This is an understatement.   The DB needs to be addressed NOW.   Both ETH and now ETC are living on borrowed time.   They are both like trains speeding down a railroad track where the bridge across the canyon has broken up ahead.  Something's gotta give.  For ETH, Vatalik is rushing (um, never a good thing in writing code) to get a fork to Casper in place.  THis will shift the ETH train over onto a Proof-of-Stake-only track.  For ETC....

Who the hell builds something like a Difficulty Bomb into their code before they have even set up a testnet to verify the alternative required for survival?    I just got into Ethereum this week as a buy-and-hold ETC investor.  Tthe deeper I do my research, the more insane VB and the rest of the Ethereum team appears to me.

http://allcoinsnews.com/2016/03/09/ethereum-releases-serenity-poc2-first-python-proof-of-concept-version/


From March 9: "The Ethereum developers have made available the first python based proof of concept (simulation) release of Serenity, the version of the Ethereum protocol designed to move from consensus through proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.  Called Serenity PoC2 (which contains the Casper economic consensus protocol)  is now available on Github and continues to be not a testnet-ready or production-ready client, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Butterin."


Read more on the Difficulty Bomb:

http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/323/what-is-the-difficulty-bomb-and-what-is-the-goal-of-it

http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3779/when-will-the-difficulty-bomb-make-mining-impossible/3800#3800

https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/7185/ethereum-mining-bomb-probably-only-6-more-months-of-eth-mining-left

"....starting from block 200,000 (very roughly X days from now), the difficulty will undergo an exponential increase which will only become noticeable in about a year...."

Note - Block 200,000 was hit just this week.  What a coincidence.  The clock is ticking.