Ethereum announced that the network is scheduled to undergo the Istanbul upgrade on December 7. The upgrade will happen at block number 9,069,000, which is predicted to occur on Saturday, December 7. The upgrade does not require ethereum holders to do anything unless their exchanges ask them to.
Istanbul is the 8th Ethereum Network Upgrade.
This is the eighth Ethereum Network upgrade. Previous network upgrades were named Spurious Dragon and Byzantium. The last upgrade on the Ethereum network was Constantinople. During an upgrade, changes to the protocol are programmed into various Ethereum clients such as geth, Parity, Besu, and Nethermind. The protocol changes are activated at a specific block number.
Istanbul is the largest upgrade in terms of community proposals.
According to Ethereum, Istanbul is the largest network upgrade in terms of community proposals. More than 30 EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) was proposed for inclusion in this fork. Out of those 6 EIPs were considered suitable and ready to implement as part of the this upgrade.
