The Code for Ethereum's Consensus Change Is Now Ready for Review

New code written to change the way the ethereum network reaches consensus is now ready for review, developers said Friday.

Ethereum improvement proposal 1011, known as Hybrid Casper FFG, would implement the first step in a long-planned shift away from the energy-intensive mining process and toward towards a greener method sometimes called "Minting."

Ethereum's current consensus protocol - the way the network agrees to add a new block to the chain - is called proof-of-work and requires resources to be expended as its "Proof."

Ethereum's creator Vitalik Buterin and other developers have discussed eventually moving to a proof-of-stake model, in which users lock ether up in special wallets and risk losing these "Stakes" if they don't follow the consensus rules.

That planned transition to proof-of-stake is known as Casper.

EIP 1011, if implemented, would bea first, partial step toward the full move to Casper, introducing a hybrid system that combines proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, an approach discussed in papers unveiled last year.

Casper, while long in the making, is still controversial in some quarters - for example, a security researcher at VMware called it "Fundamentally vulnerable" last month.

One of EIP 1011's authors, along with Chih-Cheng Liang, told fellow developers during a meeting Friday that the proposed code is "Ready for review, community discussion, etc."

Ryan added that development work for ethereum clients could begin soon and that he was corresponding with the formal verification engineers.

As Ryan suggests, the change will not be compatible with existing ethereum software, meaning that the network will have to undergo a hard fork to be implemented.