Ethereum’s Berlin Hard Fork is Live but Sync Issues Are Reported

In another step towards reducing the high fees on its blockchain, Ethereum’s latest upgrade, dubbed Berlin, has already come into effect. The hard fork arrives with four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), but many users have complained about network errors.

Berlin Hard Fork is Here for Ethereum

The high utilization of the Ethereum blockchain, being the predominant underlying technology of DeFi, NFTs, and having numerous stablecoins on top of it, caused several network issues. The transactions have experienced severe delays, while the gas costs (read fees) have skyrocketed to new highs, as reported recently.

To fight these unfriendly consequences, Ethereum’s developers plan to transition the network from the current proof of work consensus algorithm to proof of stake. However, this is a long process, which could take years. In the meantime, Ethereum’s blockchain has seen several upgrades.

After Istanbul and Muir Glacier, the developers announced earlier this year the Berlin Hard Fork – named after the city where Devcon 0 took place. It incorporates four EIPs.

EIP-2565 plans to reduce the transaction fees algorithmically, while EIP-2929 could actually increase the gas costs to speed up the processing times.

EIP-2718 enables people to combine transactions, and EIP-2930 aims to balance out the potential fee increases from EIP-2929 while also reducing the risks of broken smart contracts.

Berlin Update Causes Problems

Shortly after taking place in block number 12,244,000, however, the Berlin Hard Fork has already caused issues among users. The root of those seems connected with block number 12,244,294.

The issue appears to be a “consensus error,” which initially affected Openethereum Nodes only. However, the complaints continued with the popular wallet provider, Ledger. The team warned on Twitter that the upgrade has caused “a few disruptions in the network and its services.”

Users’ ETH balances in Ledger Live could experience delays, while new transactions will not show, said the company.

The decade-old crypto exchange, Bitstamp, followed along with an update saying all “withdrawals and deposits of ETH and ERC20 tokens are currently paused due to a technical issue on [the] Ethereum blockchain.”

As of writing these lines, the GitHub status page still says the developers are monitoring the situation.