Vitalik Buterin: The next 5 – 10 years of Ethereum 2.0 and beyond might look like this!

By Selena On Mar 19, 2020

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has announced Ethereum 2.0 development roadmap in detail over the next ten years. The plan, published by Buterin, is so sophisticated that many Twitter followers find it impossible to understand. He also emphasized that this roadmap represents only his views on how the Ethereum revolution will be developed.

Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 hand in hand with Ethereum 1.0

According to its roadmap, development of the initial phase of Ethereum 2.0 – Phase 0 or Beacon Chain – will review some elements of Ethereum 1.0, including gas pricing, client synchronization, fee policy rescheduling in terms of EIP 1559, etc. As a result, the light Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 client will be integrated into Ethereum 1.0.

After the Phase 0 launch, it will be subject to audits and tests. Once they are finished, and specifications are updated, the historic ETH1-to-ETH2 merge will erase the Proof-of-Work consensus.

This is my approximate view of what the next ~5-10 years of eth2 and beyond might look like.

Roadmap below reflects my own views, others (including future versions of me) may have different perspectives! Details may of course change as we discover new info or new tech. pic.twitter.com/wynMVC04Ag

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 18, 2020

Buterin said this roadmap is the product of a two-year R&D process, allowing Ethereum to create the perfect design for its future network. Besides, significant efforts have been made to ensure a smooth transition to the decentralized application infrastructure.

Buterin said:

“We know much more about the capabilities and limits of proof of stake, security models of sharding, etc. Thanks to the hard work of many, moon math like ZK-SNARKs is looking increasingly down-to-earth.”

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum

However, this plan is not final as the team behind the Ethereum network is trying to reduce the complexity of its parts. According to various estimates, the launch of Ethereum 2.0 is likely in mid-2020. They will at least launch the first phase by the end of 2020 co-exist with Ethereum 1.0.

Explain in detail about Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum 2020 Roadmap shows that the Ethereum Blockchain is currently in the final development stage. This stage is called Serenity, and it will lead to the launch of a new Etheruem Blockchain, Ethereum 2.0. The latter will be refurbished with several features, including proof of stake (PoS), sharding, a new Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a new rewards mechanism, etc.

The Serenity phase aims to make Ethereum faster, scalable, and better. Accordingly, Serenity’s roadmap shows a list of significant network upgrade plans planned for the Ethereum ecosystem.

That is:

Phase 0: Beacon chain (first phase, movement from PoW to PoS. Launch date: Q1 / 2020)

In Serenity Phase 0, a new Blockchain or beacon chain other than the main Ethereum Blockchain will be created. The main difference is that Ethereum 2.0 will use the PoS (Casper) consensus algorithm instead of the PoW (Ethash) consensus mechanism.

ETH2 will also be created on the beacon chain and used to reward validators. What’s more, this phase requires that two-thirds of validators must deposit 32 ETH on the next block.

Generally, the three primary responsibilities of the beacon chain are:

Managing the proof of stake mechanism
Processing crosslinks
Direct consensus and finality

Phase 1: Shard chains (a division of network transactions among multiple sets of validators. Launch date: 2021)

Sharding will process parallel transactions, storing, and processing information. Therefore, it is likely to improve the scalability of the new Ethereum. Moreover, sharding involves increasing the number of transactions that can be processed by the network at a time. In this case, the network will be divided into multiple segments.

Con brief, several transactions will be processed at the same time. On the other hand, there will be 64 shard chains in the first phase of the beacon chain, and more may be added over time.

Phase 2: eWASM (upgrade from EVM to eWASM. Launch date: 2020 or 2021)

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) enables smart contracts to execute transactions. However, to eliminate the problem of the current EVM, which executes transactions sequentially, Ethereum-flavored WebAssembly (eWASM) will be used.

eWASM is said to provide improved performance compared to EVM. It will enable support for contracts, accounts, and smart status on the new Blockchain. Smart contracts will also be written in languages other than Solidity. eWASM is set to launch in 2021, although development has begun.

Phase 3: Further improvement (launch date, 2022)

Ethereum 2.0 may have been launched, but like any other system, there will always be a need for updates and bug fixes. The continuous improvement phase has been uniquely designed to handle the overall and constant improvement of the protocol to meet the growing demands of the new Blockchain.

According to ConsenSys, the following will be done:

Lightweight state protocol
Coupling with mainchain security
Super-quadratic or exponential sharding

Read more: