Ethereum (ETH) Devs Share Details of Berlin Hardfork (Spoiler: No EIP-1559)

Ethereum's Berlin hardfork will bring a number of optimization updates onto a second blockchain. Georgios Konstantopoulos of Paradigm digital assets investments firm shared the list of EIPs to be included in Berlin.

Reconsidered gas costs, subroutines and scalability: Welcome to Berlin

According to the latest information by Ethereum (ETH) developers, Ethereum's Berlin hardfork will be activated on block 12,244,000 for mainnet, on block 4,460,644 for Goerli Testnet, on block 8,290,928 for Rinkeby Testnet and on block 9,812,189 for Ropsten Testnet. Thus, the upgrade is expected to come on April 15, 2021, in the early morning hours in the UTC timezone.

Mostly, the improvements included in the Berlin agenda bring optimization to gas spending logics. In post-Berlin Ethereum, increased fees will be charged when the "state" slot or account is accessed for the first time.

Also, EIP-2200 introduces additional gas costs to avoid DDoS-attacks on Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.

EIP-2930 is described by Mr. Constantopulos as a great step toward "stateless" Ethereum (ETH). Thus, it addresses the well-known problem with Ethereum's (ETH) "state size." At the current level of 10-100 GB, it makes node operators utilize expensive and slow SSDs. This update is also very important in terms of Ethereum's (ETH) "Layer 1" scalability.

Finally, new primitives—subroutines—are introduced in Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to upgrade the system logic and make it more efficient.

London hardfork is scheduled for July 2021

Mr. Constantopulos admitted that the much-anticipated EIP-1559 will not be included in Berlin. This proposal includes burning transactional fees and introduces dynamic block sizes to address transient congestion on the Ethereum (ETH) network.

Also, he explained to Solana's Anatoly Yakovenko that the BLS12-381 security update will not be included in Berlin.

However, it may be implemented in the London hardfork. According to Mr. Constantopulos, the London upgrade will be activated in July to "defuse the difficulty bomb."