Technological breakthroughs are the engine that promotes the advancement of the blockchain industry. Binance China Blockchain Research Institute and ChainNews are both organizations that pay close attention to the forefront of technological development in the fields of blockchain and cryptography. The “Stone” column introduces the world’s most noteworthy blockchain technology developments to readers in the Chinese world, as well as the latest application analysis and developments in finance and other industries, in order to provide reference and thinking for China’s blockchain industry to “teach jade”.
Based on the future development roadmap of Ethereum released by Vitalik Buterin, this article analyzes the development plan of Ethereum from the perspectives of expansion and beacon chain.
Original title: “Stones from Other Mountains丨Interpretation of Vitalik’s Ethereum Roadmap Planning”
Written by: JosephC
Figure: Ethereum roadmap
What progress will the Ethereum network have in the next 20 years? Vitalik Buterin posted his personal roadmap for the future development of Ethereum on Twitter. You may be curious about the key meanings of his proposed roadmap and want to know what are the key nodes of Ethereum’s progress this year?
Use Proof of Stake (PoS) and sharding technology as the Ethereum expansion plan
From top to bottom, the chart is mainly divided into four parts :
- “Eth1.x related”
- “Stateless Eth1.x”
- From the beginning of eth2 stage 0 to the eth1 -> eth2 merger, the “core” of the proof of work (PoW) is deleted.
- Eth2 Phase 2 and higher
The horizontal axis in the middle represents the time sequence. Along the horizontal axis is the transition from stage 0 to stage 1, and then from eth1->eth2.
There are three prerequisites for the merger:
- Release of Eth2 Phase 1
- Eth1 -> eth2 merger specification and implementation
- Eth1.x is stateless
After a successful merger, the consensus mechanism of the system will no longer use Proof of Work (PoW). Users will no longer need to run the eth1 client and eth2 client to track the two blockchains. Ethereum will become a fragmented equity proof system consisting of a beacon chain and a fragmented chain. The state of eth1 will be stored in shard 0. Users can continue to use the app and send transactions as before.
This merger is a huge leap in the scalability of Ethereum and requires a lot of engineering technology to support its possibilities and make it operate safely and stably. The above premise will also define the development of the entire project.
Regarding mergers and other projects, there is still a lot to discuss, but here we only focus on the core modules and “Eth1.x related” because they are the focus of Ethereum 2020. For the core module, we start from Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0.
Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0
The beacon chain is most likely to go online in 2020.
The main premise for the beacon chain to start is:
- Deploy Eth2 margin contract on the Eth1 main chain;
- At least 2, and preferably at least 3 ETH2 clients to start the software version that can be used in the production environment
- After the release of the margin contract, at least 16,384 validators (with a total amount of at least 524,288 ETH) are deposited in the margin.
Why will the beacon chain be online in 2020?
Danny Ryan, Diederik Loerakker and the other four teams have been developing high-quality Eth2 clients. In alphabetical order, the four clients are: Lighthouse, Nimbus, Prysm, Teku, Trinity.
Contributors at different levels in the Ethereum Foundation and other teams (such as Artemis, Harmony, Lodestar, Nethermind, Parity, and some “new entrants”) have established investment service companies. And carried out some audit work.
The task of delivering the beacon chain in 2020 is clear and the resources are very concentrated. Most of the work is done in a distributed manner.
From an economic point of view, it is a very creative way to attract 16,384 validators (524,288 ETH) by using a high interest rate with an annual yield of more than 20% (the annual yield will decrease as the number of validators increases ).
How to contribute to the development of Ethereum in 2020?
The final version of the beacon chain client is expected to be released after multiple rounds of security audits and the multi-client test network has been running stably for a period of time; the client test network has been running stably for a period of time, but still needs optimization and debugging under high load jobs.
Ethereum will always welcome more code contributors. Areas that need to be contributed include: client port and peer-to-peer underlying network formation, client interoperability, common testing tools, client and network security, performance and stability.
Experts in hacking, security, EVM, and smart contracts are essential to audit margin contracts and evaluate runtime verification. Although the bytecode of the margin contract has not yet been deployed on the main chain, anyone can take the lead because the margin contract will not be changed much.
Ethereum 1. x needs assistance
The top “Eth1.x related” in the figure below refers to projects related to the current Ethereum mainnet.
Figure: eth1.x related
This part can be divided into three projects. Generally speaking, there are three EIPs. Contributors need to deploy the code to the mainnet in 2020.
It has been several months since Alex Vlasov of Matter Labs proposed the pre-compiled BLS12–381 proposal. EIP2537 is also in progress. EIP2537 adds support for the BLS12–381 curve used by Eth2, making smart contracts a light node for eth2. Through pre-compilation, new smart contracts can be written to verify the data in the eth2 shard. When eth2 phase 1 starts to improve the data availability of the eth1 rollup expansion plan, fragmentation technology will be introduced. Rollup is actually a kind of smart contract. A lot of calculation and storage will be placed off-chain, and only some data will be placed on-chain for quick feedback. When data availability is not restricted, Rollup technology has greater scalability. Thanks to the efforts of Alex Vlasov, the pre-compiled BLS12-381 solution may be launched in 2020 (even before the beacon chain).
The EIP-1559 proposal will be beneficial to users, because users can ignore the handling fee setting during the transaction process, while ensuring that they will not pay excessive handling fees or wait for abnormal delays. The EIP proposal mentioned: “Even if the transaction activity in the network is very frequent, most users will no longer need to manually set the handling fee.” In addition, it has the advantage that it can consume some fees to offset the ether without significantly reducing the rewards of miners. Fang Fang’s inflation. Some progress has been made since this EIP was proposed a year ago. But no one has taken this plan any further.
The account extension function allows users to create accounts with arbitrary authorization logic. Its flexibility can have a profound impact. A simple example: a multi-signature smart contract wallet can use its own funds to pay its transaction fees. As long as you have a wallet with funds, you don’t need another account holding ETH to interact with this wallet and pay the fees. The history of account scalability can be traced back to 2015, but a proposal made a month ago makes this feature expected to be implemented in 2020.
Judging from the current progress, the sequence of Ethereum development may be roughly as follows
- The beacon chain will be launched in 2020 (Eth2 phase 0)
- BLS12–381 curve code compilation will start in 2020 (maybe it will start sooner)
- If someone promotes account extensions and the development of the EIP1559 proposal, it may be possible in 2020
- Eth2 Phase 1
- Eth 1.x stateless phase
- Eth1 -> Eth2 big merger
7. (Follow-up) execution model, privacy and security enhancement, and encryption technology
The beacon chain is a project that most people are committed to achieving in 2020. “Eth2 looks good, the phase 0 specification has been finalized, and the customer team is going through various trials and overcome difficulties.” On Eth1, the Geth team will continue to invest in development, and the BLS12-381 curve pre-compilation may be in 2020 ( May be introduced earlier than the beacon chain). However, EIP1559 and account extensible functions need to be led and promoted by someone to have a chance to be launched in 2020. The roadmap also discusses many parallel development plans, maybe we can discuss them in a follow-up article.
Source link: ethos.dev
