The team of protestors for ousting Ethereum miners has got a new supporting member, Martin Holst Swende. He is the security lead at the Ethereum Foundation. On last Friday’s developer meeting he stood in for the decision to remove ASIC mining hardware from the platform.

As per him blocking the chips would be a right decision to make under current circumstances. The argument came into the picture back in April. The leading ethereum technologists opined that having chips will not enable them to maintain the platform economically.

Therefore, the developers are of the suggestion to implement the same through a software upgrade that they call ProgPoW. Now Swende also thinks that to be an ideal decision. Swende works with other ethereum developers to make sure that the code changes do not disrupt operations on the world’s second-largest blockchain.

Swende also assured that the software upgrade will not affect the smart contract deployment on the platform. Moreover, ProgPoW will have zero effect on EVM and state transitions, he said. The upcoming hard fork for ethereum is nearby. So, Sweden opined that ProgPoW can be implemented on a separate testbed. In parallel to the current normal testing for an upcoming hard fork.

The next upgrade named Constantinople is under the process for several months. Developers are working hard on the primary issues to address them effectively. The recent developer meeting confirmed the activation of the same on ethereum testnet Ropsten on October 9. It’s estimated to occur at block 4.2 million.