Ethereum’s Istanbul hard fork is going to be launched in a few hours, so what is happening? Ethereum’s Istanbul hard fork Ethereum has crossed block #9068000, and within a thousand blocks, the Istanbul hard fork will be going live. The event is expected to occur around 23:30 UTC. The shift to Istanbul would be Ethereum’s first hard fork since Constantinople hard fork that took place in February. Both of these forks are stages of Metropolis, a network development that is ongoing since 2017. Istanbul hard fork is meant to increase Ethereum’s interoperability with tokens such as Zcash. The fork would