The developers of the Ethereum testnet announced that the release date of ETH 2.0 is set on December 1st (the block height is greater than 1,606,824,000), and the deposit contract address of the mainnet is also officially effective. For this news, Vitalik Buterin also confirmed.
The much-anticipated Ethereum 2.0 is coming. How much do you know about Ethereum 2.0? Are you ready to participate in the lock-up pledge? What are the benefits and risks of pledges? Today we will chat together~
What is Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0, also known as ETH 2 or “Tranquility”, is the next major upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain.
The development trajectory of Ethereum has long been set, with a four-step strategy: Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity.
The public beta version of the “Frontier” phase was released, and the mainnet of the “Homeland” phase was officially released. Then the “Metropolis” phase experienced hard fork upgrades-Byzantium and Constantinople, and then the Istanbul upgrade entered the fourth phase “Quiet” “The last upgrade before.
The three previous stages of “Tranquility” are all in the Ethereum 1.0 stage. Each previous upgrade has improved the performance of the Ethereum 1.0 chain step by step and set the stage for 2.0. Soon, Ethereum 2.0 will be on stage!
The difference between Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0
Compared with 1.0, 2.0 mainly introduces two improvements: PoS (Proof of Stake) and Shard Chains.
PoS (Proof of Rights and Interests): In the 1.0 stage, the PoW consensus mechanism (Proof of Work) is adopted. This mechanism relies on physical computing power (miners) and electricity (workload) to construct new blocks. After 2.0, PoS will be adopted. This is an upgraded version of PoW, which can improve security and scalability, and is more energy-efficient.
PoS relies on validators and pledged ETH to ensure the continuity of blocks, which is the only way to sharding. We will talk about the validator mechanism in detail below.
Sharding chain: The sharding chain mechanism is scalable and can greatly improve the throughput of the Ethereum chain.
Currently, a single blockchain composed of continuous blocks is highly secure and easy to verify, but requires every full node to process and verify every transaction in the continuous block. This will affect the network’s ability to quickly process transactions, especially when the main network transaction volume increases sharply.
The sharding chain mechanism will “split” the Ethereum chain into 64 different chains. After the split, data processing tasks are distributed to many nodes, so that transactions can be processed in parallel instead of serial. Each additional sharding chain is like adding a lane, upgrading Ethereum from a single-lane small road to a multi-lane highway. More lanes and parallel processing capabilities will bring higher throughput.
The sharding chain can improve the parallel transaction, storage, and information processing capabilities of Ethereum. It is conservatively estimated that the throughput can be increased by 64 times. It is designed to handle hundreds of times the data volume of Ethereum 1.0.
It is expected that the shard chain will be launched in phase 1 of Ethereum 2.0.
What changes after the 2.0 upgrade is complete
The existing 1.0: 1.0 chain will maintain the status quo and continue to improve, and will eventually become the first shard of Ethereum 2.0 after the launch of Phase 1 of 2.0.
Future 2.0: Mainly improve the scalability, throughput, and security of the Ethereum public main network. 2.0 will not erase any historical data, transaction records, or asset ownership on 1.0. The backbone of 2.0, the beacon chain, will The 1.0 chain runs together to ensure continuity.
Ethereum 2.0 development roadmap
Ethereum 2.0 will be released in multiple phases: Phase 0, Phase 1, Phase 2…
Phase 0 is scheduled to go live on December 1 this year, Phase 1 is expected to be released in 2021, and Phase 2 is scheduled to start in 2021 or 2022. Each phase will improve the functionality and performance of Ethereum in different ways.
The content of stage 0 is the beacon chain. The beacon chain is the core of Ethereum 2.0, which can manage validators and coordinate the shard chain, and serve as a practical basis to guide other developments.
Phase 1 is based on Phase 0, and firstly improves the integrated shard chain and writes data into the shard chain. Most of the basic work on the sharding chain has been done in phase 0, so the complexity of phase 1 is much lower than other components.
Phase 2 is the execution phase, which upgrades Ethereum 2.0 from a powerful database to a fully decentralized computing platform.
The definition of stage 2 is not as clear as the previous two stages, but it will include adding ETH accounts and supporting transfers and withdrawals, implementing cross-shard transfers and contract calls, building an execution environment to support the construction of scalable applications on Ethereum 2.0, and mergers The 1.0 chain to the 2.0 chain, thus completely ending the use of PoW.
After Phase 2 is completed, there will be further improvements and developments.
Will the ETH in the hands of holders be affected?
will not.
Holders of ETH do not need to take any special actions, and remain completely unaffected on the Ethereum 1.0 chain. At some point in the future, the 1.0 chain will become a part of 2.0, and token holders do not need to take any action, and the ETH in hand will continue to operate as it is now.
Ethereum 2.0 will not issue new tokens, so it is impossible to buy Ethereum 2.0 coins, but token holders can become validators and profit through pledges.
For those who want to participate in the pledge, they can choose to deposit ETH into the verifier deposit contract on the 1.0 chain to become a verifier on the 2.0 beacon chain, and then the deposited ETH will become the verifier on the 2.0 beacon chain Verifier balance.
How to become a validator through pledge?
So, how to become a validator?
Each validator needs to pledge 32 ETH to the deposit contract and run both Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0 clients.
Staking ETH to the deposit contract is a one-way, irreversible transaction. After the first stage of Ethereum 2.0, the verification talent may be able to transfer; in the second stage, the verification talent can withdraw this part of the pledged assets to For a particular shard, the entire process is estimated to take 2 years.
The validator is responsible for verifying and organizing new blocks. After becoming a validator, you will receive tasks assigned by the Ethereum network through the beacon chain. The validator submits witness information for a block on the beacon chain every 6.4 minutes, and is occasionally selected to propose a block. If there are a total of 100,000 validators, each validator will be asked to propose a block every two weeks on average. The above process is completely automatic and all handled by software.
Once a validator successfully validates a block, he will receive an ETH reward.
The reward is dynamically calculated based on the network status after the end of the period (epoch, a unit of time during which the beacon chain runs). The issuance rate of network layer rewards is a function of the total amount of pledged ETH and the average online rate of validators. The rate of return of a single verifier depends on the total number of verifiers and the online rate of that verifier.
The amount of ETH that a validator can receive at the end of each period (384 seconds to 6.5 minutes) is equal to the reward minus the penalty. Therefore, when a user is randomly selected as a validator, the expected reward may be different from the actual reward.
However, if a validator attempts to disrupt the true continuity of the blockchain, part or all of the 32 ETH he pledged will be fined.
Ordinary users are not recommended to become validators
To become a validator, you need to bear certain costs, such as operation and maintenance costs, hardware costs, etc.; in the process of performing the tasks of the validator, you may encounter software bugs or various penalties. When the node is unstable or has attack behavior for a long time There is also the risk of deducting the principal.
Moreover, as we mentioned above, the validator must wait at least 2 years for the ETH pledged in the deposit contract to be withdrawn, so it also has to bear the risk of not being able to withdraw for 2 years.
In addition, as the amount of ETH pledge increases, the pledge yield will gradually decrease. As can be seen from the figure, if the pledge amount reaches the minimum online standard of 524,288 ETH in the beacon chain at the beginning, the annualized rate of return is about 21.6%. After that, there is a negative correlation between the rate of return and the amount of pledge.
Therefore, it is recommended that ordinary users do not pledge to be a validator by themselves. If you want to become a validator, you do not have to pledge in person. You can also pledge ETH through the pledge service platform, and get a proportional reward based on the amount of pledge.
