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Source:Crypto Valley Live
The lack of public awareness and poor user experience of DApps are issues that need to be addressed in the future, which are key to achieving large-scale applications
Author: sheinix@TheStartup
Translated by: Lisa Liu
Editors: SonnySun, Fan Xuxin
Ethereum Network
As early as 2013, Vitalik Buterin, a BTC programmer and publisher of BTC magazine, published the Ethereum white paper. Ethereum's goal is to expand the application scope of blockchain technology beyond payment.
Ethereum is a universal blockchain. Like many other blockchains, it is open source, public, and has its own currency: Ethernet or ETH. A universal blockchain means having a decentralized platform that provides a programming language that developers can use to create smart contracts. Smart contracts run on each node of the network, making it possible to develop distributed applications (DApps). These Dapps inherit the significant features of blockchain technology, namely tamper resistance, transparency, reliability, and security.
Ethereum Programming Language
Solidity is the main programming language on Ethereum, created by Dr. GavinWood. It is an object-oriented high-level programming language that can be used for smart contract development, deeply influenced by Python and JavaScript languages. This is intentional, so that developers can easily start developing smart contracts directly.
Solidity is a "Turing complete" language, which means it has all the capabilities to develop complex use cases. In contrast, the programming language Scrypt of BTC is not Turing complete in design. For smart contracts, Solidity is the most popular programming language, and every developer who wants to start developing smart contracts should study it.
Vyper is another programming language created by the Ethereum team and runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Its design purpose is to simplify the process of writing smart contracts while making them easier to read. The key difference between it and Solidity is that Vyper does not include some object-oriented features, which makes Vyper safer because developers have less space to make mistakes and introduce bugs.
Gas& ETHPrice
Gas is a unit that measures the cost of executing a transaction on an Ethernet network. Every time a smart contract runs a transaction, it consumes Gas. These gases require input of smart contracts during transaction execution. The method of paying for Gas is to use ETH.
The problems and challenges faced by Ethereum
The main issue faced by Ethereum is scalability. The network is considered a 'world computer', but currently it can only process about 15 transactions per second, while private companies like Visa can process up to 45000 transactions per second. If Ethereum wants to achieve large-scale application, this is an urgent problem to be solved.
To illustrate why this issue is important, we can take a look at the example of CryptoKitties. In 2017, this project was so popular that transactions executed on smart contracts blocked the network. Therefore, there is considerable delay in processing transactions.
In addition, security has always been a major challenge for Ethereum. Mainly due to poor development practices in some projects, resulting in hacker attacks and financial losses. Ethereum needs to provide developers with tools for better security in smart contracts without affecting their Solidity.
The price of ETH and the cost of Gas make the transaction process very fragile, which is not worth it in some cases. Especially for Ethereum validators, they currently have to spend a lot of electricity to run the node and PoW consensus algorithms, and in this process, they have not received much return.
The lack of public awareness and poor user experience of DApps are issues that need to be addressed in the future, which are key to achieving large-scale applications.
The current situation of Ethereum
The ecosystem of Ethereum has been steadily developing in the past few years, although it still has many problems. ETH is the second largest digital asset in the world by market value. Solidity is the most popular open blockchain programming language with the most famous developer community (which is an indicator of project health). The more developers a platform has, the more valuable projects can be developed on it. Over the years, we have seen many excellent projects emerging on Ethereum, including the mediocre and pure fraud projects.
In 2017, we saw a significant increase in the number of projects, mainly reflected in the first-time token financing boom and market bullishness. But the reality is that only a few of these projects have survived, and they will become fewer and fewer in the coming years.
The general public has not yet adopted DApps, mainly because the platform is not mature enough and the public lacks general understanding of the technology. Nevertheless, in the past year, many projects related to gaming, gambling, and finance have developed rapidly and gained a good user base.
source:stateofthedapps.com
source:stateofthedapps.com
Ethereum Development Phase
The development plan for Ethereum is divided into four different stages. Each stage is aimed at introducing more features and fixing issues. Each step also includes' sub versions', also known as' hard forks', which change functionality and features in a way that is not backwards compatible.
The following timeline is the initial planned Ethereum development phase:
This is the initial development phase of Ethereum from July 30, 2015 to March 2016.
IceAge is a 'hard fork' that introduces an exponential increase in difficulty to facilitate the smooth transition from PoW to PoS when everything is ready.
The second phase of Ethereum was launched in March 2016.
The infamous DAO case. This is a hard fork that compensates for the victims of DAO hackers and causes Ethereum and Ethereum Classics to split into two opposing systems.
Another hard fork is used to change the gas calculation of certain I/O heavy operations and clear the accumulated state after utilizing low gas cost DoS attacks of these operations.
Hard forking solves the problem of DoS attacks, while at the same time, another state is completely cleared. In addition, it is also a protection mechanism for replay attacks.
This is the third stage of Ethereum development, which was launched in October 2017. Byzantium is the first of the two major forks in Metropolis.
This is the second hard fork on the Metropolis stage, completed in February 2019. This hard fork also includes other modifications to fix a security issue with the codename Petersburg.
