How is the development of Ethereum 2.0 promoted by V God?

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The achievements of Ethereum 2.0 may be unique, but in the research and development work of 8+ researchers and 50+ developers urgently, the challenges faced are common. With stronger coordination, standardized processes, a well-communicated shared roadmap, and stable funding, the schedule for Ethereum 2.0 to be productive will be accelerated and aligned with the expectations of the Ethereum community.

The research and development work related to Ethereum 2.0 is advancing rapidly, and it plans to release the beacon chain (beacon chain) test network in March this year. However, a series of coordination issues have slowed its progress and realization. In this paper, we summarize related issues and propose solutions that can help address them.

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• General overview

• "Ethereum 2.0" refers to a set of specifications that can significantly improve the performance of the Ethereum blockchain. As of this writing, it does so by combining and improving two earlier proposed specifications: "Casper" , which introduces a PoS mechanism for Ethereum; and "sharding", which divides transactions into several "slices" that are secured by the main chain. These "specifications" bring the following benefits to Ethereum users:

The PoS mechanism eliminates the need to invest in equipment and consume electricity to secure the blockchain. In turn, it improves the ultimate properties of Ethereum by significantly increasing the cost of 51% attacks and reducing the need to rely on mining for security.

Sharding improves the TPS of the Ethereum network.

To clarify the current state of Ethereum 2.0, we interviewed those working on researching and implementing it.

• Nimbus 

• Lodestar 

• Artemis 

• Lighthouse 

• Prysm 

interview method

• We interviewed the following implementation teams via video call:

• Each implementation team was asked questions about:

• team status;

• development status;

• route map;

• Issue considerations;

• dependent factors;

Suggest ways to improve.

We also had a phone interview with Danny Ryan, one of the core researchers at the Ethereum Foundation.

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Industry observations & possible outcomes of Ethereum 2.0

Now, we present the interview results as follows.

The implementation team is very committed, but the financing situation is not optimistic

We asked each team how likely they were to give up and under what circumstances they would give up on development. All the implementation teams we talked to expressed their willingness to devote themselves to Ethereum 2.0 and witness its arrival as long as the funds are sufficient to support their continuous development. First, the implementation team cares deeply about the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 and is happy to remove the obstacles it faces. Specifically, when these teams were asked what they would need to give up on Ethereum 2.0 development, we received responses such as "We'd be dead before giving up" and "Whatever No matter what, we will not give up development." However, their enthusiasm is not enough to offset the reality of the market. If the Ethereum Foundation's funding dries up, or if the larger entities that support them (such as ConsenSys or Status) withdraw their funding, those teams may be forced to find another way.

The R&D specification (Spec) is still confusing, but it is being improved

The development specification of Ethereum 2.0 has experienced a lot of chaos in the past year. According to one interviewee, the norm "has completely changed since the middle of last year" and it is undergoing ongoing, normalized "surgery" as issues are identified and addressed by the research team.[ Translator's Note: This refers to the fickleness of the research and development specifications of Ethereum 2.0]. Every aspect of the specification will change. For example, the naming of important data structures has been "emergently" changed recently, that is, researchers need to change the individual names and their corresponding data structures in their minds, and change the corresponding specifications accordingly, but the implementation team has not Consider the impact such a change would have on the realization of Ethereum 2.0. Taking issue #358 as an example, 35 fields were renamed, but the Github discussion board did not receive any feedback from the implementor. This forced implementation teams to redo work on the spec changes they contributed to - causing a lot of disappointment, wasted time, and in some cases reduced resources allocated to the Ethereum 2.0 project.

The past few weeks have seen several promising developments in reducing the confusion surrounding R&D norms. First, according to the research team, there is currently an effort to divide the specific areas of the development specification to clarify which specifications are stable enough for the implementation team and which specifications are still under active development. Second, the research team believes that "changes (in R&D norms) are slowing down" and that "deep reorgs" are now rare. At the same time, a cultural shift is taking place in Ethereum 2.0 development: the impact of a development specification change on the implementation team is now considered part of the new specification proposal. As a result of these developments, the implementation team has agreed that the specification in its current state is implementable.

