Ethereum 2.0 is in full swing, and its online performance has increased by 500 times, or will it greatly transform the social economy?
There is no doubt that ETH2.0 is one of the biggest events in the blockchain industry in the next 3 years.
We can make the assumption that if ETH2.0 can be launched in 2017, is it necessary for EOS, Tezos, and Tron to exist? If ETH2.0 can start to implement development in 2015, cross-chain projects such as Polkadot and Cosmos will not even appear.
But, sorry, ETH2.0 not only failed to come earlier, but has been delayed again and again. Even the phase 0 beacon chain, which was originally scheduled to go live in Q3 this year, was dragged to Q4. It can be said that the current structure of the currency circle is "blocked" by ETH.
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ETH1.5, performance increased by 500 times!
The development of Ethereum is divided into four phases: Frontier Phase, Homestead Phase, Metropolis Phase, and Serenity Phase. The last Serenity Phase is what ETH2.0 is going through. This phase is divided into three steps of 0/1/2 and is currently in Phase 0.
Once ETH2.0 is actually launched, at the technical level, ETH2.0 has three most important upgrades, namely: 1) Casper consensus; 2) sharding; 3) eWASM virtual machine.
These three technical upgrades allow the Ethereum network to achieve high performance and scalability at a low cost.
In October, when Vitalik Buterin shared the details of the new Ethereum roadmap, Vitalik emphasized that the new Ethereum expansion strategy will move the blockchain ecology to rollups, Plasma, and state channels. In the ETH1.5 stage, the tps of Ethereum will be able to reach 100,000.
What does it mean for tps to reach 100,000?
At present, the processing speed of ETH1.0 is about 15 to 25. Assuming that the middle 20 is taken, it means that the tps will be increased by 500 times. This will completely solve the problem of insufficient performance of Ethereum, and the era when CryptoKitties blocked Ethereum will be gone forever.
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Phase 0 development status
The beacon chain is the 0th phase of ETH2.0. The English name is Beacon Chain, Beacon, which means lighthouse and signal buoy, is the core and backbone of the ETH2.0 system.
From a functional point of view, the beacon chain provides ETH with a new proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism. On the one hand, it solves the consensus problem. On the other hand, the beacon chain is like the trunk of a tree. After ETH2.0 is fully launched in the future, The shard chain will be like a branch, growing firmly on the trunk to absorb nutrients.
From the perspective of development progress, the current ETH2.0 beacon chain development is divided into multiple test networks, including but not limited to Medalla, Spadina, Tapoz, Schlesi, Witti, etc., and is currently in the intense development stage.
However, the testnet development process was not smooth.
The Medalla version test network of ETH2.0, which was launched in early August, has been running for nearly two months, although serious problems were found during the period."clock bug", leading to but eventually being repaired, the number of ETH pledged on Medalla has already reached the million level.
The simple understanding of the clock bug is that the time system on the testnet is confused.
In the early hours of August 16, Beijing time, a clock bug occurred on the ETH 2.0 Medalla test network, and advanced Slot blocks and certificates were successively received. The roughtime acquisition clock in the client Prysm, which accounts for more than 64% of the entire network, was advanced by 4 hours, causing the node to calculate the Slot error, causing all prysm nodes to be paralyzed, and the remaining 30% of the clients could hardly reach a consensus on the entire network.
Later, this problem was remedied by updating the node method.
After the incident, V God even said in an interview on August 18 that from a technical point of view, the implementation of ETH 2.0 is much more difficult than expected.
In this regard, network security engineer Chase Wright released after a clock bug appeared on the Medalla test network, saying that if a similar bug occurs on the main network, the consequences may be disastrous.
Take the Spadina testnet again as an example.
After the ETH2.0 testnet Spadina launched on September 29th, users reported receiving a large number of errors, many of which were user-related technical glitches, such as not setting the correct flags for Spadina (the name of the ETH 2.0 testnet).
Also, Infura has bugs and issues. According to one participant, the chaos on the testnet appears to have resulted in some blocks being orphaned and the database needing to be purged. In addition, the current testnet participation rate is still very low, far below the 67% requirement, with only about 40% participation rate.
However, this will not be an obstacle to the launch of the beacon chain.
On October 19, ETH 2.0 developer Ben Edgington said that the 1.0.0 version candidate version 0 of the beacon chain Beacon Chain has been released, which contains many improvements and configuration adjustments. The Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature scheme has also been upgraded to enhance the resistance to denial-of-service attacks. The "genesis" of Beacon Chain may be launched in 6-8 weeks.
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ETH2.0, bringing the biggest socio-economic change?
At the end of August this year, a Weibo user asked Dovey Wan, the founding partner of Primitive Ventures, whether the Staking economy will be hindered after ETH turns to ETH2.0.
In this regard, Dovey Wan believes that the economic incentive design of ETH2 staking has been criticized by many people. The earliest inflation ratio was equivalent to charity, and the EOS DPoS governance was also a chicken feather.
In addition, Dovey Wan believes that POS is "proof of capital volume", so the cost of capital is calculable. "Cost = investment opportunity cost of funds in other places (such as lending) + a floating strike price backward option (which can be simply understood as volatility income, the greater the volatility, the higher the income). Therefore, if you continue to have high income without loss of principal If you don’t, your opportunity cost of funds will be higher, and you won’t lock up ETH for staking.”
As for the confusion of the ETH2.0 launch date, Mati, the founder of Quantum Economics, believes that this is not a big problem.
In May of this year, regarding the confusion about the launch date of ETH2.0, Mati said that the confusion about the release date of ETH2.0 is not a big problem. Judging only by the price action, Vitalik's statement does not seem to have that much impact. All startups have a tendency to push dates and delay, especially when rolling out major upgrades.
In addition, Mati also pointed out that Ethereum is the third largest position in his crypto portfolio. He said, "Everything that happens in DeFi is very exciting, and I am optimistic."
In May of this year, cryptocurrency venture capitalist Adam Cochran (Adam Cochran) tweeted that the introduction of such an upgrade would almost certainly limit supply while increasing demand, leading to price increases.
Cochrane believes that in ETH2.0, Ethereum will use staking (Staking) to replace the current proof-of-work (mining) model, which will significantly reduce the supply inflation rate of ETH by more than 50%.
At the same time, fundamental demand for ETH is also increasing, and Cochran expects demand for ETH in the form of gas to increase as ETH 2.0 makes the blockchain faster and more adaptable. Cochran said that with the release of ETH 2.0, we will see ETH improve its tps, thereby improving its commercial and consumer viability. Even in a market with high-frequency applications, problems such as network congestion, high gas, and slow operation in DApps will disappear.
Cochran even believes that ETH2.0 is likely to bring about the "biggest socioeconomic shift."
