During a developers' conference call on June 26, Ethereum developers decided to delay the Berlin hard fork for at least a month due to Geth client centralization concerns.
According to EthereumNodes.org, Geth client currently dominates (79.4%) the number of nodes running the Ethereum blockchain network, which puts the blockchain in strict security and operational position if the client temporarily freezes or shuts down.
Such dominance jeopardizes the functioning of the entire network if a serious error is detected.
Independent researcher and software developer Alexey Akhunov during the call said that the delay of the Berlin hard fork should help to decrease the centralization in the network.
"Currently the burden is too high since Geth correctness is so critical, and they end up doing most of the work on ensuring everything works correctly," Akhunov added.
The developers agreed to wait for the moment when many clients will be able to launch the update together to prevent any failures if one or more of them crashes.
This is not the first time when the Berlin hard fork has been postponed.
In May, it became clear the developers had not managed to launch the testnet on the expected date (May 26) as several EIPs had not been included in the system.
However, on June 29, a new milestone was eventually reached as developers succeeded to launch the multi-client testnet for Ethereum 2.0, known as Altona.
Altona is the first network to use the updated 0.12 specification for Ethereum 2.0. This is the first testnet targeting a wide range of users. However, the developers call it a "devnet" as they have yet to identify the most serious bugs.
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