Development update: Increased work difficulty upgrade status
With the release of Athena V21 support for a change in the work difficulty on the network was included but not yet activated. Due to the nature of this change, each account must be upgraded in the ledger and to help with this process a different block type is distributed, called an epoch block.
Details on the epoch upgrade mechanism and the history of its use can be found in the Network Upgrades documentation. The upcoming epoch blocks will be version 2 as they were previously used to transition into state blocks. It is worth noting that because older versions of the node cannot properly handle epoch v2 blocks, only nodes that have upgraded to V21.0 or higher will remain on the network after the initial epoch v2 block is distributed.
Important notices
When will epoch v2 distribution begin?
We have been monitoring the progress of upgrades on the network to ensure that over 90% of voting weight is upgraded, along with key services. These are the desired conditions that will allow a smoother network upgrade to take place.
Currently, about 81% of the voting weight on the network has been upgraded to V21+, leaving 19% on older versions. Many key services have also upgraded, with others indicating they will soon follow.
At this time the estimate for distribution is no earlier than 2 weeks from today. Additional updates and notifications on progress toward the network upgrade will continue to be pushed through the usual channels.
Once epoch blocks are distributed, how will behavior on the network change?
When the first epoch block is distributed on the network nodes will begin generating and requiring a higher level of work in order for blocks to be considered valid (8x higher work compared to current levels). For most integrations using the node or nano-work-server to generate their work, all calls should continue to function without additional code changes.
Due to the higher difficulty any hardware performing the work generation will take longer to do so. Services and integrations that haven’t evaluated their work generation systems are highly encouraged to do so to minimize the impact of this change on their users.
More information about the preparations and other details of the upgrade can be found in the Increased work difficulty upgrade guide.
Where can I keep up with the progress?
Updates will continue to be posted on Medium, Twitter, and other channel. We also encourage everyone to join our Technical Updates Mailing List to receive notifications of progress. And don’t forget to add info@nano.org to your email whitelist to make sure the updates hit your inbox every time.
Other details
How will epoch distribution be done?
There are two ways in which an account can be upgraded:
- Have an epoch block added to the account
- Receive a pending block from an account that was already upgraded
In order to minimize the number of extra blocks added to the ledger, the upgrade process will involve the distribution of a single epoch block to upgrade an active account. From that point on, all sends from that account which are received will update other accounts on the network. For each of these upgraded accounts an epoch block is no longer needed.
Once the rate of account upgrades from receiving from another upgraded account slows down, additional epoch blocks will be distributed until all accounts have been upgraded.
Where can I get support for questions about this network upgrade?
Please visit the Work difficulty increase support topic in our forum where the Nano Foundation and community members can assist.
