V God Announces Ethereum 2.0's Next 5-10 Year Roadmap, What Does ETH2.0 Mean?

On March 19th, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted several consecutive tweets expressing his views on the development of ETH2.0 in the next 5-10 years and beyond

On March 19th, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted several consecutive tweets expressing his views on the development of ETH2.0 in the next 5-10 years and beyond. As new information or technologies are discovered, details may change.

VitalikButerin stated that in the past two years, the Ethereum team has shifted from the "bluesky" research phase (attempting to understand what is possible) to specific research and development. The team has a better understanding of the functions and limitations of proof of rights, as well as the security model of shards. Technologies such as zk snake, which used to seem unreachable, are now becoming increasingly practical.

In addition, maintaining compatibility and ensuring a smooth transition of Ethereum has been a growing trend over the past two years. At present, relevant research is still ongoing, and there will only be more complex things in the future than this upgrade. But at the same time, VitalikButerin stated that many changes are actually being made in the direction of reducing complexity.

Ethereum 2.0 is a word that people often hear. Ethereum is the world's second largest public chain and is considered crucial for the future development of blockchain. However, it is not so easy to accurately explain it clearly. Nevertheless, in this article, I will try my best to explain it clearly.

It is difficult to have a public chain that can accomplish so many things like in Ethereum. It is the location of the vast majority of tokens and smart contracts, and it is the most attractive blockchain for developers and companies. However, Ethereum has not yet officially achieved its true expected appearance. It takes a lot of process to reach the "Serenity" version.

In fact, a simple hard fork is planned during the transition to the Serenity version. Due to the fact that this process is more complex than expected, it may currently go through a lengthy process. Ethereum 2.0 is the way to achieve this goal. We often read about this term in many cryptocurrency related media, and even find hundreds or thousands of articles about it. However, most of these articles are either too simple and general, or too technical and detailed.

Why Ethereum 2.0

Chromatic Capital explains that Ethereum is currently running very slowly. The Ethereum chain can only process 15 transactions per second, "he said." The cost of running any large-scale and complex application on Ethereum is very expensive. In contrast, Visa can process thousands of transactions per second. The reason why Ethereum runs slowly is because it is decentralized and it must remain decentralized

According to its design, this problem can be solved by relying on super nodes (i.e. "consensus nodes"). You can accelerate the processing of each transaction by improving the performance of the super node server. This solution is a very simple and direct solution. Blockchain can remain unchanged, while people only need to increase concurrency on the client side.

However, the developers of Ethereum rejected this solution mainly because they were concerned that it would harm decentralized thinking and reduce their ability to resist censorship. We all know the following theories: the impossible triangle in the cross chain world - decentralization, scalability, and security. This issue has become the foundation of all second-generation blockchain projects, including IOTA, which claim to be able to solve this challenge. Most of the methods adopted in these projects, including Ethereum 2.0, have used another consensus mechanism instead of the current PoW mining algorithm.

The previous designs of Ethereum were considered to be more or less unsuccessful. Therefore, according to ChromaticCapita, "Ethereum 2.0 is a completely different project from the past, a leap from zero to one. Ethereum 2.0 is not just an upgrade, it reshapes the blockchain. This new design makes Ethereum more secure, expands transaction processing to thousands of transactions per second, and also improves programmability. All of these improvements do not sacrifice its decentralized nature

Image source: DaniilKu Filmed by Elev, released on Unsplash

How is Ethereum 2.0 resolved?

Ethereum 2.0 solves the traditional blockchain impossible triangle problem through three main means: sharding, Proof of Stake consensus algorithm, and a new contract virtual machine.

What do these words mean?

Sharding Sharding

Proof of Interest Consensus AlgorithmThere are no miners in China who use a large amount of energy to mine and assemble block data. They have been replaced by equity mortgagors (Stackers): these nodes need to prove that they have a certain amount of Ethereum as collateral. This algorithm not only has higher energy efficiency, but also ensures faster confirmation and consensus of transactions, and maximizes the decentralization of these validators. The developers of Ethereum have been committed to improving the consensus process for many years, hoping that this process can quickly complete the consensus of transactions and ensure that mortgagors can comply with the rules (to prevent node wrongdoing). With proof of ownership, transactions on Ethereum can be confirmed in just a few seconds, and the chain can also resist 51% attacks.

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Sharding

Stage 0: Beacon Chain

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As a reward for their work, validators will receive ETH2 tokens. ETH2 is a native token on the beacon chain. In the long run, it will replace the current Ethereum and be distributed without fixed restrictions to ensure the security of the chain in the long run.

The beacon chain is expected to be launched in the second or third quarter of 2020. This will initiate the transition to Ethereum towards phase 0. At this stage, a beacon client can be run and the current Ethereum (now known as ETH1) can be transferred to the beacon chain, and they can be converted into ETH2 during this process. This is a one-way process (ETH1 can only be converted to ETH2, ETH2 cannot be converted to ETH1), so ETH1 is effectively destroyed.

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There may not be much to say about this stage. It will contain thousands of details, discussions, or major or minor updates to help Ethereum reach this stage. Establishing and running a new proof of rights system and establishing a chain that can serve as a control center for various data links is a huge challenge.

At this stage, the eth1 and eth2 chains will still exist in parallel. Starting from the second stage, the subsequent stages will become very exciting.

Stage 2: Realizing the Vision

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The second phase is expected to start at the end of 2021 or early 2022. According to the Ethereum roadmap, many parts of the second phase, such as conceptualizing the execution environment, are still under in-depth research and development.

Image source: Taken by Joshua Earle, published on Unsplash

Stage 3-6

The ETH2.0 plan will be gradually launched in six stages. However, according to the description of the roadmap, starting from stage 3, any prediction is only speculation, and many places may change. It is possible that at some point during these stages, ETH1 may die. However, if all of this happens as planned, or because all Ethereum and users have gradually migrated, ETH2.0 should replace the old blockchain. Just now, none of these are certain.

The GithubWiki document for Ethereum describes the following four stages:

Phase 3: Light Client State Protocol

The client becomes in a state of minimalism. This stage will reduce the size of Ethereum state data that a single node must carry, but it will not completely eliminate this part of the node's data storage.

Stage 4: Cross chain transactions

Sharding

Stage 5: Tightly connected to the main chain security

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However, there is currently a lack of specific information about these stages, and it is not known when the phased goals will be available. This information comes from highly abstract papers or fragments from online discussions. Therefore, there is currently no clear definition of the specific form of ETH2.0. Therefore, completing the Serenity version of Ethereum may take some time (conservatively estimated to be 4-5 years).