Ethereum upgrade delayed over security vulnerability

Ethereum's Constantinople upgrade, which was supposed to kick in on Thursday, Jan 16, is getting delayed. 

According to the official Ethereum blog, the delay is due to a potential security vulnerability identified by security audit company ChainSecurity on Jan. 15. 

The security bug could potentially make some smart contracts on Ethereum vulnerable to a so-called "re-entrancy attack," enabling an attacker to steal other people's ether. 

The bug is explained in detail in a blog post by ChainSecurity. The important bit is that, since Constantinople was delayed, no smart contracts are vulnerable at this point. In fact, a scan of Ethereum's blockchain by ChainSecurity did not find any contracts that would be vulnerable even if the upgrade went through, but Ethereum's developers still decided to mitigate the risk by delaying the upgrade. Read more...