The implementation team does not say No to the researchers

Most implementation teams don't veto researchers. They gave two reasons: they either did not feel qualified to veto researchers, or they felt that the chances of a successful veto were too small to make it worthwhile. These feelings are reinforced by the way the researchers describe their changes to the Ethereum 2.0 specification: These changes are often described as "clearly better" and "hard to veto"—especially when considering the qualifications of those proposing these changes . It is true that some R&D specifications can only be determined by a small group of people, but this "research exclusivity" ("research exclusivity") currently extends to all R&D specifications and the entire implementation plan of Ethereum 2.0.

Different teams' definitions of Ethereum 2.0 completion

All the Implementers we spoke to are working on a testnet that launches in March. What this testnet looks like, and what will happen after that - different teams have very different opinions. For example, because the peer protocol specification has not been fully accepted, it is impossible to have a testnet supporting interoperability between nodes at the time of release. Some teams made interoperability between nodes a goal of a testnet launch, while others did not. As such, it is difficult to give a clear picture of what will be included in the testnet launch in March.

Things got murkier after the testnet. No team can predict when Phase 2 — the complete Ethereum 2.0 specification including cross shards and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — will be ready (to the point that it will lead to a mainnet launch). Because some teams have received dedicated sponsorship funds to develop the beacon chain, implementation teams may need additional funds to complete the development of related specifications.

In the end, only one of the teams we interviewed had user adoption as one of their goals (specifically, having "100 staked validators using their software"). Other teams focus on the specification they are working on.

Implementers are unclear about what will happen after Ethereum 2.0

Many teams expressed concerns about their respective careers after successfully reaching Ethereum 2.0. No team has a clear answer on how to monetize after deploying Ethereum 2.0, so continued access to financing to keep it alive (especially if the price of Ethereum continues to decline) is one of the main concerns for these teams.

Ethereum 2.0 lacks a leader

From an organizational perspective, no one person is responsible for ensuring that the development of Ethereum 2.0 is closely related to the Ethereum community. Danny Lane fills that role in part. He sees himself as a bridge between the implementation team and the research team, and his efforts are highly appreciated. The implementation team, however, had varying degrees of exposure to Danny - some teams said they wished they had more access to Danny.

• The narrative of Ethereum 2.0 is controlled by people outside the development process

• Consider James Prestwich's popular article "What Can We Expect When Ethereum Developers Expect It" which contains assertions like this:

• "The tools and contracts we wrote for Ethereum 1X may need to be redesigned and written for ETH 2.0."

• "Phase 1 is nothing interesting. It's basically a bootstrapping phase for crosslinking and symmetry mechanisms for shards to refer to the beacon chain. The designers seem confident that these mechanisms will work."

• “Interestingly, the deployment of Phase 0 took place at the same time as the deployment of the R&D specification. Even with less than three months before the testnet launch, the R&D specification of Phase 0 changed frequently. This means that the development of the future Ethereum 2.0 phase Timing will also change frequently. While optimists tell me it will only take 6 months, it is easy to see Phase 1 development taking 12-18 months after Phase 0 enters beta.”

“We have very little information about the model of Ethereum 2.0. We know that it cannot call cross-shard contracts without sacrificing scaling. If you stop reading here, I don’t blame you, because Phase 4 has only one route in mind Figure and some ambiguous links. One obvious consequence is that Ethereum 2.0 will not provide meaningful scaling benefits to complex smart contracts until Phase 4. Until then, contracts wishing to interoperate with other chip coexistence and is limited by its speed and scalability."

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• These are the specifics of how developers can expect to take advantage of Ethereum 2.0. The article also contains a lot of detail about developing the specification, but as an ethereum developer, the most pertinent information is how the specification will affect your work and when scalability improvements can be expected. In contrast to the media created by the implementation team and the Ethereum Foundation, they tend to focus on the new research progress of the R&D specification and the completion of some specific parts. Check out the summary of Development Update #20 written by Prysmatic below.

