A large number of researchers and developers have started to discuss the proposed upgrade to Ethereum known as Ethereum 1x.
The code changes are still not confirmed but developers from all around the world are suggesting their different proposals in order to improve the usability of Ethereum- the world’s third-largest blockchain. The code is predicted to be created and accepted by the ethereum network users by June 2019.
Afri Schoedon, the manager for Parity Ethereum client had suggested implementing the upgrade on a separate blockchain of its own but other prominent developers and managers have suggested activating the changes to the existing blockchain network.
Ethereum 2.0 which was in the news lately after the Ethereum Dev Con this year which is being called as ‘Serenity’ by Vitalik Buterin, has a long roadmap and the production of Ethereum 2.0 will probably start in 2020 because of the new design specifications that will take time to be activated.
Ethereum 1x
Ethereum 1x sounds quite contentious at the moment but according to the Afri Schoedon, the first aim is the discussion of the ideas with the stakeholders so that the contentious word comes out of the picture.
Ethereum 1x was in a discussion in a closed room during the Devcon4 conference but some prominent community members were not satisfied as they believed that the discussion will be more satisfied with the involvement of the general public.
Therefore the first open meeting is planned for today i.e. 30th November at 14:00 UTC.
Groups for the advancement of Ethereum 1x
In the minutes of the meeting published by Dan Heyman, the program director of Pegasys, an Ethereum Blockchain development group it is mentioned that currently there around 4 groups working on the advancement of Ethereum 1x.
Alexey Akhunov, the leader of one of the groups is working for the introduction of “storage rent” on the ethereum platform. The storage rent’s purpose is to keep a check on the growth of all the applications and accounts being operated on the ethereum blockchain network. The larger the ethereum applications and accounts grow, the longer it takes for the new systems joining the ethereum blockchain network to download and maintain the copies of all the data.
As the data on the ethereum blockchain has been increasing rapidly over the years, a proposal to charge a fee for the users who store their smart contract data on the blockchain has been made in order to ensure the accessibility of the network for all the users.
Another contradictory proposal is to move parts of the data on the smart contract off the blockchain which will eventually put the responsibility of storing the data on the developers of different ethereum dapps. This mechanism is called the “stateless clients“. However, some developers have raised the concern as to how dapp developers will be able to share and update the off chain data.
The second group involved in the advancement of Ethereum 1x is exploring the possibilities of archiving the old data stored on the blockchain in a bid for relieving the pressure of the growing ethereum state.
The Simulation Group, the third group is analyzing the problems which occur on the blockchain due to the block size increase. A few studies have been made in accordance to analyze how blocks propagate through the blockchain network and what will happen when the gas limit is raised.
The fourth group is working on decreasing the cost of deployment of a smart contract. According to the fourth team, this would balance out the increase of cost for smart contract storage as proposed by “Rent One”.
Ethereum developers have put forward eWASM, a new virtual machine that processes smart contract code which will create “precompiles” comfortably.
“Precomplies” are smart contract operations optimized to run on the ethereum blockchain for a particular fee or gas. Currently, there are only a few “precomplies” running on the blockchain but the deamd is increasing.
Afri Schoedon, the parity ethereum client manager also mentioned that as there are only a few developers in the core development team of Ethereum, it will be very difficult to implement the high demand of “Precomplies” as they won’t be able to focus on other things then. Deciding the gas cost for a particulat smart contract operation is also very difficult.
Once the contruction process of Precompiles gets earlier, then the team plans to open eWASM for all developers.
All things considered, until the point when that future is acknowledged, etheruem 1x is imagined to support what Afri Schoedon calls as “out of the box” solutions.
