Ben Edgington, a senior ConsenSys developer involved in building the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, has hinted that the network’s deposit contract could be released within the next few days. According to Edgington, the launch will most likely occur this week thus paving the way for staking on the Ethereum protocol.
Edgington also provided an update on the status of ETH 2.0 stating that the beacon chain genesis is likely to be launched within the next six to eight weeks. According to the post by the ConseSys developer announcing the launch of ‘V1.0.0 release candidate 0’, the deposit contract will serve as the first step in the migration towards the new ETH 2.0 chain. The contract will enable users to send Ether between Ethereum and ETH 2.0 thus heralding a great milestone in the roll-out of ETH 2.0 Phase 0. Once this is completed, the development team will move on to the next steps leading up to the launch of the beacon chain.
As I understand it, we are good to go: deposit contract in the next few days; beacon chain genesis 6-8 weeks later.
According to Edgington, the details outlined in the post are merely his prediction and do not constitute an official statement from the development team. Nonetheless, the blockchain community will be pleased with the update since it serves as a timely reminder of the progress being made by the ETH 2.0 development team. Considering that Edgington is an insider, his prediction is substantial proof that the new protocol is almost ready for launch.
I think people are getting a bit bored of testnests. It’s time to move on […] we need to launch Phase 0 asap.
The long-planned and much anticipated ETH 2.0 launch is poised to bring along multiple benefits to the network. With the protocol moving from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, its security will be strengthened. This is because, the network is secured through staking on nodes rather than computational resources needed for PoW mechanism. According to Edgington, the upgrade will strengthen Ethereum making it much more resilient against denial-of-service attacks.
The journey has not been all smooth sailing though, with Edgington citing some issues like a week-long genesis delay, the dramatic surge in penalty fees, and low number of participants on the Medalla testnet. However, he was quick to clear the air stating that the quadrupling of penalty fees was temporary and was aimed at boosting the confidence among stakers in the case of trouble during the test process.
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