Can’t wait? Vitalik Buterin pushes Ethereum client to launch ETH 2.0 “Phase 1”

This article comes from Trustnodes

Odaily Planet Daily Translator | Moni

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly stated that he is "actively pushing" for the Ethereum 2.0 "Phase 1" implementation. In the words of Vitalik Buterin, "I have been actively pushing some client teams to start Ethereum 2.0 'Phase 1' work as soon as possible, so we can better understand how the first phase of Ethereum 2.0 actually works."

In a recent Ethereum 2.0 developer call, Vitalik Buterin revealed that an Ethereum client that was a little behind on “Phase 0” should start working on “Phase 1”, explaining:

“Phase 1 of Ethereum 2.0 does not require any research, it is basically all specification optimization and development. Conceptually, I think the Phase 1 specification is actually very simple, because a lot of the hard work related to Phase 1 has already been completed in Phase 0.”

At present, the main technical risk of Ethereum 2.0 "Phase 1" is that the sharding P2P network has never been implemented in this way before, so it means that Ethereum is taking unknown risks in the network. That is, Ethereum already uses sharding P2P networks for proof broadcasting, but its capacity is already limited, so this bottleneck may reduce the attractiveness of the technology.

At this stage, the main research focus of Ethereum 2.0 is: it would undoubtedly be great if Ethereum 2.0 light client support could be obtained in Ethereum 1.0 (or bridge) at the same time as the launch of "Phase 1", because in this way, "Phase 1" will be very useful for Rollups based on the Ethereum 1.0 blockchain, and it can also realize the previous promise of 100,000 TPS scalability - of course, the exact details of how to do this still require a lot of work.

Ethereum 2.0 “Phase 0” is a key step in the implementation of the Ethereum blockchain’s proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. If all goes well, it is expected to be released in November 2020. It includes the implementation of the so-called “sharding” solution, which bundles ETH stakers into different groups so that all these groups can still operate as one network.

According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum 2.0 "Phase 1" may be launched in 2021, when shard storage will be added, and DApp can use shard storage to obtain a performance improvement of 100,000 transactions per second. On the other hand, it is also interesting to observe whether miners still have practical utility in "Phase 1.5", because the goal of Ethereum Proof of Stake consensus is to "eliminate" miners, and this work has obviously begun. In other words, if Ethereum 2.0 is officially launched next year, miners, the most important role in the blockchain network since the birth of the cryptocurrency industry, will disappear on Ethereum, and the Ethereum block reward will be reduced from the current 2 ETH per block to 0.22 ETH.

Previously, Ethereum 2.0 researcher Justin Drake said that "Phase 0" may be delayed until 2021, and at least three clients must run the test network for eight consecutive weeks before the main network can be launched. However, this view was opposed by Vitalik Buterin, who said that he strongly disagreed with this and hoped to launch "Phase 0" in a big way before the end of 2020, regardless of whether it is ready or not. Vitalik Buterin explained:

“Ethereum 1.0 took 4 months from the launch of the first multi-client testnet (from Olympic in March 2015 to the launch of Ethereum 1.0 at the end of May 2015), and when the Ethereum 2.0 testnet Altona was launched, I think the UK entered a four-month countdown from the beginning of July 2020. Ethereum 2.0 'Phase 0' is in some ways simpler than Ethereum 1.0 - although it is more complex in some aspects, such as proof of stake consensus, but proof of stake does not actually require more optimization than the complexity of proof of work for GPUs, and there is no complex virtual machine (VM) etc. So Ethereum 2.0 'Phase 0' is simpler to implement on the network, so the actual risk of error is lower (although Justin Drake may think the relative risk of the entire ecosystem is greater).”

Ultimately, Ethereum is likely to complete all sharding work in 2022. If feasible, Ethereum scalability is expected to have no "reasonable" limits - in other words, you can add as many shards as you want. It is worth mentioning that Ethereum supporter Ryan Sean Adams also specifically pointed out that people don't have to worry about Ethereum 2.0 repeating the mistakes of the Lightning Network, because the two are fundamentally different. Ethereum 2.0 will build a new independent platform that will eventually replace the main chain, while the Lightning Network is based on the Bitcoin blockchain. At present, "Phase 0" has been basically completed (the review work has been completed). If there are no major problems, it can pass the test network smoothly within a week. Some clients may have started "Phase 1" work now.