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• Responsibilities of Phase 0 Validator Clients

• Merge code, make pull requests and issues

• Complete E2E testing of state transition block processing

• Complete State Transition Epoch Processing Consolidation/Integration

Implement a deposit listener implementation for the validator deposit contract

• Implementer Validator Deposit Retrieval

• The next job

• Ghost Fork Selection Rules for the Ethereum Beacon Chain

• Full end-to-end testing of the beacon chain with validator deposits

• Delegate our Solidity contract to Vyper

• Create a transaction pool for the beacon chain

Misc

• Refactor validator client

• Authenticator private key management and other secrets

Ethereum 2.0 Implementers Conference Call January 17, 2019

The factors that will affect the "narrative" of ethereum - such as when it will be achieved, when it will be used, and how developers can use it - are presented more by Prestwich than Prysmatic's article , because the former information is more directly related to the daily work of Ethereum users. We applaud the efforts of the Ethereum 2.0 team to promote transparency in the development process and want to focus on technical content. However, without additional clarification from people on the research and implementation teams about when Ethereum 2.0 will be ready and what it will be, the Ethereum narrative will continue to be controlled by outsiders. This will make it difficult for correct expectations to be established and survived.

Side note: A conversation with members of the Ethereum community led us to a high-level outline of the Ethereum roadmap produced by EthHub. The official sharding roadmap document, although instructive, is not very helpful to developers who want to know what the specifications of each stage mean to them.

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open question

• What does the community expect?

• At the moment, here’s what to expect around when Ethereum 2.0 will be released and what it will look like:

• Ethereum 2.0 is coming and will soon be available to the public

Ethereum 2.0's testnet will start in March

• Ethereum 2.0 Will Solve Ethereum's Major Scalability Problems

• Based on our interviews with Ethereum 2.0 research and implementation teams, it will take at least a year and a half for dApp developers to actually use Ethereum 2.0. From our understanding, the deliverables at each stage are as follows:

• Phase 0:. Beacon Chain

Phase 1: Sharding without virtual machines

Phase 2: On-chip and cross-chip virtual machine communication (EVM Communications)

For developers, if they want to achieve the same level of utility in Ethereum 2.0 as in Ethereum 1.0, phase 2 must be released.

Further, the release of phases after Ethereum 2.0 may invalidate new research, or reshape its roadmap. It is unclear whether the entire Ethereum community is aware of this. The discrepancy between what the community expected and what was actually released could materially hurt the utility of its deployment—reinforcing the argument that Ethereum cannot scale and, in turn, driving new developers to other blockchain platforms.

Were implementors consulted when the design was rolled out?

We don’t yet know how much implementor input, and what input, went into decisions at each phase of Ethereum 2.0. While we understand the value of phased deployments - e.g., it gives new technologies like PoS time to "burn" in a quasi-environment In the case of the project itself, trial and error] - but the project should still adhere to the logic that the people responsible for implementing each phase of the project should be those most qualified to design them first. This includes: a schedule for when a certain technology will be introduced, and an implementation schedule for each stage. If implementors have not been consulted in the past, is the beacon chain launch a good time to bring in implementors and involve them in the process?

Does making Danny Lane the official "Ethereum 2.0 leader" help the realization of Ethereum 2.0?

• Many of Ethereum's unsatisfactory aspects stem from a lack of coordination between the research and implementation teams. The agreement contained a myriad of different elements that needed to be integrated as part of a plan that spanned several years. No one intervened to oversee the integration until Danny Lane assumed the role of coordinator. Danny has long since proven his worth as a leader. His name came up repeatedly among the interviewers - as someone the latter wanted to see more of, and his work on an early version of the R&D specification showed that he was knowledgeable enough as a researcher to oversee the project .

• It is important to be clear about what "leadership" means in this context. We use "leadership" to mean a person who:

• Responsible for ensuring the landing of Ethereum 2.0

• Accessible to all implementation teams and researchers

Have delegated authority to ensure the right people are doing the right thing

Obviously this is a centralized control. However, that doesn't seem to be a bad thing considering its role gives Danny himself the status of official lead, likely to ensure the smooth integration of the entire project.

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Suggest ways to improve

• Including "Product Context" in Public-Facing Media

• Given the importance of Ethereum 2.0 to the success of the Ethereum network, it is paramount to clearly communicate what will be released, when it will be released, and how to prepare for it. In order to make the media content produced by the Ethereum 2.0 team and researchers more relevant to the community, and to regain control of the Ethereum 2.0 narrative, we propose a new public article that clearly articulates the following:

• How the latest update will affect developers

How roadmap changes might affect the Ethereum 2.0 timeline

Where confusion can arise in research and products

Provide a clear path for ongoing financing

We believe that motivating teams to engage in long-term, ongoing development of the Ethereum 2.0 client is critical to its successful launch. But the source of ongoing financing is murky and fraught. If the Ethereum Foundation or other stakeholders join forces to bring funds together and provide a clear funding amount and timeline, this will eliminate the worries surrounding Ethereum 2.0 after its release-how client projects continue to finance and develop new features.

