upgrade provides easier programming . This will allow novice programmers to easily work with smart contracts. New functionality and an easier hands-on approach will encourage new programmers to begin building their applications and smart contracts.

Account Abstraction Will allow users to have more control over their private keys and the ability for contracts to pay the mining fees instead of having the sender always pay for the gas. Additionally, the account abstraction will reduce the risk of being hacked by quantum computing.

Our views:

The above upgrade is to increase Ethereum’s competitive position as the platform for smart contract and application development. Although there may be platforms with strong technology: NEO, upcoming ICON. Ethereum seek to excel especially in the area of community development and enterprises adoption to build projects on their platform. Byzantium upgrades are worthy effort to consolidate and position Ethereum to be the mainstream platform amidst competition and this is achieved through following:

Increased adoption : With implementation of Zk-snarks, the EEA network and companies (eg JP morgan, and barclays) using permissioned ledgers on ethereum platform will only further strengthened as it encourage enterprises to deploy Ethereum public blockchain solution without concerning on exposing confidential information on this ledger.

Larger programming community : More programs and projects are expected to be built on ethereum platform with the simplification of solidity. This is done in view of competition to encourage people to program on their blockchain.

Trading recommendations:

Buy and hold Ethereum: Slower increase in ether supply, higher adoption and increased projects on ethereum platform would only drive ETH price upwards

Prices between USD220-USD230 is attractive long term buy: USD220 is the next support and seek to accumulate when prices drop to the this next support level

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