Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0 to merge - MEW founder: Still a long way to go
Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain officially launched as scheduled at 8:00 pm on December 1st. However, the Beacon Chain is currently only the Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, with Phase 1, 1.5, and Phase 2 planned for the future. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin also shared the latest roadmap on Twitter.
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The Ethereum Upgrade is Just Beginning
The upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 is roughly divided into the four stages mentioned above. Phase 0's beacon chain only temporarily implements staking, with most applications continuing to use Ethereum 1.0. The introduction of data sharding in Phase 1, and transaction sharding in Phase 2, will enable high throughput at a larger scale.
Vitalik released a slightly updated roadmap on Twitter yesterday (12/2), which was originally outlined in March of this year. The updated roadmap now includes progress bars covering all Ethereum developments. He noted progress has been made, but there is still much development to be completed.
The roadmap I made back in March updated with (very rough and approximate!) progress bars showing what has been done and some of the recent tweaks to the roadmap itself.
A lot has been accomplished, but still a lot remains to be done! pic.twitter.com/4zIK4aTNTh
— 豚林 vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 1, 2020
From the roadmap, there is no clear distinction between stages, with significant updates like the introduction of 2.0 light clients into 1.0, data sharding, and EIP-1559 all progressing simultaneously.
Vitalik also mentioned the significant proposal related to transaction fee structure, "EIP-1559". Researcher Tim Roughgarden pointed out that the low scalability is the main cause of high transaction fees. Without improvement, including proposals like EIP-1559, it will not be possible to reduce transaction fees.
According to previous reports, what makes EIP-1559 most anticipated is not only the significant reduction in Ethereum's criticized transaction fees but also the ability to lower the base fees from the total destroyed transaction fees, thereby reducing Ethereum's issuance and increasing its value.
MEW Founder: A Long Road Ahead
After the launch of 2.0, MyEtherWallet founder Kosala Hemachandra expressed his views. He believes that Ethereum will face a development bottleneck and transitioning fully to 2.0 will take several years. He stated:
After the beacon chain release, Ethereum will focus on the specifications of Phase 1, which will undergo multiple iterations with a large amount of code that needs fixing, leading to many challenges. Based on past experience, I believe Phase 1 will take a year, 1.5 will take another 6 months, and Phase 2 may need at least another 1.5 years.
However, Ethereum's co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin is quite optimistic about the development timeline, believing that 2.0 will fully replace Ethereum 1.0 in the near future. He stated:
Those who understand the ecosystem will be optimistic because very complex work has already been completed with the launch of Phase 0. Currently, all aspects are progressing in sync, indicating that the upgrade may happen sooner than many observers expect. I believe that the next phase of 2.0 will go live within 9 to 12 months from now.