The Ethereum Core Developer team just concluded its latest meeting. While there were a number of issues discussed, the main takeaway for investors is that they adopted EIP-1234: Constantinople Difficulty Bomb Delay and Block Reward Adjustment
- Cuts Base Block Reward to 2 ETH
- Delays the Difficulty Bomb by 6 million blocks
These changes are not immediate; however, they will be included in the next hard fork named "Constantinople"
This was the last meeting before changes could be included in the latest hard fork, thus making it critical that the dev's came to a consensus on the issue of block rewards.
There was some debate about what the correct reduction in block reward should be. Naturally, different stakeholders had conflicting opinions as to the correct number. The final number, 2 ETH per block, seemed to be an ad hoc compromise between miners, who of course perferred no change, and investors who wanted it to drop even further. Several core dev's lamented that there wasn't a better way for the community to vote.
So far the reaction to ETH / USD has been muted; prices are buoyed slightly by a general rally in the market over the last 30 minutes more than the decision to cut block rewards. Given the changes will only appear in the next hard fork, its likely the impact, if any, will be felt over a prolonged period of time in ETH/USD and the crypto-2-crypto spreads.
