Earlier this year, there were some that weren’t too sure the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade — also known as ETH2 — would go live in 2020. This came after months and even years of assertions that the upgrade would go live in 2020.
As reported by CryptoSlate, Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation said that the upgrade may take until early-2021 due to the need for a public testnet running for multiple months, along with other technical implementations like an “incentivized attack net” and bug bounty.
“Before [launch] I want to see: a public testnet with 3+ clients running smoothly for 2-3 months, an incentivised “attack net” running for 2-3 months (teased here—more details soon), a bug bounty program similar to bounty.ethereum.org running for 2-3 months… All the above cannot happen in Q3 2020.”
Fortunately, a top developer of the ETH2 implementation has confirmed that the upgrade is on track for late-2020.
Ethereum 2.0 still on track for 2021
Raul Jordan of Prysmatic Labs, a developer group working on the Ethereum 2.0 clients for the upgrade’s first phase (“phase zero”), remarked in a Sep. 11 blog that the upgrade is still set to go live in November:
“We can likely perform a feature freeze by mid October, allowing us to only work on security improvements and UX before going live. If all goes well, November is still looking good for a launch from our perspective.”
Jordan explained that the “checklist for ETH2 phase 0” has been going along nicely, with security audits, user interface adjustments, and other technical improvements taking place to ensure the upgrade is ready in the near future.
This came shortly after Afri Schoedon said that ETH2’s beacon chain also asserted that November is a likely date for the launch:
“The Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain will launch in November unless we find severe bugs in clients or protocol. I’m in-between Vitalk and Justin with my estimation here, I don’t think that we necessarily need to delay Ethereum 2.0 into 2021 unless we find critical issues. We are well on track for a late 2020 launch.”
Schoedon is one of many prominent Ethereum stakeholders to have asserted that a 2020 launch is possible and likely.
ETH2 will be an all-encompassing upgrade that will take a number of years to roll out.
The upgrade should increase the decentralization of Ethereum while also making it more efficient. The upgrade is also set to imbue ETH with more value accrual mechanisms, thereby strengthening the network further.
Upgrade needed ASAP
The ETH2 upgrade is needed as soon as possible, analysts have indicated.
Commenting on the ongoing situation with extremely high Ethereum transaction fees, the founder of the network Vitalik Buterin commented:
“The only solution to high tx fees is scaling. Tether, Gitcoin and other apps are doing the right thing by migrating to ZK rollups today. I’m excited about the soon-upcoming optimistic rollups that will generalize rollup scaling to full EVM contracts.”
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