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Good news for Ethereum community: the core developers have revealed the date of the Constantinople hardfork activation. A lot of experts draw the association of this event with some sort of a Rubicon on path of ETH transition from Proof-of-Work concept to Proof-of-Stake. So, what this hardfork boils down to and what issues it will solve, or at least try to?

For starters, what is a cryptocurrency hardfork in the first place? Hardfork is the division of the blockchain into two independent chains that do not longer cooperate and overlap. Such a division may be done due to some technical issues, hacks or developers' roadmap. More often, the main goal of hardforks is improving security, implementation of important updates and increase of the speed of the blockchain's transaction and other actions taking place within it. 

## What to expect from Constantinople update?

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*Constantinople* is the second stage of the large ETH update called [*Metropolis*](https://blockgeeks.com/guides/ethereum-metropolis/). It's worth reminding that this large update consists of two major parts: Byzantine and Constantinople, which is aimed at easing the ETHs path towards more rational PoS protocol. 

Constantinople will bring about the lower transaction cost to Ethereum network and improve its bandwidth in general. For instance, the following improvements will take place:

- EIP 210 (reorganizing of blocks' hash storage patterns)
- EIP 145 (the increase of the arithmetical operations in Ethereum Virtual Machine
- EIP 1014 (adding of new state channels)
Constantinople launch date is set for the period between January 14th and 18th, when the block # 7,080,000 will be mined. 

[VHCEx](https://www.vhcex.com/) will keep you updated with regard to our policy towards the latest Ethereum hardfork. Stay tuned.