• Strictly define and enforce formal standard procedures

• The inherent coordination problems of implementing norms are further exacerbated by the absence of a formal standardization process. By developing and publishing specifications, the Ethereum Foundation can act as the de facto standard-setting body for Ethereum 2.0. Thus, defining a standard procedure for moving a study from the proposal stage to the formal implementation stage can further reduce the confusion surrounding the specification. There are many examples of standards that can be considered by the Ethereum Foundation, but we recommend a variant version of the ECMA TC39 standard procedure. Our reasons are as follows:

• The program of TC39 is open and absorbs modern development practices, such as submitting requests on Github, which developers are already familiar with.

• TC39 programs incorporate acceptance tests and reference implementations into the program itself.

• TC39 procedures are easier to understand

The program supports adding new standards at a fixed pace

We recommend that the development of Ethereum 2.0 at least introduce the concept of "stages" in TC39. For those unfamiliar with the TC39 proposal, it progresses from Phase 0 (Scarecrow) to Phase 4 (Completion) and is then approved as a new standard at the TC39 Members Annual Meeting. The purpose of dividing proposals into stages is to make the process for a proposal to be successfully published extremely clear. Further, since test vectors and reference implementations are required from one phase to another, much dialogue is encouraged between researchers and implementers. Although an implementer may not be qualified to comment on the specifics of an algorithm, they may be qualified to comment on how the algorithm is implemented. Under the TC39 program, both research and implementation processes will be required to transition from Phase 3 to Phase 4.

in conclusion

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in conclusion

The achievements of Ethereum 2.0 may be unique, but in the research and development work of 8+ researchers and 50+ developers urgently, the challenges faced are common. With stronger coordination, standardized processes, a well-communicated shared roadmap, and stable funding, the schedule for Ethereum 2.0 to be productive will be accelerated and aligned with the expectations of the Ethereum community.

We have already witnessed the beginning of this accelerated process. In December last year, Vitalik rewarded Prysmatic, Lighthouse and Lodestar teams with 1000 ETH. Another contacted Ethereum investor followed Vitalik and gave Prymatic 2,800 ETH to help Preston Van Loon leave Google and devote himself to the development of Ethereum 2.0 full-time. We expect better results. We are all in Ethereum 2.0 together.

The value of the authoring team of this article to Ethereum 2.0

This article was mainly completed by Matt Slipper and Dan Tsui of Kyokan, Moloch DAO and Ameen Soleimani personally provided financial support for the research work of this article.

Kyokan is a blockchain "native" software consulting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the past, we have worked with MetaMask, SpankChain, Cosmos, Dfinity, and Uniswap. In addition, we have also received sponsorship from the Ethereum Foundation to build and implement Plasma MVP, which is preparing for the mainnet launch. Our team members have extensive experience in providing technical and software services to outstanding customers and enterprises.

• Moloch is a grant-driven DAO/guild and a radical experiment in voluntary incentive alignment to overcome the tragedy of the commons. Specifically, our goal is to accelerate the development of Ethereum's public infrastructure, which many teams need but are unwilling to spend money on. By pooling our Ethereum and ERC20 tokens, Ethereum investors and Ethereum-based teams can co-fund open source work that we believe is in our mutual interest.

• With funding from parties such as Moloch, Kyokan will support the ETH 2.0 project in the following ways:

• Produce reports and analysis like this article to inform the community about the progress of Ethereum 2.0

• Evaluate the effectiveness of R&D progress within Ethereum 2.0

• Organizational structure to help develop needs

• Help harmonize standards across teams

• Help plan the development roadmap

Provide coordination assistance for product launches and prepare clients for product launches

• Help with developer recruitment

• Moloch is committed to supporting Ethereum 2.0 by:

• Additional Funding Support for Ethereum 2.0