Ethereum core developers have decided that they will activate the proposed Constantinople upgrade in late February.

The upgrade was delayed earlier this week following a code audit, which revealed that the fork would introduce security issues affecting Ethereum’s smart contracts, potentially resulting in the theft of users’ funds.

Prior to the hard fork being delayed, Michael Moro, the CEO of Genesis Global Trading, spoke about the importance of the supply reduction feature, saying that it could be bullish for ETH’s price.

“Being that the inflation rate will drop by a third, it could potentially reduce selling pressure that could come from the miners’ reward,” he said.

Ethereum saw some decent price gains earlier this month that many analysts attributed to the Constantinople upgrade, which will reduce the new supply of ETH by 33%. Over the long run, analysts speculated that this supply reduction would lead ETH to see greater price stability and gradual gains. Despite the security flaw, the supply reduction feature that analysts deemed as being bullish will still be implemented when the upgrade occurs next month.

There is no speculation about how much of Ethereum’s January price surge is directly the result of investors anticipation of Constantinople, though its price did drop nearly 8% after the delay and security flaw were announced earlier this week.

A prompt decision to reactivate Constantinople sooner rather than later was needed in part due to prolonged activation of Ethereum’s difficulty bomb – a piece of code embedded into the blockchain making block times increasingly longer over time.

As TheCryptosight reported earlier, major cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance, Kraken, Huobi, and OKEx have confirmed their support of Constantinople.