Ethereum developers have decided to take a new step in the fight against ASIC mining by introducing a new algorithm that will close access to the network for miners using ASIC equipment, leaving mining to those who practice cryptocurrency mining in the traditional way — using graphics cards. This preliminary agreement was reached during another online meeting of key figures in the Ethereum ecosystem. The meeting participants decided to launch a new solution, ProgPoW. If it is integrated into Ethereum's mining system, then from now on ETH mining will be carried out only using traditional equipment such as graphics cards, limiting the influence of ASIC miners. The head of public relations at the Ethereum Foundation, Hudson Jameson, stated that consensus on this issue is indeed close: "It seems we have reached a preliminary agreement on implementing ProgPoW, unless serious flaws are discovered during testing or other obstacles of a similar nature arise." And Ethereum's head of security, Martin Holst Swende, noted that he favors updating the code, since this will ultimately help with the transition to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm. "Today we know that Ethhash has vulnerabilities, and they are already being exploited. That is why I would like to update the code as soon as possible — thanks to this we could gain additional time for the transition to Proof-of-Stake," Swende said.

To implement this idea, according to the developers, it is necessary to spend several more months completing the development and testing of the ProgPoW algorithm, so it will not be included in the Constantinople code. The developers will discuss a more precise date for its implementation at the next meeting – on January 18. Constantinople, in turn, should be activated at block 7,080,000 . According to the estimate of Parity release manager Afri Schoedon, this will happen "10 minutes after 12:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 16," and in November 2019 the Istanbul hard fork will take place. In mid-December, the most popular client for Ethereum – Go-ethereum (Geth) – received a special update, v1.8.20, which sets the activation time for Constantinople. Two leading exchanges, OKEx and Binance, have already announced support for the upcoming hard fork.