The Ethereum Foundation confirms that the planned hardfork will be activated on the block 4 370 000, which will be produced, roughly, on Monday October 16, between 12:00 and 13:00 UTC (16:00 to 17:00 Moscow time). The same hardfork was activated in the test network Ropsten on September 19 on the block 1,700,000. The countdown timer can be viewed here. To date, in the Etherium, there have already been four hardfork, and only one of them led to the creation of an alternative blocker Ethereum Classic. Given that Byzantium is included in the development plan of the Etherium since 2015, it is unlikely that there will be problems with the update. Byzantium can be considered as a conservative update, which will include 9 proposals for changes (EIP - analog BIP) in the platform. The essence of the change is that they need to make the platform easier and faster, improving the speed of transactions, the security of smart contracts and, possibly, confidentiality.