For years ethereum developers have been working on ethereum 2.0 a multi-phased upgrade to address the network's

scalability and security by modifying its infrastructure most notably by switching from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof of stake model ethereum 2.0

is still approaching but a lot has changed since the upgrade was first conceptualized what is ethereum 2.0 also known as eth2 or serenity is an upgrade to the ethereum blockchain the upgrade aims to enhance the speed efficiency and scalability of the ethereum network so that it can process more transactions and ease bottlenecks

strictly speaking however eth2 no longer exists in january 2022 the ethereum foundation following the lead of many developers said it would stop referring to the upgrade as ethereum 2.0 the rebrand is intended to reflect the fact that it is an upgrade not a new network accordingly eth1 is now known as the execution layer where smart contracts and network rules reside while eth2 is referred to as the consensus layer which ensures that devices contributing to the network are acting in accordance with its rules those sides are scheduled to come together later this year in an event known as the merge when is the upgrade happening ethereum 2.0 is launching in several phases the

first phase → called the beacon chain went live on december 1st 2020.the beacon chain introduced staking to the ethereum blockchain it's a key feature of the network's shift to a proof of state consensus mechanism as the name suggests it is a separate blockchain from the ethereum mainnet

second phase → the merge is expected by the end of 2022 and will combine the beacon chain with the current ethereum main net

final phase→ is shard chains which will play a key role in scaling the ethereum network instead of settling all operations on a single blockchain sharding spreads these operations across 64 different chains reducing congestion an added bonus is that it will become much easier to run an ethereum node because there will be far less data that needs to be stored the full upgrade to ethereum 2.0 is expected to take place by 2023

According to the ethereum foundation how does

Proof-of-WORK

• Differ from proof-of-work ethereum like bitcoin currently uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism in this system miners leverage a computer's processing power to solve complex mathematical puzzles and verify new transactions the first miner to solve a puzzle adds a new transaction to the record of all transactions that make up the blockchain they are then rewarded with the network's native

cryptocurrency however this process can be hugely energy intensive

Proof-of-stake

• Differs in that instead of miners users can dedicate a certain amount of the network's native cryptocurrency and become validators validators are similar to miners in that they verify transactions and ensure the network isn't processing fraudulent transactions these validators are selected to propose a block based on how much crypto they have staked and how long they've staked it for other validators can then attest that they have seen a block when there are enough

  Attestations a block can be added to the blockchain validators are then rewarded with cryptocurrency the main advantage of proof of stake is that it is far more energy efficient than proof of work as it decouples energy-intensive computer processing from the consensus algorithm it also means that you don't need a lot of computing power to secure the blockchain how will the upgrade improve scalability and security one of the main reasons for the upgrade is scalability the current ethereum network can only support a few dozen transactions per second this causes delays and congestion

• ethereum 2.0 promises up to a hundred thousand transactions per second this increase will be achieved through the implementation of shard chains but the upgrade has also been devised with security in mind many proof-of-stake networks have a small set of validators which makes for a more centralized system and decreased network security the upgraded ethereum

• network however requires a minimum of sixteen thousand hundred 384 validators making it much more decentralized and hence secure the future for ethereum 2.0 an august 2021 upgrade known as the london hard fork served as something of a trial run for the next phase of ethereum it saw the deployment of ethereum improvement proposal 1559 which changed how transaction fees work on the network eip 1559 has users who make a transaction on the network pay a base fee that's burned instead of going to ethereum miners reducing the supply of eth and placing deflationary pressure on the ethereum network but it wasn't designed to reduce congestion or lower energy consumption for that all eyes are on ethereum 2.0

WANT TO JOIN US AT- WWW.WEB3DEPLOYER.COM

JOIN THE COMMUNITY - DISCORD