Share this article
Ethereum Executes Byzantium Blockchain Software Upgrade
Ethereum's Byzantium upgrade has just executed by way of a hard fork at block number 4,370,000.
Updated Dec 11, 2022, 7:50 p.m. Published Oct 16, 2017, 6:00 a.m.
Ethereum has officially updated.
At 05.22 UTC, the fifth hard fork to occur on ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, enacted a batch of ethereum improvement protocols (EIPs) designed to enhance the platform. The price per dollar of ether oscillated wildly in the run up, before rising over 2 percent following activation to $348, according to CoinMarketCap data.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
First introduced in the ethereum roadmap in 2015 under the name of Metropolis, that large-scale upgrade encountered some substantial delays, leading it to be broken into two phases – Byzantium and Constantinople (the latter still having no formal release date).
As Byzantium was a planned fork with minimally contentious changes, there's been very little disagreement among the community about the merits of the code changes included in the upgrade. However, the fork is still notable in that it's ethereum's first major upgrade since interest in the technology skyrocketed this year, which has been largely correlated to the popularity of ICO tokens launched using ethereum's ERC-20 token standard.
The process was at times a little sticky, though, with ethereum developers encountering some pretty nasty surprises in the run-up to the deadline.
Over the last few days, Byzantium-enabled ethereum software was continuously retracted due to critical bugs found in the code. Developers pushed out corrections just in time – but not without seriously considering postponing the fork.
According to blockchain analytics website Ether Nodes, nodes running faulty software are currently 65.3 percent Gethhttps://ethernodes.org/network/1/forkWatch/geth and 30.4 percent Parityhttps://ethernodes.org/network/1/forkWatch/parity, the two main ethereum clients. As previously detailed by CoinDesk, the faulty software could cause a consensus issue, leading the network to partition, or expose the platform to denial-of-service attacks.
However, so far, there is no sign of a minority fork according to current fork logs, and developers are celebrating the transition on social media.
CoinDesk will continue to monitor this developing story.
Yellow mosaic image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
U.S. Interest Rates, Do Kwon Sentencing: Crypto Week Ahead
Your look at what's coming in the week starting Dec. 8.
What to know:
You are reading Crypto Week Ahead: a comprehensive list of what's coming up in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the coming days, as well as the major macroeconomic events that will influence digital asset markets. For an updated daily email reminder of what's expected, click here to sign up for Crypto Daybook Americas. You won't want to start your day without it.
Top Stories
