Following delays to the rollout of ETH 2.0, it’s no secret that the Ethereum community grows restless over the wait.
A recent public discussion on the matter had Ethereum Foundation Researcher, Justin Drake give a tentative date of January 2021 for Phase 0 rollout, during a Reddit AMA.
The announcement garnered a mixed response. Some took the view that the slow progress to date has tarnished Ethereum’s credibility, leading the door open for competitors to gain ground.
” It makes it look like Ethereum has lost the “hunger”. Which opens the door to all the scrappy Ethereum killer VC chains who have no problem putting the pedal to the metal.”
Others took a more pragmatic approach by acknowledging the need to get things right the first time around.
Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, took heavy criticism for expressing his desire to launch well before January 2021, even if things aren’t ready.
Ethereum 2.0 Will Be Ready Late 2020
In an unexpected twist to the saga, Ethereum developer, Afri Schoedon believes Phase 0 will be ready for launch in November 2020.
Reports have circulated that the development team is struggling to meet soft deadlines, as a result of building with legacy architecture in mind, but Schoedon paints a contrasting view.
Schoedon stated that the team is making good progress and on schedule for launch during late 2020. He also remarked that Drake’s provisional date of January 2021 would be overkill, barring the discovery of severe issues.
“The Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain will launch in November unless we find severe bugs in clients or protocol. I’m in-between Vitalk and Justin with my estimation here, I don’t think that we necessarily need to delay Ethereum 2.0 into 2021 unless we find critical issues. We are well on track for a late 2020 launch.”
During the interview, Schoedon spoke briefly about his area of responsibility, developing the multi-client testnet. He confirmed that all is going as planned and that the multi-client testnet will launch in the near future.
“Currently, at least five clients implement the latest version of the Ethereum 2.0 specification. The currently running Altona testnet appears to be stable which featured four clients in Genesis and just added a fifth with Lodestar. This allows us to prepare launching the official multi-client testnet Medalla very soon, which would mark the final step towards an Ethereum 2.0 mainnet launch.”
Phase 0 Sets The Foundation For Proof-of-Stake
Much anticipation surrounds the launch of Ethereum 2.0, in particular, the move to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
The race to complete Phase 0 refers to the launch of Beacon Chain. This will implement PoS and manage the registry of validators.
Ethereum developers have stated that Beacon Chain will initially run in parallel with the existing Ethereum chain. But it will not be able to process transactions, execute smart contracts, or host dApps.
Instead, at Phase 0, it will provide the live testing ground for PoS until Phase 1.5. At this point, the two blockchains will merge to form a single Ethereum network.
Implementing this while administrating a live chain means the Ethereum team have their work cut out for them. For that reason, delays are somewhat understandable.
However, it remains to be seen if Schoedon’s optimism is justified.