According to a group of developers, the first part of the merger would be ready in 2021. Another Ethereum developer considers that 2021 as a launch year is aspirational.

One of the steps to get to Ethereum 2.0 is a minimum functional viable product. In this, proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS) consensus could work in tandem. However, there appears to be no consensus as to the launch date of the first merger. The programmers in charge cannot define an exact period for the launch.

Ethereum programmer and researcher Justin Drake applied a survey to a group of developers. They had to answer whether they considered the possibility of achieving a minimum viable merger by 2021. Eighty-six per cent of those surveyed agreed with such a possibility.

Regarding the merger, the developer said that it will occur after the London hard fork proposed in EIP-1559. That event is scheduled to happen in July or August. The goal is to mitigate the high fees that users currently have to pay.

Drake posted the survey results on a Twitter thread, tagging some of the contributors who had responded thus far. Among them was Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin himself. However, Drake raised/mentioned the fact that some developers still have to cast their vote.

In contrast, Ben Edgington, lead Ethereum 2.0 developer at ConseSys, published an article mentioning Drake’s Twitter thread. He stated that expecting a minimum viable merger by 2021 was “aspirational.” Additionally, he said that the first quarter of 2022 was a more realistic year for this goal.

Edgington describes the efforts to achieve such a consensus, not only among developers but also among the wider community. He mentions the initial specifications of the feature, which developer Mikhail Kalinin released. This fact was a mechanism to prepare ETH 1.0 clients with PoW, in their move towards PoS.

Ethereum 2.0 Has Already Suffered Delays

In mid-2020, Vitalik Buterin and Justin Drake discussed the Ethereum 2.0 Genesis block launch date. On that occasion, Drake considered that ETH 2.0 would go into operation in early 2021, while Vitalik bet everything on 2020.

Before that, Vitalik had already admitted his mistake in announcing the launch date of Ethereum 2.0 for January 2020. Subsequently, he stated that it would be operational in July of the same year, which finally occurred on December 1st, 2020.

Some Steps Remain for ETH 2.0

There is a high expectation as Ethereum 2.0 would mitigate the saturations that usually affect the network. The scalability of this model, thanks to the side chains, would allow achieving this objective.

It is still necessary to take some steps, beyond the fact that BeaconChain, or chain of Ethereum 2.0 with PoS, is already operational.

Although the London hard fork refers, in theory, to a reduction in fees through EIP 1559, it has already found detractors. That happened with the protest of Ethereum miners against the burning of fees that this would represent. Although it did not work, it could have been a setback in the development of Ethereum 2.0.

By Alexander Salazar

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