Hello Readers👋🏻
We all would be probably familiar with Ethereum..
But what is Ethereum 2.0
Why is it upgrading?
Let's see about it 👇
Why Ethereum is upgrading?
There are 3 reasons
- Scalability
- Security
- Eco-friendly
What is all these? Let's break it down👇
Scalability Right now Ethereum can handle only 15 transaction/sec . So whenever network is busy cost of transaction goes high. In fact we have seen the cost fee till $50/tranc Means if you have to transfer $20 eth then you will have to pay $70 eth. So Ethereum 2.0 will have mechanism which will allow to perform upto 100,000 transaction/sec.
Security Ethereum 2.0 will be much more resistant to 51% attacks due to how it works means it will be much more difficult to attack the network or to do something malicious to it.
Eco-friendly Right now Ethereum uses POW(proof of work) mechanism which uses ton of electricity to help secure network since eth has grown to such large &coin is believed in by many people we can actually switch to POW to POS method which uses much less electricity.
Now , we have understood why Ethereum is upgrading. But , How they are doing it? Well the next big thing about Ethereum 2.0 is The Beacon Chain
The Beacon Chain
- It is POS mega blockchain
- It does not handle transaction
- It does not handle smart contracts
- But it is heart of Ethereum 2.0
The Beacon chain is POS mega blockchain which actually went live on 1st December 2020. Beacon chain purpose is basically to coordinate entire ethereum network. Speaking to entire ethereum network let's talk about sharding..
Sharding
So, imagine there is one way highway road and the lane is so backed up that there are so many bumper & your usual 20 min drive is taking 1 hour . This is currently how etherum is working. Imagine if they made 10 way lane which went to exact same route. So this way lot more car can travel and we can save time . This is essentially what sharding is. The idea of creating shards is so that they can split the infrastructure of eth network into smaller pieces so each smaller pieces can operate independently of each other with goal of Scalability. Now in terms of etherum these shards will allow storage & accessibility of data but they won't be used for executing code like our current blockchain. Eventually our current etherum blockchain will become one of 10 shards(10 highway lane) So we will keep all data old data from old blockchain & then we will have 5 new blockchain to start using this process is also big term in etherum 2.0 and it's called Docking.
Docking
It also marks the last time we actually use POW in etherum network. So now that you know what POS, Beacon chain & sharding is , you might be wondering when all of this is going to take place.
Etherum 2.0 will be upgrading in section in around time period of 1-2 year at least according to their website now the plan is to upgrade in phases.
Phases :
Phase0: Beacon Chain Uses new POS. This is already happened on 1 dec 2020 to do this virtual validators actually volunteered to validate transaction on beacon chain & each validator had to stake 32 eth which right now is lot money there is actually around 10 billion dollars locked up as collateral for these validators.
Phase 1: Sharding network Now etherum.org website says they plan for this phase to happen around this year ,when they want to launch & start testing the shard blockchain.
Phase 1.5: Docking- Final merging process. These is where we actually switch from old etherum to new etherum. Move from POW to POS Old eth blockchain will become New Shards.
Phase 2: Final touches The shards will be upgradble to include new features. Etherum Virtual Machine which is actually the thing that runs the etherum code.
This brings us to the end of the article.
If you still think that something is missed, don’t forget to use the comment section below.
Hope you enjoyed it!!