Ethereum 2.0 would come by Q2 or possibly slip into Q3 of this year, says Joe Lubin the co-founder of Ethereum and ConsenSys CEO. He is very much confident that it will be out in a couple of months. Lubin had said the same at the Camp Ethereal crypto event in Wyoming last week.
He highlighted that the merge is happening in the same timeframe. Lubin says a team is working on it heavily round the clock. The current Ethereum mainnet (Ethereum 1.0) will be moved to a sort of ghost network which is operating in parallel. It is called the Beacon Chain and will evolve into Ethereum 2.0.
It should be noted that in January 2022, the Ethereum Foundation was rebranded as Ethereum 2.0 in favor of the consensus layer/chain. But the Beacon Chain is not executing real transactions. It is creating a home for validators to lock up their hard-earned Ethereum.
The Beacon Chain is setting the groundwork for Ethereum’s shift from the current method of verifying transactions using proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). Bitcoin uses the PoW mechanism and has been caught up in global criticism because of its enormous energy usage. The popular crypto doesn’t have plans to jump ships yet.
Ethereum validators, like PoW miners, under the new mechanism, are rewarded for ensuring that the network is processing correct transactions. Presently, it pays out 5.54% in ETH to stakers. But if they are caught adding fraudulent transactions to the blockchain, they get penalized. The fine is monetary. It gets drawn from the 32 Ethereum.
Three days ago, Ethereum developers revealed that they successfully trialed the Merge event on a public testnet – Kiln. Tim Beiko, the core developer, tweeted that it seems to have worked. He highlighted that post-merge blocks are being produced by validators and it contains transactions. This is seen as a technical milestone for Ethereum.
