Main Features of Ethereum 2.0

– Proof of Stake (Casper)
– Scalability (Sharding)
– VM Improvements (EWASM)
– Improvements to cross-contract logic
– Improvements to protocol economics

Serenity Begins

What is Serenity?

According to Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin, the Senerity is a realization of the research that ethereum is spending time on, over the last 4 years. Serenity is a new blockchain in the sense of being a data structure which will have to link to the existing proof of work chain. So the proof of stake chain will be aware of the block hashes over the proof to work chain and the users will be able to move ETH from the proof of work chain into the proof of stake chain.

Expected Phases of Ethereum 2.0

Phase 0: Beacon Chain Proof of Stake
Phase 1: Shards as data chains
Phase 2: Enabling state transitions
Phase 3: iterate, improve and adding technology

Expected Feature of Ethereum 2.0

– Pure proof of stake consensus
– Faster time to synchronous confirmation )only 8-16 seconds)
– Economic finality
– Fast Virtual Machine execution via EWASM
– 1000X higher scalability

Ethereum 2.0 Post Serenity Innovation

– Layer 2 execution engines
– Privacy
– Cross-shard transactions
– Semi-private chains
– Proof of stake improvements

However, Vitalik Buterin did not define the timeline as to when the Ethereum 2.0 will be released and the users will be able to see all these improvements.

One of the lead developers and researchers with the ethereum foundation Justin Drake said in an interview with CNBC that there have been mistakes by the ethereum community for overpromising which is mostly because of miscommunication and underestimating the complexity of things. In reality, the research on moving ethereum to a proof of stake consensus has been moving really fast in accordance to the blockchain space. He also told that the Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 that is between the mainnet and the testnet will be released in 2019, the Phase 1 that is Sharding will be seen in 2020, the Phase 2 will be live in 2021.

Erik Voorhees, the CEO of Shapeshift wallet and exchange said in the Ethereum Devcon that he believes that Ethereum will be one of the main chains as it has the network effect and more developers than any other blockchain in the world. He also said that Vitalik does not personally control Ethereum and if Vitalik disappeared someday, the ethereum blockchain will still prevail forever despite that fact that the ETH market might crash for a month or so.

What is your take on Ethereum 2.0? Will it boost the price of ETH back to four figures? Tell us in the comments section below.