Ethereum blockchain is getting ready for another network upgrade - Berlin.

Background

"Berlin" was initially named as Istanbul II as it contained most of the EIPs that was originally proposed for Istanbul. For Istanbul, over 25 EIPs were porposed. But, in the interest of 'being on schedule', core developers decided to proceed with only 6 EIPs and dropped rest for Istanbul II, later named as Berlin.

Istanbul was deployed in December 2019 followed by another upgrade Muir Glacier which included only one EIP (which was initially missed in the Istanbul) to push the difficulty bomb in the PoW algorithm. To know more about Muir Glacier read here.

As decided in the Ethereum All Core Developers  meeting back in November 2019, Berlin is the first upgrade that is going to follow the EIP Centric Model, which in Layman's term means that an upgrade will be deployed when an EIP that can add high  value to the Ethereum blockchain is ready. In other words, unlike Istanbul, it is not schedule based inviting EIPs but EIP based with no hard deadline to be deployed.  These EIPs can be tracked at EFI tracker.

The Berlin upgrade is centered around the EIP 2537 which is BLS12-381 curve operations, an improvement in Ethereum blockchain for the Ethereum 2.0 launch.

(Last updated May 15, 2020)

EIPs (accepted) for Berlin upgrade

• EIP-2537: BLS12-381 curve operations
• EIP-2315: Simple Subroutines for the EVM

Tentatively accepted for upgrade

• EIP-2046: Reduced gas cost for static calls made to precompiles
• EIP-2565: Repricing of the EIP-198 ModExp precompile

Client status tracker here

Berlin Meta EIP-2070

Timeline

(Tentative months in 2020, based on discussion in ACD meeting 87)

• YOLO Testnet: May-June
• Mainnet: TBD

References

• Tracking EFI
• ACD meeting notes 84

Stay tuned to Ethereum Core Dev calls for latest update on Berlin upgrade or you can just subscribe us :)

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