Ethereum’s Constantinople upgrade postponed, beware of ETH volatility ahead

Ethereum is not moving to the fork anymore. The  Constantinople upgrade was to take place at block number 7,080,000, around today. The event was tied to a block number; thus the exact time was not known.

However, smart contract audit performed by ChainSecurity revealed a critical vulnerability of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1283. The vulnerability was dubbed «re-entrance attack.» It allows hackers to re-enter the same function multiple times without notifying the user. It’s a dangerous loophole that might lead to the implementation of the update could lead to cryptocurrency theft.

“Imagine that my contract has a function which makes a call to another contract… If I’m a hacker and I’m able to trigger function a while the previous function was still executing, I might be able to withdraw funds,” Joanes Espanol, CTO of blockchain analytics company Amberdata explained earlier in the interview with CoinDesk.

Hackers used a similar vulnerability during DAO attack.

As a result, the developers decided to postpone the updated for an unknown time.

Currently, ETH/USD is changing hands at $121.87, down 6% on a day-over-day basis. Ethereum takes the third place by market value. It has lost over 20% in recent seven days with the downside momentum gaining traction. The news about Constantinople delay might increase the bearish pressure during European hours.