Ethereum Community Leans Toward Approving Parity “Patch”

An important Ethereum improvement proposal is being considered right now. Although EIP 999 is somewhat controversial among community members, it seems the majority of the network is in favor of seeing this solution move ahead. There is still a long way to go until we know the final outcome, though.

The EIP 999 Vote is in Progress

For those unaware of what this EIP entails exactly, it is an effort to address the contract code which is part of the recent Parity screwup. More specifically, a fair amount of money has been frozen in a wallet address due to a bug in the smart contract. So far, no resolution has been found, and it seems some innovative trickery will be required to resolve this matter.

This particular gas proposal restores the Parity Wallet contract’s Walletlibrary to let owners regain access to their assets. Other solutions are pretty much impossible at this stage, as the Ethereum source code doesn’t allow for the restoration of self-destructed contracts.

For those users who saw their money locked up due to the Parity bug, this may be the only solution left. So far, the community is seemingly in favor of approving the proposal, but the total number of votes is still on the low side of the spectrum.

When it comes to unfreezing funds on the Ethereum blockchain, most people will think back to the blockchain rollback associated with The DAO. At that time, the Ethereum developers rewrote the Ethereum transaction history to free millions of dollars worth of Ether. This new approach is a bit different, although it will not necessarily be less controversial.

Users with an opinion on this proposal can vote with their Ether balance. So far, 69% of voters are in favor of having this proposal activated on the network, whereas 31% is opposed. Surprisingly, 8 people voted “don’t care”, as it seems the Parity issue is not the hottest of topics in the Ethereum community right now. It is still a problem that will need to be resolved very soon.

With voting ending on April 22, it will be interesting to see what the outcome of this proposal is. Solving this lingering issue will not impact the total Ether supply or cause any major disruptions to the network. Nor is there a need for an Ethereum software client update, as the “patch” only pertains to one specific smart contract address.