- Ethereum core developer Danny Ryan gave an update on the progress of Ethereum 2.0, phase 0 and 1, addressing various issues such as hardware requirements, sharding and ETH 3.0
- Ryan also commented on the Ethereum community’s concerns about centralization through the proof of stake and pointed out countermeasures.
Now that the third Bitcoin Halving is history, the crypto-community is watching Ethereum and its transition to the Proof of Stake (PoS). The upgrade is considered by many experts to be a massively bullish event, as the demand for Ether (ETH) could increase significantly due to staking.
However, as so often in Ethereum’s past, Ethereum 2.0, phase 0 also has to cope with a considerable delay. The originally announced date of the end of July, Ethereum’s fifth birthday, cannot be kept either, as the last weeks have shown. In a new podcast, Ethereum core developer Danny Ryan answered questions from Reddit’s r/ethfinance community about the launch of phase 0 and provided interesting new information.
Ethereum 2.0: Concerns about centralization, phase 1 and ETH 3.0
During the podcast, Ryan explained that currently most of the developers’ efforts are focused on the introduction of phase 0. However, Ryan also expressed hope that phase 1 could be released soon after the release of phase 0, as its development is progressing rapidly. Ryan also noted that while a Raspberry Pi 4 might be able to handle phase 0, phase 1 might require more powerful hardware.
Furthermore, Ryan also noted that the core developers are aware of the community’s concerns regarding the deposit of 32 ETH to act as a validator. They are therefore open for further discussion after the launch of phase 0. Originally there were plans to enable ETH transfer between validators, but this was initially rejected.
Ryan also stated that there should be “deterrents” to prevent centralization by “staking-as-a-service” providers. According to Ryan, the core developers are working to ensure that the entire Ethereum community is involved and that the network is distributed across as many clients as possible. There will also be penalties to prevent centralization to one or a few specific clients.
Another point Ryan raised was the topic of sharding. In this regard, the core developer mentioned that similar applications could be run on a common shard to increase speed. He also hinted that a DeFi specific shard is not unlikely.
The topic Ethereum 3.0, which was brought up by the community and where some key components could be replaced by zk-SNARKS versions that are quantum resistant, was rejected by Ryan and also Vitalik Buterin. Buterin wrote in the accompanying Reddit for the podcast:
At present, I favor the basic structure of Ethereum never again changing after (ETH 2.0) is out; only incremental tweaks.