Ethereum's Istanbul Upgrade Will Break 680 Smart Contracts on Aragon

A system-wide upgrade is coming to ethereum's Ropsten test network on Wednesday.

For governance platform Aragon, in particular, the code changes are expected to break roughly 680 smart contracts, according to Aragon One CTO Jorge Izquierdo.

These smart contracts typically manage the governance of decentralized applications running on the ethereum blockchain.

Izquierdo tells CoinDesk this means forced upgrades are required for the affected smart contracts in order to ensure all decentralized autonomous organizations currently built on the Aragon platform continue to function smoothly.

Aragon One communications lead John Light says these fund transfers between DAOs on Aragon would effectively "Run out of gas."

For ethereum token-swap platform Kyber Network the system-wide upgrade only affects a single smart contract, according to Kyber Network co-founder Loi Luu.

Stepping back, the code change in Istanbul affecting certain smart contracts is known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1884 and is meant to address one downside of ethereum's steady growth.

Gas prices, on the other hand, have stayed stagnant, creating what Ethereum Foundation security lead Martin Holst Swende calls "An imbalance between the price of an operation and the resource consumption."

This four-fold increase in SLOAD gas cost is what breaks Aragon smart contracts and jacks up prices for end-users of the Kyber Network.

"[Istanbul] is the kind of hard fork that's going to break a lot of smart contracts," Luu said.