Ethereum All Set to Transition From PoW to PoS, Vitalik Praises Developers Working on ETH 2.0

ETH 2.0 met the threshold number of validators before the cut-off date of November 24 making way for a timely launch of Phase 0 in the form of the Beacon chain on December 1st. The Bacon Chain launch would mark the beginning of a new era for Ethereum blockchain as it moves from a Proof-of-work mining consensus towards a Proof-of-stake marking a great mining overhaul.

ETH 2.0 brings sharding to the mainstream which promises to increase the transaction capacity by multi-folds. ETH 1.0 consisted of a single chain of blocks where transactions were verified per block one after another. However, sharding would allow for parallel transaction execution instead of consecutive ones which are believed to make ETH 2.0 one of the fastest blockchains ever. ETH 2.0 will be rolled out in phases and would take almost two years for a complete roll-out.

After the launch of the Beacon Chain with PoS, the PoW based ETH 1 will run alongside ETH 2,0 to ensure data continuity. Recently, Mikhail Kalinin an ETH developer proposed “the merger” to make ETH 1 chain compatible with the ETH 2.0 Beacon chain and a smooth transfer of data from ETH 1.0 to ETH 2.0.

Executable Beacon Chain Proposal

The proposal was to continue ETH 1 chain alongside and access data from it through an independent shard chain, however, Kalinin believes it would put “unnecessary complexity to the consensus layer and increases delays between publishing data on shards and accessing them in eth1.” Instead, he proposed data embedding through Beacon blocks.

The key factors of the proposal include,

• Eth1-engine is maintained by each validator in the system.
• When the validator is meant to propose a beacon block it asks eth1-engine to create eth1 data. Eth1 data are then embedded into the body of the beacon block that is being produced.
• If eth1 data is invalid, it also invalidates the beacon block carrying it.

Vitalik Buterin the co-founder of Ethereum lauded the R&D efforts by the developer community and said,

Excellent ongoing work from @mkalinin2on “the merge” (folding the existing ethereum system into eth2 to retire the PoW chain and fully enable withdrawals). This line of R&D is increasingly being prioritized and done in parallel to sharding and other eth2 improvements.

Buterin has predicted that after the complete roll-out of ETH 2.0 along with fully executable sharding nodes, the Ethereum network would become one of the fastest and most secure blockchain networks until now.