- The developers of Ethereum 2.0 are estimating that the audit and testing of the deposit contracts will be ready in two months.
- Estimated date for the launch of phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0 will be the fifth anniversary of Ethereum.
In an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit, the developers behind Ethereum 2.0 responded to the most pressing concerns of the Ethereum community. Just the day before yesterday, Eth2 project coordinator Danny Ryan gave an interim report on the team’s progress, as reported by CNF. Ryan explained that an important step has been taken with the completion of the formal verification (VF) of the bytecode of the deposit smart contract.
Via the AMA, the core developer, Justin Drake, explained that the deposit contract has been finalized. Although an audit and user interface testing for this smart contract still needs to be completed, Drake estimates that this can be done within the next three months.
Most of the questions asked to developers focused on the start of Phase 0 of Eth2. Project Coordinator Danny Ryan clarified that no major changes to the functionality had been made since June. The changes introduced, Ryan continued, were mainly to improve the Beacon Chain:
[…] avoid invalid placeholder specifications for phase 1, move unnecessary complexity (e.g. some early optimizations for thin clients) to phase 1 when we really need it, and polish what is there.
On the other hand, Drake said that the estimated date for the start of Phase 0 is July 30, the fifth anniversary of the genesis block of Ethereum. However, the date is still tentative and, as Ryan later made clear, it will depend on the technical development and stability and optimization during this stage. In addition, Ryan believes that it is necessary to wait for the progress of the client developers regarding the audits. When asked if the team would consider the start of Phase 0 in 2021 a failure, Drake replied:
Yes, it would be a failure. I am 95% confident that we will launch in 2020.
On future plans, Drake said he is working on a SNARK ASIC accelerator that could be launched after the introduction of the ASIC VDF. The developer said he is excited about the advances the Ethereum network can make in terms of scalability if SNARKs are used. He also stated:
With phase 0 and phase 1 research essentially done I am spending significant time on SNARKs.
Vitalik Buterin gives his opinion on the progress of the Ethereum 2.0
The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, also took part in the discussion and gave his opinion on the progress of Eth2. Buterin was satisfied with the answers of developers Ryan and Drake. In his response to the question of whether Ethereum has a plan in case the start of Phase 0 is delayed, Buterin said that the developers are meanwhile focusing on improving the scalability of the network with stateless clients. The development of stateless clients, Buterin said, is preparing for the merger between eth1 and eth2. However, Buterin also said he is not overly concerned about scalability.
Finally, Drake also talked about how long he considers it necessary to maintain a test network and how many clients he believes should participate in this phase. Drake explained:
I think most of the research team want 3 production-ready clients at launch, Danny being a notable exception arguing for launch with just 2 production-ready clients. As for uptime, I’d say we need a stable multi-client testnet for at least 2 months.
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