The Ethereum Foundation reveals the details of the upcoming Istanbul hard fork

• Ethereum developers published the guidelines ahead of the Istanbul update.
• Nodes operators should perform an upgrade before December 1.

After a series of semi-official reports, the Ethereum Foundation representatives published a full guide to the upcoming Istanbul hardfork, where they detailed the software requirements and the actions to be taken bu users.

As confirmed by the community manager of the organization Hudson Jameson, the update will be activated on block 9,069,000 – approximately on December 7. The exact date and time of the hard fork, however, may change due to the varying time of blocks discovery.

Nodes operators need to update their software by December 1. Geth and Parity as well as some lesser-known clients like Aleth, Besu and Nethermind are compatible with the upgrade.

“If you are using an Ethereum client that is not updated to the latest version (listed above), your client will sync to the pre-fork blockchain once the upgrade occurs. You will be stuck on an incompatible chain following the old rules and you will be unable to send ether or operate on the post-upgrade Ethereum network,” the guide says.  

Meanwhile, users of web wallets, mobile apps, exchanges and hardware wallets should not take any action on their own initiative unless they are asked to take additional steps by their service provider.

Istanbul will be the last hardfork on the Ethereum 1.0, network that will pave the way to Serenity and the transition to Ethereum 2.0.

This large-scale update will be preceded by the activation of Casper and the switch to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm, sharding, virtual machine update (EWASM), change of cross-contract logic and protocol economics.

Before that, another major update called Berlin will be launched by the end of June 2020.