Ethereum Hard Fork Due Today, Miner Vote Overturned

Ethereum’s hard fork will officially occur Wednesday at approximately 7am EST, despite 65% of miners voting against the measures.

Also read: Charlie Shrem Is Home From Prison and Moving ‘Onward’

Pools ‘Supposed Not to Support’ Fork

The countdown to block 1,920,000, determined to be the opportune point for the action to recover funds lost during the DAO hack, is set to expire shortly.

Following creator Vitalik Buterin’s original proposal of a soft fork in June, Ether mining pools gave miners the option of a non-binding vote on the issue. At the time, organizers stated, a “potential hard [fork] is currently not included in the voting as there is not even a clear proposal on the table.”

A soft fork was later determined to be a dangerous move, and the hard fork option was tabled as the only acceptable solution.

65% of miners this time voted against the action, but today the announcement came that their opinion would be overturned and the hard fork carried out regardless.

A message on the Ethermine.org pool states:

According to the voting result (65% in favor of not supporting the fork) the pool is supposed not to support the fork. But as all other major pools (e.g. dwarfpool, ethermine, nanopool) are supporting the fork we can and will not jeopardize any mining income of the pool by mining on a chain that has a very high probability to get orphaned. Therefore, according to our voting policy stated in the announcement, we will support the hard fork.

Code is Law?

The news follows divisions in the community about the implications of a reset, which some consider contrary to Ethereum’s principle that “code is law.”

Co-founder Charles Hoskinson, who left the Ethereum project in 2014, went on record stating his opposition to a hard fork.

“When you start intervening, it kind of diminishes the entire purpose of these types of systems in general,” he said during an episode of Coinscrum’s Members Club.

Coinbase’s Brain Armstrong meanwhile tweeted the move could be “positive” and that it demonstrates its team “can listen” to the community. His perspective drew mixed responses:

Ethereum community being vulnerable to socialy engineered crisis hardly positive. Damage to fungibility irreversible https://t.co/fqFyB04boR

— Alex B. (@bergealex4) July 19, 2016

Major ether exchange Kraken meanwhile has released extensive information regarding the hard fork itself. In a statement, the service advises its users to be “cautious” about the DAO even if the move is successful due to vulnerability to a so-called replay attack.

“Caution should be exercised for all Ethereum blockchain operations during the fork, including DAO and any other Ethereum based tokens…,” it wrote. “DAO transfers are also vulnerable to the replay attack discussed above, so you should be cautious about sending DAO transfers even after the fork.”

What do you think about Ethereum’s decision and the implications for its future? Let us know in the comments section below!

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