This is another hard fork, planned to be activated on December 4, 2019, which will include more security fixes and incentives to move from PoW to PoS algorithm.
SerenityEthereum2.0
Serenity is the final stage of Ethereum's development. It will introduce Ethereum 2.0- a new Ethereum blockchain, complete PoS integration, and introduce a new Ethereum virtual machine, along with many detailed changes.
There are many discussions and rumors about when Serenity will be launched. This massive stage will be divided into different sub stages:
Serenity Roadmap
Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0SerenityDanny RyanEthereum 2.0
To understand how all of this is achieved, let's take a look at the details of each Serenity stage:
Stage 0: Beacon Chain
The beacon chain will be an independent blockchain from the Ethereum blockchain. This new chain will use Proof of Rights (PoS) as the consensus mechanism algorithm, which will run in parallel with the main Proof of Work Consensus Mechanism (PoW) Ethereum blockchain. Initially, for simplicity's sake, blockchain did not support smart contracts or accounts.
At the time of writing this article, Ethereum is using a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism algorithm, which is very similar to the algorithm used by BTC. In Ethereum, the name of this algorithm is Ethash. On the beacon chain, we will see a new PoS algorithm called Casper. In the past few years, the plan for Casper to replace Ethash has been postponed several times, which requires some intervention measures to resolve the difficulties and delay the mandatory elimination of PoW. Now we finally have a beacon chain.
Short description of PoS:
According to the PoS consensus mechanism, blockchain tracks a set of verifications, and anyone holding the blockchain's underlying digital asset (Ether in this case) can complete the verification by sending a specific type of transaction to lock it in Ether as a deposit. The validators take turns proposing and voting on the next valid block. The weight of the verifier's vote depends on the size of their deposit (bet). If the majority of validators reject the blocks they have created, then validators face the risk of losing their deposits. On the contrary, for each block that is accepted by the majority, the verifier receives a small reward proportional to the shares they hold. Therefore, PoS forces the verifier to act honestly and adhere to consensus rules through a reward and punishment system.
ETH2: New Ether
Another feature of Phase 1 is the introduction of ETH2, a new asset validated on a new beacon chain. This new ETH2 will be created as a reward for verifying transactions on the beacon chain, and any ETH1 can purchase it. Initially, it was not possible to remove ETH2 from the beacon chain. If someone wants to be a new chain verifier, they need at least 32 ETHs to mortgage the original chain.
Phase 1: ShardChains
Fragmentation is a scalable technology that allows for parallel transactions. This is to divide the network into multiple shards to help expand transaction scale, allowing the network to process many transactions simultaneously.
VitalikButerin has expressed the following views on 'sharding':
Imagine Ethereum being divided into thousands of islands. Each island can do its own thing. Each island has its own unique characteristics, and everyone belongs to that island. For example, accounts can interact with each other, and they can freely indulge in all its functions. If they want to come into contact with other islands, they will have to use some protocol.
Fragmentation will be introduced on the beacon chain, with an initial scale of approximately 100. Verifiers will verify transactions from their own fragments, and in the first stage, they will not approve any smart contracts, accounts, or assets.
Although sharding will bring more scalability, some setbacks need to be considered. The validator has a small transaction pool to verify, which makes 51% of attacks easier as they only require 51% of computing power (or equity), rather than the entire network.
This technology can also lead to higher centralization, as each fragment can be verified by a small group of validators. It will be very interesting to see how this stage is implemented, as it still requires thorough testing to ensure that all validators are randomly selected to avoid centralization and any risk attacks.
Phase 2: New Ethereum Virtual Machine eWASM
What is EVM
All nodes on the Ethereum system need to run smart contracts to execute final transactions on the blockchain. Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) allows for the execution of these smart contracts.
EVMEthereum NetworkSolidityEVM
Current EVM issues
One of the main issues with EVM currently is that it processes transactions in order. With the changes in PoS and sharding, transactions need to be processed in parallel, which is not suitable for the current EVM.
New EVM
New EVMeWASMEthereum WebAssemblyWebAssemblyEVMeWASM2021
Phase 3: Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement "is a code name that includes all future changes, fixes, and improvements from previous stages, as well as more content that follows. Unfortunately, there is not much information about this stage as it was originally planned to be launched in 2022. What we know is that the following technologies will be implemented:
Ethereum 2.0
The most important thing about understanding Ethereum 2.0 is that it is not something that can happen overnight. The initial release plan was divided into four stages, but no one said that development would end there or that there would be no delays or changes during this process. Every software has no final version, there is always room for improvement and correction.
Ethereum is one of the most important projects in the field of cryptography and is also relied on by many other projects. It has received strong support from the development community and enterprises. Many people have invested heavily in the future of Ethereum, which has put a lot of pressure on them. If this team successfully achieves this, we will have a fully scalable universal blockchain that will be closer to the original Ethereum slogan: "Global Supercomputers" and will demonstrate to the world that the "blockchain dream" is possible. This will attract more developers and investors to continue building star projects based on this foundation.
Ethereum 2.01.0
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