After the second bifurcation takes of Ethereum in less than a month, the time of creation of the blocks in the blockchain decreased by about 23%. As can be seen from data of Etherscan between the date prior to the bifurcation Muir Glacier, on the 1st of January, and this Sunday the 5th of January.Through the referred browser for Ethereum, it can be seen that for the 1 of January, the average time for the creation of each block was about 17,16 seconds, while on Sunday the average was 13,15 seconds.During the Saturday, 4 January, even, the average time of the creation of blocks was below the 13 seconds. In the records of Etherscan, this only happened on the 29th of last may, when we recorded exactly 12,96 seconds per block, as this Saturday.This decrease in the time of creation of blocks comes just after the new delay in the pump of difficulty for the mining of Ethereum. This is precisely the single change that introduced the most recent branching lasts from the network, Muir Glacier.This Saturday, the time per block repeated his minimum, with 12,96 seconds. Source: Etherscan.The aim of this new branch was to avoid possible complications in the stage of transition to the next version of the network, Ethereum 2.0 or Serenity. When that happens, the algorithm of mining will change the protocol of Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
Lower difficulty and higher inflation
One of the concerns around these numbers is the increase in the inflation before the issuance of new ethers (ETH). In fact, the daily rewards for mining spent approximately 10.200 ETH the 1 of January to more than 13,000 ETH this Sunday. Also the Friday and Saturday of the issuance of ETH exceeded that figure, reflect data as of Etherscan.These last few days, in addition, the creation of blocks in Ethereum again than 6,000 diaries for the first time since November. Even, this Friday and Saturday, were created more than 6,500 blocks each day, something that has not happened since the end of July of last year.The daily emission was again overcome the 6,000 blocks and 13,000 ETH. Source: Etherscan.In data of Coin Metrics is seen that indeed, the inflation annual percentage grew the past days. Precisely, after the activation of Muir Glacier, inflation went from 3.4% to 3.9% between the 1 and 2 January.Then, the inflation exceeded 4% for the first time since mid-December and has approached to a 4.6% which is not reached from the last week of September. Also the inflation in Ethereum became to exceed that of Bitcoin, according to the chart of Coin Metrics, for the first time since the second week of December.Since December, the inflation of Ethereum did not exceed that of Bitcoin. Source: Coin Metrics.The activation of Muir Glacier became the third occasion that the developers of Ethereum delay the pump difficulty, a mechanism by which seeks to facilitate the transition to the next algorithm of PoS becoming more and more difficult to mining with PoW.The difficulty has decreased significantly since the advent of the fork, as shown by data of Etherscan. On the 1st of January, the difficulty of the network was above the 2,450 TH, and for the Sunday, January 4 just over 2.040 TH.