Ethereum developers are cautiously optimistic about Constantinople

Ethereum network is getting closer to the vital Constantinopole upgrade. The community is nervous ahead of the event, though the developers are "cautiously optimistic". 

According to the statistical data from Etherenodes.org, the resource that tracks the number of nodes that updated their software, only 16% of miners adopted Constantinople by Saturday, January 12.  However,   Peter Pratscher, the CEO of the biggest ether mining pool Ethermine, believes that the data is not correct.

“Miners are prepared. Only miners can split the chain. We expect most of the not-updated nodes to be updated by the time the fork block arrives,”  Afri Schoedon, release manager for the Parity ethereum client said.

While Constantinople is considered to be a scheduled update not disputed by community members, there is always a risk that something might go wrong. for the network to function normally, all nodes should install the new version of the software. If a relatively big number of miners fail to do that by the time of the system upgrade, the network will be split into two separate chais. In other words, we will have a fork. That's what happened when Etehreum developers decided to implement a questionable update after the DAO collapse in summer 2016.

Constantinople is a part of a large scale Ethereum upgrade known as Metropolis that will allow to take the network to Proof-of-Stake algorithm and implement five Ethereim Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Most of them are general improvements approved by the majority of the developers' community.

Ethereum has been a big loser lately. The coin has lost over 26% of its value in recent seven days and touched $114.60, which is the lowest level since December 27. The coin is vulnerable to losses until the risk event is out of the way, Watch out for $100.00 handle as it may pop up in front of ETH/USD sooner rather than later.