Rise in ethereum difficulty will break block.difficulty

[sz-piotr]

The following code tries to fit block.difficulty into a number.

ethers.js/packages/providers/src.ts/formatter.ts

Lines 274 to 285 in f0b3bc3

	// Returns the difficulty as a number, or if too large (i.e. PoA network) null
	difficulty(value: any): number {
	if (value == null) { return null; }
	const v = BigNumber.from(value);
	try {
	return v.toNumber();
	} catch (error) { }
	return null;
	}

The difficulty in the recent Ethereum blocks is fast approaching Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER. Comparing:

https://etherscan.io/block/13153551  8,648,512,341,350,155
Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER              9,007,199,254,740,991

In order to properly handle this the type of block.difficulty would need to change to BigNumber. Since this is a breaking change I am not sure what the process for it should be.

[ricmoo]

I completely agree. I will schedule this change for the next major-version.

Thanks! :)

[ricmoo]

I'll add this as the next minor bump as discussed in #2036, for v5 and in v6 this will be a BigNumber and the new _difficulty field will be removed.

[ricmoo]

I've dded the _difficulty property for those that need it as a BigNumber. Available as of 5.5.0.

Thanks! :)

[wmitsuda]

Thanks! I'll upgrade and try it out!