may not seem like a big deal (Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day) but it can have some palpable consequences for the project itself and for the community.
Ethereum's difficulty and global hashrate has been rising at unforeseen proportions, due to Ethereum's ASIC-resistant algorithm, which has kept Ether Mining in the hands of GPU users making it a fair and decentralized system that attracts average users.
Ethereum Difficulty Growth Chart
Mass adoption of Ether Mining came as a double-edged sword, since it's what makes Ethereum Mining decentralized but it also makes it harder for miners to find a block, and since the price isn't really keeping up with the difficulty and hashrate, miners may soon lose the incentive to mine altogether, which would cause miners to leave the consensus. In most cryptocurrencies this wouldn't be a problem, since difficulty would reduce with the global hashrate, but in Ethereum the difficulty is hard-coded to keep rising even if the hashrate decreases.
Proof of Stake would solve this issue. Since users would no longer need to provide computational power the cost of mining Ethereum would be close to nothing (Assuming you have Ether that you can use to stake), but there's a catch: Casper, the proof of stake protocol that will be implemented in Ethereum, is not ready, and with Team Members working round the clock for a whole month trying to fix the DAO issue the problem has obviously been aggravated.
Many suggest that a hard fork to remove the hard-coded difficulty rise for Ether Mining, known as "Ice-Age", may take place in the future. Of course, this Is a direct consequence of the Hack and, not the Hard Fork itself.
Something that can be seen as a direct consequence of both the Hack itself and the solution presented (hard fork), is the release of a big piece of the Ethereum cake back to the market, which may cause the price to react in a very negative way, as selling pressure rises. The Ethereum price was hoveirng around $8 before The DAO, and it's possible we may see this kind of price once more.
The general feeling regarding the hard fork seems to be positive however when one looks at the charts a few hours before the fork took place.
Ethereum Price Chart
Ethereum was able to steer away from disaster and to do so, while taking the input of the community into consideration. What we're left with is an Ethereum that is more organized, but also more careful regarding the development, testing, auditing and deployment of complex smart contacts.
Price data by www.cryptocompare.com
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