Ethereum's Blockchain Is Once Again Feeling the 'Difficulty Bomb' Effect

Ethereum is being affected by what is popularly known as the "Difficulty bomb" embedded in the code - and this month's upcoming hard fork is expected to once again push its effects further into the future.

In effect, the difficulty bomb as referenced back in 2015 by former ethereum CCO Stephan Tual raises the difficulty level of mining a block on the ethereum blockchain exponentially over time.

The bomb began to "Go off" so to speak last December after being delayed once in June 2017 and again in October 2017.

As reported by blockchain analytics site Etherscan, the ethereum blockchain saw its lowest level of daily block reward issuance Monday with a recorded 13,131 ETH. By comparison, as late as mid-November, new issuance was regularly seen above 20,000 ETH. What's more, Etherscan reports a clear decline since December in the number of blocks produced on ethereum per day, which sits at present below 4,500 blocks.

Afri Schoedon - release manager for ethereum client Parity - estimates if left unaddressed, it would take two to three months from now for the difficulty bomb to stall the ethereum blockchain to new record-lows.

This not being the first time ethereum core developers have had to include such tweaks to the difficulty bomb code.

To this point, Eric Conner - founder of ,ethereum information site ETHHub - agreed telling CoinDesk that, in his view, the motivationary effect of the difficulty bomb isn't the same as it was.

Mining difficulty levels increase by a factor of two as a result of the bomb every 100,000 blocks, Connor noted.

This time around, Connor doesn't imagine any further impacts of the difficulty bomb on the ethereum network, given that Constantinople - with its kicking-of-the-can built-in - will occur before the next expected uptick in mining difficulty at block 7,300,000.

What's more, after Constantinople is activated, ethereum will face an added reduction of block reward issuance from 3 to 2 ETH. The reduction "Thirdening" was put in place in order to mitigate the impacts of inflation on the network without a timed difficulty bomb.