With Bitcoin Futures grabbing all the limelight, the number two cryptocurrency is not far behind. Ethereum is trading near all-time high, and ETH prices are hovering around $550.00. With more banks opting for the platform to meet stricter regulations, the currency shall keep grabbing headlines in future.
At present, ethereum hard fork news has surfaced again with Parity Technologies, the company that offers one of the fastest and most secure ways of interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. Parity comes with an extensive and easy to use, in-built Ethereum Wallet, which can be accessed by the users via web browser of their choice. However, there was an ethereum code bug which brought down the system last month as hundreds of millions of dollars in ether could not be accessed by users with parity wallets that deployed multi-signatures. One of the users had accidentally triggered a function which resulted in him/her becoming the sole owner of all Parity wallets (multi-signatures) deployed after 20th July.
The company has suggested a solution which may not be agreed upon by the community and could mean a still longer wait for users to access their locked funds in non-functional Parity wallets.
On Monday, Parity Technologies stated in its blog post that through an ethereum code fix, these lost ethereum millions can be made accessible. This code fix means similar move like an ethereum hard fork which involves an update to the blockchain software. (Source: On Classes of Stuck Ether and Potential Solutions, Parity Technologies Blog, December 11, 2017)
Such a move was attempted last year when a hacker had exploited an ethereum code bug and made away with over $50 million worth of the digital currency from Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), which is a form of investor-directed venture capital fund.
However, the ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin had stated at that time that ethereum hard fork should not be looked as the solution in every such incident on the ethereum blockchain.
With ethereum at an all-time high, it is very unlikely that an ethereum code fix would be attempted at this time. A successful ethereum hard fork involves the entire community to work together to arrive at a consensus and then move to the new version of the software.
Ethereum has immense potential as a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts and can be used to build wide ranging applications. These applications can be run without little possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. But the fact remains that ethereum is continuously evolving. Parity Technologies has expressed optimism that the community would get behind a rescue of these locked funds to help as many users as possible.
Source: Price Confidential
