Ethereum London Hard Fork Incoming: How Binance and OKEx are Preparing

The Ethereum blockchain is scheduled to undergo the London hard fork, and several exchanges are taking precautions to ensure users’ funds remain secured once the hard fork is successfully deployed. 

At block height 12,965,000, estimated to take place tomorrow (August 5th, 2021), Ethereum was scheduled to undergo the hard fork, and two scenarios are likely to occur; either the chain is split, and there’s a competing network with a new token or no new token is created, and most exchanges will resume ETH and ERC-20 tokens operations like withdrawals and deposits after the hard fork.

How Are Exchanges Preparing for the Hard Fork?

Binance announced it will suspend ETH and ERC-20 tokens deposits and withdrawals at 2021-08-05 11:45 (UTC). This is to ensure that trading risks are reduced if a new token is created during the hard fork, which could lead to extreme price volatility. 

Some Binance products like Spot and Margin trading will be unaffected — however, the exchange warned users to take their precautions as price volatility is often high during a hard fork. Binance Crypto Loans will be suspended for 42 hours.  

Crypto exchange OKEx said that if ETH splits and a new token is created, the platform will credit users with ETH from the chain. It also warned users not to transfer ETH during the snapshot period, which lasts for 10 minutes.

“We will then also credit users with the token from the minority chain at a ratio of 1:1 based on the snapshot of ETH balances at block height 12,965,000, or approximately 2021-08-05 11:55 (UTC),” reads the blog post.

London Hard Fork Good For the Long Run

Commenting on the latest hard fork, OKEx CEO Jay Hao delivered his thoughts to CryptoPotato.

“The Ethereum London hard fork event introduces a new pricing mechanism to smooth out these gas price spikes with a major overhaul of the existing fee structure. It looks set to improve ETH’s value proposition and the network’s user experience, but just a beginning. More layer-2 protocols and Ethereum 2.0 are on the way,” said Jay Hao, CEO at OKEx.

“Also, we can’t deny there are more DeFi projects adopting the multi-chain strategy, and migrating to other blockchain networks – especially those of high cross-chain operationality.”