EIP-3554: Difficulty Bomb Delay to December 2021

Metadata

Status: FinalStandards Track: CoreCreated: 2021-05-06

Authors

James Hancock (@madeoftin)

Links

GitHub page Discussion on Ethereum Magicians

Simple Summary

Delays the difficulty bomb to show effect the first week of December 2021.

Abstract

Starting with FORK_BLOCK_NUMBER the client will calculate the difficulty based on a fake block number suggesting to the client that the difficulty bomb is adjusting 9,700,000 blocks later than the actual block number.

Motivation

Targeting for the Shanghai upgrade and/or the Merge to occur before December 2021. Either the bomb can be readjusted at that time, or removed all together.

Specification

Relax Difficulty with Fake Block Number

For the purposes of calc_difficulty, simply replace the use of block.number, as used in the exponential ice age component, with the formula:

Rationale

The following script predicts a .1 second delay to blocktime the first week of december and a 1 second delay by the end of the month. This gives reason to address because the effect will be seen, but not so much urgency we don't have space to work around if needed.

Backwards Compatibility

No known backward compatibility issues.

Security Considerations

Misjudging the effects of the difficulty can mean longer blocktimes than anticipated until a hardfork is released. Wild shifts in difficulty can affect this number severely. Also, gradual changes in blocktimes due to longer-term adjustments in difficulty can affect the timing of difficulty bomb epochs. This affects the usability of the network but unlikely to have security ramifications.