You got it backwards. The ICE AGE effects have been in place since May of this year as preparation for the switch to the POS Casper release, initially planned for later this year. Recently it was announced the switch to POS is not ready to made for what looks like at least 12 months. There was some contention as to whether the ETH developers would delay the programmed difficulty rise and block time increases from the ICE AGE, now that the switch to POS has officially been delayed.
What was confirmed at the last two developer meetings, is the diffusement of the ICE AGE difficulty bomb and block time increases will not happen until they release the next planned fork, in late September or early October this year. At which point the difficulty will go back to being based on the network hash rate, the block times will go back to 15 seconds along with a reduction in the block reward to ~3 ETH at the same time the fork is implemented.
In the meantime the continued planned difficulty and block time increases from the ICE AGE implementation will go on as scheduled. The next being August 25 which is expected to increase the difficulty ~30% from where it is now and then another difficulty ramp up on September 24th. The block times will also go from the current 20 seconds to 25 seconds on August 25th and then to 32 seconds on September 24th.
All of which means starting tomorrow, mining ETH is not going to be very profitable until the next hard fork unless the price goes up substantially from where it is now.
https://etherchain.org/charts/difficultyBomb
What was confirmed at the last two developer meetings, is the diffusement of the ICE AGE difficulty bomb and block time increases will not happen until they release the next planned fork, in late September or early October this year. At which point the difficulty will go back to being based on the network hash rate, the block times will go back to 15 seconds along with a reduction in the block reward to ~3 ETH at the same time the fork is implemented.
In the meantime the continued planned difficulty and block time increases from the ICE AGE implementation will go on as scheduled. The next being August 25 which is expected to increase the difficulty ~30% from where it is now and then another difficulty ramp up on September 24th. The block times will also go from the current 20 seconds to 25 seconds on August 25th and then to 32 seconds on September 24th.
All of which means starting tomorrow, mining ETH is not going to be very profitable until the next hard fork unless the price goes up substantially from where it is now.
https://etherchain.org/charts/difficultyBomb
Thanks for sharing this info and the chart -- this makes better sense of what I was trying to piece together.
