Ethereum Upgrade Overview: What is the "Serenity" phase of Ethereum 2.0?
A quick primer on Ethereum: This is an application of blockchain technology that aims to make its use cases go beyond payments. Ethereum is a general-purpose blockchain, completely open source, open to the public, and has its own native digital currency ETH.
As a decentralized platform, Ethereum also has its own programming language Solidity, which programmers can use to create smart contracts. Smart contracts are code deconstructions that can be executed automatically when certain conditions are met, paving the way for decentralized applications (dApps) based on blockchain's inherent capabilities such as transparency, reliability, and immutability.
Ethereum has been revolutionary since its inception. During the ICO boom of 2017, it helped expand the digital currency ecosystem while working with entrepreneurs and developers to launch the latest and most innovative blockchain applications. But things were not all smooth sailing.
The current network faces many systemic problems in terms of scalability, security and transaction costs. That’s why the decentralized community that hosts ethereum set out to develop a roadmap to address these issues through a series of carefully planned upgrades spanning four distinct phases.
We are currently entering Tranquility, the final stage of a rigorous development programme. Before we get into Serenity, let's take a quick look back at some of the upgrades that have been implemented over the past few years.
Ethereum development phase
Each phase of the Ethereum development plan introduces more features and solves existing problems. Some of these steps include hard forks that change functionality through incompatibility.
March 2016 – "Homeland" phase (1,150,000 blocks)
The Canary contract was removed, and Ethereum core developers no longer have the authority to stop network activity. Added new Solidity code and introduced Mist ETH wallet.
July 2016 – DAO hard fork
This is an unplanned fork in response to the DAO attack event. At the time, $50 million worth of ETH was stolen due to a loophole in the DAO’s contract. This event led to a network split, and the birth of Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
October 2017 – Byzantium (block 4,370,000)
Block reward reduced from 5 ETH to 3 ETH.
February 2019 – "Constantinople" phase
State channels have been improved to provide better support for off-chain transactions. The block reward was further reduced to 2 ETH. Allows smart contracts to authenticate each other using only hashes. The hard fork also included other changes, fixing a security issue codenamed Petersburg.
October 2019 – Istanbul
Another hard fork of Ethereum, and the final upgrade before implementation, including more security fixes and incentives to transition from the proof-of-work algorithm to the proof-of-stake algorithm.
We now enter the final phase, the "serenity" phase of ETH 2.0.
The Connotation of ETH 2.0's "Quiet" Phase
ETH 2.0 is the general term for all updated stages starting from the "quiet" stage. The initial release of ETH 2.0 was originally planned for January 2020, but has since been delayed. The developers are now expecting a release in late July 2020 with "95% confidence".
The purpose of this stage is to make Ethereum more scalable, faster and more reliable. According to researcher Danny Ryan, the main goals of the "quiet" phase are to:
Security: Increase the participation of verifiers in total time and unit time.
Simplicity: Minimize complexity, even at the expense of some efficiency.
Lifespan: Preparing the network for a future in which quantum computing is available.
Resilience: Even if a large number of nodes go offline, the network should remain active.
Decentralization: Given the current dominance of ASIC validators, opening up more typical consumer laptops to participate in the validation process keeps the network decentralized.
Phase 0: Beacon Chain
Phase 0: Beacon Chain
After many delays, with the launch of the beacon chain, Ethereum finally switched to the POS consensus mechanism. Initially, the new chain will run side by side with the main proof-of-work ethereum blockchain in a simplified fashion, with no support for smart contracts or accounts. During this phase, a new asset called ETH2 will be created to reward transaction validators on the Beacon Chain. Initially, ETH2 cannot be withdrawn from the beacon chain.
Phase 1: Shard Chain
Sharding is a scalability technique that allows parallel transactions. This is designed to help transaction scaling by dividing the network into multiple shards, allowing the network to process multiple transactions simultaneously. This technique can lead to higher centralization as each shard can be validated by a small set of validators.
Phase 2: eWASM
Smart contracts require the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to automatically execute transactions. The EVM is like a globally decentralized computer, containing millions of executable objects, each with its own permanent data store. The current EVM processes transactions sequentially, but as PoS and sharding change, the EVM needs to be updated with new features to support smart contracts, accounts, and state.
The upgraded EVM is called eWASM, short for Ethereum WebAssembly, which refers to an open standard that defines a portable binary code format for executable programs.
Phase 3: Continuous Improvement
The last phase is currently open-ended, as it will contain all future changes and fixes for the previous phases. Like a piece of software, it has no final version, there are always areas for improvement and correction.
