The industry desperately needs Ethereum 2.0, but it will be at least 2 years before it is "available"

You may be familiar with the name Ethereum 2.0. Ethereum has an important position in the blockchain community, and Ethereum 2.0 will directly affect the future of Ethereum and even the blockchain.

The Ethereum community is bustling, almost no blockchain community can match it; the vast majority of tokens and smart contracts run on Ethereum, and for most developers and companies in the blockchain field, Ethereum Fang is also their first choice. However, the current state of Ethereum is still far from its ambition. In other words, the expected ecology of Ethereum has not yet officially appeared. In the final stage of Serenity (serenity, which means wisdom), Ethereum will officially convert to the PoS consensus mechanism, showing its final appearance.

The road to tranquility, however, is a long one.

In practice, the transition from Ethereum 1.0 to the final Serenity phase involved a series of planned hard forks. However, the process was time-consuming and labor-intensive due to the complexity exceeding expectations. The community uses "Ethereum 2.0" to describe the goals and ways to achieve it.

Ethereum 2.0, or ETH 2.0, you should have seen this term in many blockchain media. There are hundreds of articles mentioning Ethereum 2.0. But there are not many satisfactory articles: some articles are too simple and general to provide specific information; others are too professional and detailed to be difficult to read.

I hope to use this article to describe Ethereum 2.0 clearly. It is worth reminding that this article contains the current understanding of Ethereum 2.0, and this information may be updated at any time.

The first reason is: the current speed of Ethereum is too slow. Many complex applications are very expensive to scale. Compare Visa's credit card processing capabilities: Visa can process thousands of transactions per second, while Ethereum can only process 15 transactions per second. The reason why Ethereum is slow is because it is a decentralized architecture, and it needs to continue to be decentralized.

So how to improve?

One possible idea is through the way of super nodes: users can rely on super nodes, that is, "consensus nodes". Consensus nodes have servers powerful enough to process all transactions. This solution is simple enough to keep the blockchain as it is, and all that needs to be done is to increase the concurrent processing of the client machine.

However, ethereum developers rejected this option, mainly because they feared that it would damage the decentralization of the blockchain and damage its ability to resist censorship.

We have long been familiar with the thesis of the impossible triangle of the blockchain: decentralization, scalability and security, we can only choose two of the three, and we cannot take care of all three. How to break the impossible triangle is what all "second-generation blockchain" projects want to try. For example, IOTA claims to be able to solve this trilemma. Most solutions, including Ethereum 2.0, try to replace the PoW mining mechanism with other consensus mechanisms.

Therefore, the original design of Ethereum was more or less seen as a failure. According to Chromatic Capital, Ethereum 2.0 is "a completely different project, adopting a 0-to-1 paradigm, like a blockchain's secondary chain."

Ethereum 2.0 is not just an upgrade to the original version, but a complete overhaul of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum 2.0 is designed to make Ethereum more secure, expand processing power enough to handle thousands of transactions, and increase programmability. More critically, these improvements will not harm the decentralization of Ethereum.

How does Ethereum 2.0 intend to solve this problem?

Fragmentation

• Fragmentation

• PoS Proof of Interest Consensus Mechanism

• new virtual machine

Fragmentation

Sharding is a technical means of cutting databases across multiple servers, in other words, partitioning them. Just like a computer has multiple partitions on the same hard drive, it is also possible to split the blockchain into several parts without compromising data consistency. Fragmentation (Shard) has the same security as the entire system, and there will be no risk due to sharding.

Proof of Stake

Under the PoS consensus mechanism, miners are no longer required to create blocks. In Ethereum 2.0, pledge verifiers (Stakers) will assume the responsibility of producing blocks: these nodes need to pledge a certain amount of ETH. Compared with the PoW consensus mechanism, the PoS method not only saves energy, but also improves transaction speed, and also makes the distribution of pledge validators on the blockchain more decentralized.

Over the years, ethereum's blockchain developers have been working on implementing a unique consensus mechanism that can ensure transactions are completed quickly while ensuring that participants abide by the rules. With the help of the PoS proof-of-interest mechanism, Ethereum transactions can be completed within a few seconds and can resist 51% attacks.

new virtual machine design

With the new virtual machine design, developers can create their own execution environments. This allows rules from other blockchains to be introduced on the shard. For example, developers can introduce the rules of BTC or Zcash to Ethereum. Therefore, Ethereum can become a common framework for use by different blockchains.

It has to be said that each of the three goals of sharding, PoS consensus mechanism, and new virtual machine is a very ambitious idea. So far, the blockchain sharding function has not been realized, and many wise thinkers in the community are also debating whether the PoS consensus mechanism is really effective.

Ethereum personnel are working on solving multiple challenges of blockchain development, working to create a suitable architecture, breaking through the constraints and compromises faced by existing blockchain development, and making these problems a thing of the past.

Phase 0: Beacon Chain

The beacon chain is the core of Ethereum 2.0. In the initial stage after the launch of this new blockchain, it can coordinate the operation of up to 64 shard chains. The beacon chain is the "command and control center" of the entire Ethereum 2.0 network.

