The project will be tentatively complete in 2022, according to its roadmap. All three development phases could extend before moving from PoW to PoS.
The recent activation of the Beacon Chain is the first step towards the arrival of Ethereum 2.0. This raised the curtain on what will be a major migration in the network’s consensus mechanism. What happened on December 1st is a link in a long chain of implementations to evaluate before its integration.
As a network to register and manage validating nodes, it would be possible to illustrate Beacon Chain as the conception of a new life that still needs to go through many development stages to be born.
Ethereum 2.0 will have three implementation phases: phase 0, phase 1, and phase 2. According to the roadmap, the process could end in 2022. However, it will possibly extend for a longer time.
Ethereum is in a transition from Proof of Work (PoW), as the base algorithm of its operation, to Proof of Stake (PoS). For years, the community that brought this project to life has discussed the possible changes, their benefits, and the time to achieve the objectives.
Developer Vitalik Buterin, Cofounder of Ethereum, recently shared an update to the intricate roadmap, known as Serenity that awaits Ethereum 2.0.
On his Twitter account, Buterin said that the roadmap that he made in March was updated with very rough and approximate progress bars. These showed the progress and some of the recent adjustments to the roadmap itself. There have been many achievements, but a lot of work is still necessary.
Buterin shows that the progress towards Ethereum 2.0 occurs in parallel with new improvements on the current Ethereum blockchain. The section for the new version of the network shows the preparation of the path for the shard chains (groups of nodes validating in parallel), new tests, and implementations.
Ethereum 2.0 Implementation Phases
According to data from ConsenSys, the project incubator on Ethereum, the deployment will occur in at least three phases. Here the question arises about what each phase comprises and what its execution time is.
Phase 0 has already started with the activation of the Beacon Chain. This will take control of the validating nodes and will launch the Proof-of-Stake mechanism.
To become a validator, the operator must risk 32 ethers (ETH) in a smart contract. However, he will not be able to withdraw them for at least two years when both networks join. When the integration process is complete, operators can have the funds along with their incentives.
Once phase 0 is consolidated, phase 1 would start in 2021. At this stage, shard chains will be the protagonists with an implementation that would divide the validating nodes into smaller groups. The nodes would work in parallel and not sequentially. A total of 64 different chains would share data verification and settlement functions.
By doing a relevant assessment of phase 1, the third phase (called phase 2) would come. According to ConsenSys, this is the least defined stage of the project, which will probably be ready by 2022. At this point, there would already be full integration of both networks and final disposal of the Proof-of-Work method.
“This phase will involve adding Ether accounts, allowing transfers and withdrawals, implementing crossed transactions and calls for smart contracts. In addition to building runtime environments to develop scalable applications on Ethereum 2.0, this will take the chain from Ethereum 1.0 to Ethereum 2.0 so that the Proof of Work will finally stop working,” the development company explained.
If there are no technical complications, and if there is a consensus among all participants, the activation of Ethereum 2.0 would be complete in 2022. However, the integration of the new PoS mechanism will likely occur later.
By Alexander Salazar
