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On November 4th, Ethereum (ETH) Lead Developers hit a significant milestone. In a “quick update” on the Ethereum Foundation blog, developer Danny Ryan confirmed the release of the v1.0 specification for the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 update, which includes the mainnet deposit agreement address. Anyone who wants to participate as a validator on the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet can now start depositing their minimum stake of 32 ETH.
Initial results looked promising, with 14,000 ETH (worth around $ 5 million) wagered in the first eight hours alone. However, the developers have set a minimum total stake of 524,288 ETH from 16,384 validators as a trigger for launching the mainnet, known as the beacon chain. The goal must be reached at least seven days before, so by November 24th. If this does not happen, the launch will take place seven days after reaching the minimum staking threshold.
Is the deadline of 1 December achievable?
At the time of writing, less than 20% of the total amount was staked. If staking continues at its current pace, the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet will launch not on December 1, but in the first weeks of 2021.
Obviously the participation rate could change. As November 24 approaches, growing anticipation could encourage more people to stake their ETH. Ben Edgington, the lead product owner at ConsenSys Quorum Protocol Engineering who advises on the development of Ethereum 2.0 in the ConsenSys organization, maintains a positive view on the December 1 launch date, telling Cointelegraph:
“I expect the pace of deposits will accelerate sharply as the cut-off date approaches. There is little benefit in betting early, so I think people are just taking their time. It’s hard to judge if there will be enough to push us further. the threshold in time, but I remain optimistic. If there is a delay in the genesis, I expect it to be short. “
The numbers show the potential is there, as the number of addresses with 32 ETH hit an all-time high of 126,852 in the hours following the news. This means that less than 13% of addresses must participate to reach the threshold.
On the other hand, those who bet will lock their tokens in a one-way contract until the current Ethereum mainnet joins the beacons chain. Nobody knows exactly when this will happen, although the current Ethereum 2.0 roadmap specifies that it will be in 2021.
Whether the chain of beacons is launched on December 1 or in the weeks thereafter, there will not necessarily be “big bangs” to be expected to launch. The role of the beacon chain is to protect transactions on fragment chains, which will not be available until late. The current mainnet Ethereum 1.0 will continue to function as it does now.
The road to sharding
So what are the next steps and when can Ethereum become fully scalable? The launch of the beacon chain is known as Phase 0 in the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap. The next significant developments are scheduled for 2021 and will involve the launch of 64 chains of fragments, which will operate under the proof-of-stake consensus validated by those who bet on ETH. However, in their initial state, fragment chains do not support smart contracts or user accounts.
Perhaps the most significant milestone for the current Ethereum 1.0 ecosystem will be Phase 1.5, when the Ethereum mainnet joins the beacons chain as a chain of fragments. This will mark Ethereum’s transition to full proof-of-stake consensus. Again, it should happen in 2021, but an exact date is not yet available.
Only when the final phase of Phase 2 arrives will it be possible to evaluate the full effect of the Ethereum 2.0 update on the scalability of the network. At this time, the fragments will be fully operational, supporting smart contracts and all types of transactions. However, this could take up to two years. On the roadmap, the Ethereum Foundation states: “Phase 2 is still in the research phase,” effectively confirming that development is not yet underway.
No solution to dominate them all
While all stages of the roadmap will be delivered within the next 18 months, which is a big “if”, it will be well beyond 2022 before the full scalable potential of Ethereum 2.0 is visible. However, rather than focusing on developing Ethereum 2.0 as an endgame, it’s worth taking a bird’s eye view of the evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem over the next few years.
Despite being criticized, tier two solutions still offer Ethereum’s best hope of scalability before the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet becomes fully operational. Vitalik Buterin himself also seems to prefer other second tier platforms as a current scaling solution.
This year, both Matic Network and OMG Network unveiled Level Two solutions based on variations of Plasma, which uses side chains to take the processing load off the Ethereum main chain.
However, while plasma has been the preferred scaling technology for a while, the focus for much of this year has been on rollups, a solution also approved by Vitalik Buterin. In addition, the Aztec privacy protocol has launched zero-knowledge rollup-based private smart contracts. Zero-knowledge rollups group transactions using zero-knowledge proofs to verify validity.
Another type of rollup, called an optimistic rollup, is also being developed by several projects. Optimistic rollups use game theory to avoid the need for the heavy computational load required by zk-Rollup. Erick De Moura, founder and CEO of Cartesi, explained to Cointelegraph how he believes rollups outperform plasma-based scaling solutions:
“Rollups solve a huge Plasma problem: data availability. With rollups, all transaction data is bundled or grouped and made available on Ethereum in a cheaper way than it would be for normal blockchain-based transactions. In addition, all the required computational workload is done off-chain, which significantly increases productivity and transaction cost efficiency. “
Cartesi is poised to launch its own optimistic rollup version on its testnet in early 2021. The launch will take place with a Linux-based infrastructure, effectively making a scalable version of Ethereum available to developers accustomed to mainstream standards.
A scalable ecosystem
It is worth pointing out that the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 will not undo the tier two platform development efforts that are currently attempting to address scalability. Instead, technologies like rollup or side chain will continue to help Ethereum 2.0 scale beyond its renewed capability once sharding is fully implemented.
So, buckle up and get ready for a long journey. Ethereum 2.0 may be ready for an initial launch, but it’s still just the first of many steps on the long road to scalability. The continued development of tier two solutions means there is a lot of company along the way.
