The total pledged amount is less than 20%, can the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet be launched as scheduled?

Editor's Note: This article comes fromCointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina), Author: HELEN PARTZ, reprinted with authorization by Odaily.

Editor's Note: This article comes from

Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)

, Author: HELEN PARTZ, reprinted with authorization by Odaily.

On November 4, Ethereum (ETH) core developers hit a major milestone. In a “quick update” on the Ethereum Foundation blog, developer Danny Ryan confirmed the release of the v1.0 specification for the much-anticipated ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which includes mainnet deposit contract addresses. Anyone who wants to participate as a validator on the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet can now start depositing 32 ETH to stake.

Initial results looked promising, with 14,000 ETH (worth around $5 million) staked in the first eight hours alone. However, when the amount of ETH pledged in the deposit contract reaches 524,288 ETH (that is, 16,384 verifiers participate in the pledge, and each verifier pledges 32 ETH), the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain mainnet (Ethereum 2.0 stage 0) will be officially launched on December 1st. This has to be reached at least 7 days in advance, so it has to be done by November 24th. If the goal is not met, Phase 0 will start 7 days after the minimum staking threshold has been reached.

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Can the minimum stake be reached on December 1st?

At the time of writing, less than 20% of the total has been staked. If staking continues at the current rate, the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet launch will not be on December 1st, but in the first few weeks of 2021.

“I expect the velocity of deposits to pick up considerably as the deadline approaches. There is little benefit in staking too early, so I think people are just playing for time. It’s hard to tell if there will be enough capital to get us to that threshold in time, but I'm still optimistic. If Genesis is delayed, I expect it to be short."

These numbers suggest potential, as the amount of ETH held in deposit contracts hit an all-time high of 126,852 in the hours of this post.

Stakers, on the other hand, will lock their tokens in a one-way contract until the current Ethereum mainnet joins the beacon chain. While the current Ethereum 2.0 roadmap states that it will happen in 2021, no one knows exactly when.

Whether the beacon chain launches on December 1st or within the next few weeks, there won’t necessarily be the expected “big bang.” The role of the beacon chain is to secure transactions on the shard chains, which are not available until later. The current Ethereum 1.0 mainnet will continue to function as it does now.

The road to sharding is long

So what are the next steps and when will Ethereum be fully scalable? On the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, the launch of the beacon chain is referred to as Phase 0. The next major development is planned for 2021 and will involve the launch of 64 shard chains that will be verified by ETH holders under a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. However, the shard chain will not support smart contracts and user accounts in its initial state.

Probably the most important milestone of the existing Ethereum 1.0 ecosystem is Phase 1.5, when the Ethereum mainnet joins the Beacon Chain as a shard chain. This will mark Ethereum’s full transition to proof-of-stake consensus. Again, it will take place in 2021, but there is no exact date yet.

Only when the final phase of Phase 2 arrives will it be possible to assess the full impact of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade on network scalability. Currently, sharding will be fully operational, supporting smart contracts and all transaction types. However, this can take up to two years. On the roadmap, the Ethereum Foundation notes that “Phase 2 is still in the research phase,” effectively confirming that development has not yet begun.

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Ethereum 2.0 cannot solve all problems

Even if all roadmap phases are completed within the next 18 months, the full scalability potential of Ethereum 2.0 will not be seen until 2022. However, rather than focusing on the development of Ethereum 2.0 as the ultimate goal, it is better to have a comprehensive understanding of the development of the Ethereum ecosystem in the next few years.

Despite some criticism, layer-two solutions still offer the best hope for ethereum scalability until the ethereum 2.0 mainnet is fully operational. Even Vitalik Buterin himself seems to be leaning toward other second-layer platforms as current scaling solutions.

But while Plasma has been the scaling technology of choice for some time, the focus for much of this year has been on rollups, a solution that Vitalik Buterin also endorses. Additionally, privacy protocol Aztec has launched private smart contracts based on ZK-Rollups. ZK-Rollups use zero-knowledge proofs to bundle transactions together to verify validity.

Several projects are also developing another type of rollups, called optimistic rollups. This uses game theory to avoid the massive computational load required by zk-Rollups. Cartesi founder and CEO Erick De Moura explained to Cointelegraph why he believes rollups perform better than Plasma-based scalable solutions:

"Rollups solve a huge problem inherent in Plasma - data availability. With rollups, all transaction data will be bundled or aggregated and made available on Ethereum in a way that is cheaper than regular blockchain-based transactions. Additionally , all computational loads are done off-chain, greatly improving throughput and transaction cost efficiency.”

Cartesi plans to launch its own optimistic rollups on its testnet in early 2021. The launch will come with a linux-based infrastructure, effectively making a scalable version of ethereum available to developers accustomed to mainstream standards.