ETH 2.0 Release Draws Near as Vitalik Submits Phase 0 EIP
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and core dev/researcher Danny Ryan had submitted a formal proposal detailing the various implementations in the much-awaited network upgrade, ETH 2.0, according to a September 16 tweet by ETHBoston co-organizer Justin Leroux.
Phase 0 to Launch Before the end of 2020
Two months after deploying the Medalla testnet, Buterin and Ryan had unitedly submitted an EIP that details the new implementations under Phase 0. After approval, we will witness the rollout of the Beacon Chain, a new PoS-based blockchain that will run alongside the old PoW chain.
It needs to be noted that most of the functionalities of ETH 2.0 will not be available yet, including staking and sharding. Phase 0 will serve as a genesis release which would initially set up the network’s PoS system.
The Ethereum team may have had a bad rep because of all its delayed protocol upgrades in the past, but this time they are confident that at the very least, the first iteration will be ready for release within the year. Even Ethereum developer Justin Drake, who had initial doubts on Serenity’s release timeline, appeared to have changed his mind and is working at full steam to make sure the iteration is released on time.
The Promise of ETH 2.0
The concept of ETH 2.0 has been shared with the world since the day Buterin published Ethereum’s whitepaper in 2013. It’s been more than seven years since then and so much of the software has evolved, yet the fundamentals of the project remain the same. The plan has always been to use a PoW chain to bootstrap the PoS chain and work side by side with it.
Eventually, the PoS chain will dominate the system while the PoW mechanism will either disappear or remain as a non-dominant blockchain within the network.
The Ethereum team and Foundation believe that the network will ultimately be able to handle over 100,000 tps (transactions per second) sometime after the Phase 2 rollout. Once this is deployed, Ethereum dApps will be able to run (in theory) at exponential speeds while gas fees would dramatically drop thanks to the network’s immense throughput.
