What’s Happening To ETH 2.0?
What is ETH 2.0?
Why is it taking so long to be released?
Will it ever be released?
Will it affect the future of ETH?
Was it cancelled?
These are probably the most frequently asked questions concerning Ethereum.
What was this long-awaited upgrade? ETH 2.0 was basically a set of upgrades that were in progress on the Ethereum blockchain that would make the network more scalable, secure, and sustainable. It was meant to create a network that could potentially process a lot more transactions per second. It was expected to create a much more sustainable network without the energy-intensive mining and introduce smart contracts to the broader world, increasing Ethereum’s real-world utility. The announcement of ETH 2.0, made us wonder if maybe, just maybe Ethereum could
Surpass bitcoin.
This upgrade was meant to be launched in 2019 but it wasn’t making ETH 2.0 the joke of the internet for a while.
However, there have been some modifications concerning ETH 2.0 — as matter of fact, “ETH 2” has been scrapped. Keep-calm my fellow ETH 2.0 seekers, the upgrade will still happen however, as I said earlier on, there have been some modifications.
On their blog, they stated, “Ethereum is a protocol undergoing significant changes. Client teams are upgrading the protocol to scale to meet global demand while improving security and decentralization. Beyond protocol development, a critical shift in Ethereum has been the movement away from ‘Eth1’ and ‘Eth2’ terminology. As of late 2021, core developers stopped using the terminology, preferring ‘execution layer’ and ‘consensus layer’, respectively. Today, as highlighted in our Q1 roadmap, ethereum.org makes the same shift.”
https://twitter.com/VirtualDan365/status/1486404830839152647?s=20
They also commented on why the name ‘ETH 2.0’ could not be used. One of those reasons was to prevent scams. As we know there are a lot of scams in the crypto market and there is a 75% chance that you have had an encounter with one. Ethereum stated that scammers have attempted to use the Eth2 as a tool to scam users either by telling them to swap their ETH for ‘ETH2’ tokens or that they must somehow move their ETH to another wallet before they can get the ETH2 upgrade.
ETH 2.0 was said to be phased out in preparation for “the merge”. The merge is basically when both the mainnet, which is the chain we use today, secured by proof-of-work becomes one with the beacon chain that makes use of proof-of-stake.
The Beacon chain was shipped late last year. It conducts or coordinates the expanded network of shards and stakers however unlike the mainnet it cannot handle smart contracts or accounts. They also stated that The Beacon Chain’s role will change over time but will remain a foundational component for the secure, sustainable, and scalable Ethereum.
It is expected that after the merge, the shard chain, which is a multi-phase upgrade to improve Ethereum’s scalability and capacity, will also be released.
Although we won’t be seeing any upgrade called ETH 2.0, we are still going to see a lot of big upgrades possibly within this year and the next. However, changing the name could probably just be a way for Ethereum to cover up their failure?