The Beacon Chain manages the "Caspar Proof of Stake" protocol, which records pledged witnesses (Staker/Validator) and their pledged tokens, and randomly selects pledged validators, and also assigns shard chains to verifier. The beacon chain will adopt consensus rules, sanction dishonest staking validators, and act as a link hub between different shards.

Validators in Ethereum 2.0 vote through a proof-of-stake mechanism, using the tokens they hold to vote on structures called "certificates". Once the shard chain gets enough "credentials", it gets a crosslink relationship on the beacon chain. From this moment on, the block acquires final stability and cannot be revoked or tampered with anymore. On shard chains, blocks gain the same security as blocks on the main chain, the beacon chain. This process seems to remind us of Ripple's consensus mechanism and IOTA's plan: let nodes on the network vote on blocks in a certain way.

Pledge validators are rewarded for their labor: they are rewarded with ETH2, the native token of the beacon chain. In the long run, ETH2 will replace ETH tokens, and there is no limit on the total amount of ETH2 tokens. In this way, tokens are allocated to validators who maintain the operation of the blockchain, bringing long-term security guarantees to the blockchain.

The beacon chain is scheduled to go live in the second or third quarter of 2020. This will start Phase 0 of the transition to ETH2. Users can run a beacon chain client and pay ETH (now called ETH1) to the beacon chain, where it will be switched to ETH2. This is a one-way exchange method, and ETH1 will be destroyed.

Therefore, if Phase 0 is successful, there will be two Ethereum blockchains: Ethereum 1.0 and Ethereum 2.0, or ETH1 and ETH2 as they are called. For users, Ethereum 2.0 does not make any sense at this time, because there is no shard chain that can be linked to the beacon chain.

At this stage, the beacon chain is still a skeleton without a body, or you can think of it as the keel of a big ship, the bracket of a house.

Phase 1: Shard Chain

Around 2021, the first batch of shard chains will be launched and put into use.

These shards will initially store data in raw form. They cannot process data according to certain consensus rules, and they cannot even display the account balance of users or addresses. They are only used as experiments to test the effect of sharding, but it is also possible to use these shards to store data and help DApps better to expand.

The focus of Phase 1 will revolve around the beacon chain. At this stage, the beacon chain begins to reference the state of the shards through crossLinks, thereby achieving state finality.

We can think of the beacon chain as a blockchain: other blockchains will connect to this beacon chain and rotate around the beacon chain. At this stage, these shard chains do not yet have much practical functionality.

Building and running a new PoS consensus mechanism and setting up a blockchain as the control center of various data chains is a huge challenge. To get Ethereum 1.0 to this stage, there are still hundreds of details to be discussed, and countless updates, large and small, to be implemented. But for Phase 1, that's all we need to know for now.

At this stage, the Ethereum 1.0 and Ethereum 2.0 blockchains will continue to operate in parallel. Things get really exciting and more interesting from the second stage onwards.

Phase 2 : Realizing the vision

According to the roadmap, the next phase will "realize the true vision of ethereum 2.0": having shard chains that will be able to process transactions.

From this stage, the Ethereum 2.0 network should be ready for use in real applications. In the follow-up process of the project, the smart contract will also be activated on the shard chain.

Then the execution environment provided by the new virtual machine mentioned above also comes into effect, which allows the activation of its own rules on the shard. For example simulating other blockchains like Bitcoin, Zcash or Ethereum 1.0.

Just as Ethereum 1.0 realized smart contracts on the blockchain by abstracting Bitcoin, Ethereum 2.0 will also abstract Ethereum 1.0 and redefine the basic nature of blockchain computing.

Phase 2 combines the functionality of all chains. In Phase 1, shard chains were pure data storage, and are now becoming structured chains that link the state of smart contracts to the consensus process as well.

Developers can create their DApps on a certain shard, and Ethereum becomes a multi-chain system controlled by the beacon chain.

Phase two is expected to be completed in late 2021 or early 2022. According to the roadmap, many parts, such as the conceptualization of the execution environment, "are still under intensive research and development."

Phases 3 - 6

According to the plan, Ethereum 2.0 will be launched in 6 stages. However according to the roadmap, from phase 3 onwards any kind of prediction is speculation as changes are likely to occur. At some point during these phases, Ethereum 1.0 may gradually die out due to unattended participation. Of course, if it goes according to plan, or when Ethereum 2.0 replaces the original Ethereum 1.0 blockchain, all users and Ethereum tokens can be migrated to the new blockchain. However, all this has not yet been decided.

These stages are described in an open way in Ethereum’s Github repository:

However, more specific information about these stages is still missing, and there are only some highly abstract papers or snippets from online seminars.

What is the specific form of Ethereum 2.0? So far, it has not been clearly defined. Therefore, it is expected that the quiet stage of Ethereum may take some time - such as 4-5 years, or even longer to complete.

Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent opinion, and does not represent the position of the Blockchain Institute (public account), nor does it constitute any investment opinion or suggestion.

original:https://medium.com/

Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent opinion, and does not represent the position of the Blockchain Institute (public account), nor does it constitute any investment opinion or suggestion.