Ethereum client Parity has urged users to immediately upgrade their software after the company forgot to include an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP). 

According to an update published on GitHub, Parity asked users to update their software to include EIP1344.  

The post reads,

Parity Ethereum v2.6.6-beta is an emergency patch release that adds the missing eip1344_transition for mainnet – Users are advised to update as soon as possible to prevent any issues with the imminent Istanbul hardfork.

EIP1344 is a proposal to add an opcode to “retrieve the chain id of the chain that the block has been mined one.” 

Without this proposal users are at an increased risk of attack following hard forks, such as Instanbul,

Currently the only way is to hardcode the chain id into the smart contract. This poses a problem in case of a hardfork. This opcode would allow multi signature contracts that use signatures to implement better replay protection and increase security.

Parity noticed its error just in time for Ethereum’s long-awaited and highly anticipated Istanbul update expected to occur on Dec. 8, 2019.  

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