Hi everyone. This article will cover the Ethereum Byzantium Fork, the first half of the Metropolis Hard Fork, which is occurring this Monday between 12:00 and 13:00 UTC (block 4370000). We'll go over:
Let's get started.
The Byzantium Hard Fork is the first half of the Metropolis Stage. Metropolis is an Ethereum Development Stage consisting of two forks, named Byzantium (October 2017) and Constantinople (2018).
Byzantium includes a lot of support for cryptographic and mathematical operations Ethereum did not have before.
The addition I think will have the most impact is the ZK-Snark Proof.
The ZK-Snark proof is a fully anonymous zero knowledge proof, currently the only truly anonymous transaction.
It was first popularized by the cryptocurrency ZCash and continues to be adopted.
Adding this to Ethereum is a very smart decision, and might attract quite some attention from places like Wall Street.
The other most impactful update is the delay of the Ethereum Ice Age. But what's that?
Ethereum eventually plans to move from a Proof of Work protocol (mining is based on computational power or work) to a Proof of Stake one (mining is based on your Ether balance). However, the code for this (nicknamed "Casper") is not ready to be implemented live yet.
When it does get implemented, it'll be implemented in a hard fork just like this one. However, hard forks are always up to the community, in terms of whether they want to move to the new side of the fork or not.
In order to give miners incentive to move to the Proof of Stake side of the fork when it comes out, they implemented an Ice Age or Difficulty Bomb.
This raises the difficulty of Ethereum at unimaginable rates, making sure miners can't keep up.
Eventually, the difficulty will be too high to mine a block, and Ethereum will be frozen in place (hence the name "Ice Age").
However, Casper still has not been implemented yet, so in the Byzantium Hard Fork, developers have extended the Ice Age Day by one year. Simultaneously, they have reduced the ETH block reward from 5 ether to 3 ether.
The fork is occurring this Monday between 12:00 and 13:00 UTC (block 4370000). You can track the current status of the fork at https://fork.codetract.io. There, you'll see an image something like this:
4370000 is the block number at which the fork will begin.
Depending on what client you use, you may not need to do much.
If you're using a desktop client such as the below, update to these versions:
v1.7.2+v1.7.6+v2.1.0+However, if you're using a web client such as MyEtherWallet.com or Jaxx, its up to your client to manage their infrastructure. If you're worried, you can contact them directly. However, I strongly believe MyEtherWallet does plan to upgrade their hardware and software with the fork.
To conclude, the Ethereum Byzantium Fork will bring a wealth of exciting new features to Ethereum, mainly the addition of cryptographically anonymous transactions, the delaying of the ice age, and the reduction of the block reward. The fork will occur very soon between 12:00-13:00 UTC on Monday!
Thanks for reading,
— 
announcement #1:
announcement #2: To follow the fork progress, view the Ethereum Blog here. They'll also post updates on their Twitter account here. May the fork be with you :)