Original title: “The ETH2.0 beacon chain will be online soon, you must know these key points”
Written by: OKEx
According to Cryptopotato news, ETH 2.0 developer Ben Edgington said that the 1.0.0 version candidate version 0 of the Beacon Chain has been released, which contains many improvements and configuration adjustments. The Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature scheme has also been upgraded to enhance the resistance to denial of service attacks. The “Genesis” of Beacon Chain may be launched in 6-8 weeks. This is still an estimate and there is no official release date.
As soon as the news came out, it caused heated discussions. From technologists to investors, the beacon chain has always been paying attention. According to OKEx data, ETH has continued to rise in the past 3 days. As of press time, ETH is quoted at US$413.01, which is a 23.28% increase from the lowest price of US$335 on October 8. It can be said that the rise of ETH this time is related to the upcoming launch of the beacon chain.
Image source: OKEx
Why is the beacon chain so important?
For a long time, Ethereum’s proof of equity has been a shortcoming criticized by people, and the Ethereum development team has worked hard to solve the problem.
V God, the founder of Ethereum, said that the emergence of the beacon chain will fundamentally improve the performance and scalability of Ethereum.
The beacon chain is composed of shards, staking validators, attestations, committees, checkpoints, and finality. It can be said that it is the core of the Ethereum 2.0 system.
Image source: OKEx Insights
Ethereum 2.0 has three stages, Phase 0-beacon chain, Phase 1-sharding, Phase 2-execution. If you use the human body as an analogy, they are Phase 0-heart, Phase 1- limbs, and Phase 2-brain. To describe it as a company, it is Phase 0-CEO, Phase 1- Employee, Phase 2-Manager. Each stage is the core of the Ethereum 2.0 system. It has its unique characteristics and is indispensable. Phase 0 is the core, Phase 1 is stability, and Phase 2 is the execution and agency. If the Ethereum 2.0 system is to be implemented, it must first be implemented The beacon chain is also the most important goal of the Ethereum team in 2020.
Image source: OKEx Insights
Through the beacon chain, PoS (Proof of Stake) can be realized, allowing verifiers to replace the role of miners, participate in the pledge system, and become the builder of the chain. At the same time, it will be an index for storing the shard status.
How to become the architect of the chain?
PoW (Proof of Work) is a mining reward algorithm used by Bitcoin. Proof of work requires all nodes to solve cryptographic problems. That is, miners can get more rewards by solving cryptographic problems in a faster time. However, such an algorithm does not better reflect the ability of the miners. It requires the miners to spend money to buy larger and better equipment to solve the password problem faster, but this makes the miners overwhelmed.
In order to solve this problem, the industry is looking for a better way, that is, the aforementioned PoS (Proof of Stake). The proof of stake is in the form of election, in which any node is randomly selected to verify the next block. There are no miners in the proof of stake, but a validator to create a new block. The verifier is not selected completely at random. To become a validator, you need to deposit a certain amount of currency as equity in the node network, which can be understood as a margin. The size of the stake determines the probability of being selected as a validator, which is linearly related. Suppose Lily deposits 100 USD in it and Jackson deposits 1000 USD, then when the election is held, Jackson has a 10 times higher chance of becoming a validator than Lily.
Image source: OKEx Insights
The beacon chain is one of the basic technologies for achieving proof of rights. By deploying a registrar contract on Ethereum, users can achieve symbiosis between the existing chain and the beacon chain in the future, and pledge 32 ETH in the registrar contract to obtain a receipt, which is what you can participate in as a validator qualifications. It should be noted that this is a single process, once involved, users will not be able to withdraw from the existing system to PoW.
After the verifier is registered on the beacon chain, it will be randomly assigned to verify one or two shards. The validator will combine the data on their shard with the data on the beacon chain to form a new block; when the validator has not been assigned to propose a block, the validator can agree/reject other validators The proposed block.
It needs to be emphasized that the beacon chain is not connected to the data we usually use. It does not store any information existing on the current Ethereum, including account balance, token contract, dApp status, etc. Only store the verifier list and Attestation (proof information) in the beacon chain
Attestation
Attestation (proof information) passes the hash value signed by the verifier in real time, and they record the status of the shard to which they belong in real time. The hash value is related to what it records. When you record each content, the system will generate a string of numbers and letters based on the content or data you input. This is the hash value. Once the original data changes, the output characters will change to form a new hash value. Therefore, we no longer need to in-depth query the change records of each shard. Only by observing the hash value, we can understand that the total data or content of the process has been changed. When the verifier finds a change, it will report the change to the beacon chain to achieve asynchronous (ie non-real-time) communication between shards based on the change.
Beacon Chain Committee Mechanism
After understanding the basic operating principles of the beacon chain, the operation of the beacon chain committee is also particularly important.
Each committee consists of a group of no less than 128 verifiers. Its purpose is to strengthen security and prevent malicious attackers from being able to control 2/3 of the committee members. In the beacon chain, a pseudo-random process (RANDAO) is used to implement consensus. In each epoch, RANDAO selects block proposers for each slot, scrambles the validators, and assigns them to the committee. The committee members are not fixed and will change block by block.
Image source: Ethereum China
In each beacon chain committee, validators need to vote for the blockchain head. The following figure comprehensively describes what happens in the three slots. In slot1, a verifier proposes a block, and the block is certified by two verifiers; and one verifier in committee A is offline. The proofs and blocks in Slot 1 were broadcast to the network, and many verifiers also received the information. In slot 2, another block is proposed, and a verifier of committee B missed the information, so the verifier believes that the beacon chain head is the block in slot 1. Please note that this validator is different from the offline validator in slot 1. The process of voting to prove the beacon chain head is called “LMD GHOST voting”. In slot 3, all validators on committee C follow the LMD GHOST bifurcation selection rule and independently vote for the same beacon header.
Image source: Ethereum China
Conclusion
The Beacon Chain has become the chain builder, and the distribution mechanism and verification method of the Beacon Chain Committee optimizes the PoS mechanism. It synchronizes information from Attestation storage and reduces information gaps, which will fundamentally improve the performance and scalability of Ethereum.
As the beacon chain is about to go online, many people in the industry have also expressed their expectations for it, and believe that the arrival of the beacon chain can achieve an update in the performance of Ethereum. As Weibo Big V said, although the beacon chain is long overdue, it is one of the most important steps to realize the transformation of Ethereum from PoW to PoS, and it is worth the wait.
Image source: Weibo
The author believes that from the perspective of the operation principle and mechanism of the beacon chain, the birth of the beacon chain can effectively promote the transformation of the current Ethereum from PoW to PoS, promote the fair mechanism of Ethereum mining, reduce Gas fees, and reduce mining cost. At the same time, the transition from “miners” to “verifiers” is also attractive to miners. The combination of the two factors may attract more miners to support the advancement of Ethereum 2.0. And this trend is expected to promote the rise of Ethereum tokens and bring a wave of spring in the cold winter. However, the market is volatile, and any factor will cause the currency price to fluctuate. Investors can only use technological updates as part of the reference factor. Investment needs to be cautious.
