Major Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain Qtum has gone through its first-ever hard fork today, updating the network to Qtum 2.0.

Major network upgrade

Qtum blockchain has had its first hard fork as scheduled, Qtum Official tweeted on Oct. 17.

The hard fork happened at block 466,000, upgrading the Qtum network to unlock a number of significant features such as smart contract and block spacing improvements, as previously announced by the firm.

According to Qtum blockchain explorer Qtum Insight, the number of blocks on Qtum blockchain has crossed the 466,000 mark, amounting to 466,621 at press time.

Qtum blocks. Souce: Qtum Insight

4 QIPs activated

As Qtum previously announced, the purpose of the hard fork is to upgrade the Qtum blockchain, not to produce a new coin.

Specifically, Qtum 2.0 activates four Qtum Improvement Proposals (QIPs) that introduce a number of performance enhancements and new features. Those QIPs include:

“QIP-5: Add signature verification to the output script of the contract transaction; QIP-6: Add btc_ecrecover precompiled contract to the Qtum EVM; QIP-7: Upgrade the Qtum EVM to the latest Ethereum EVM Constantinople; QIP-9: Modify the difficulty adjustment algorithm to make the block time more stable.”

Qtum recommended that users update to version 0.18.1 as soon as possible, noting that the new features have been enabled automatically as of block 466,600. The firm warned that sending or staking coins with an old version wallet after the hard fork will lead to a temporary loss of the coins.

QTUM is up nearly 6%

At publishing time, Qtum’s native cryptocurrency QTUM is the 36th largest coin by market cap, currently at $178 million. Following the hard fork, QTUM is up 5.7% over the past 24 hours at press time, according to Coin360.

On Sept. 23, EOS, the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at press time, successfully performed its first hard fork.