Sarah Tran
Independent Analyst
- Ethereum’s proof-of-stake is highly anticipated in the community, as researchers favor fast-tracking the upgrade.
- Vitalik Buterin says it only requires one honest miner for the "merge" to Ethereum 2.0.
- An Ethereum researcher says he is confident that Ethereum could ship the upgrade in 2021.
Ethereum 2.0 may be coming sooner than expected as the community is heavily in favor of fast-tracking the upgrade.
The upgrade requires at least one honest miner
Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, recently released a “quick merge via fork choice change,” which would allow Ethereum to abandon mining operations soon.
The merge refers to Serenity — from Phase 1.5 to Ethereum 2.0, marking the network’s move to proof-of-stake. In the current Ethereum 2.0 road map, Phase 1 is scheduled to launch next, which includes sharding that would increase its efficiency as 64 new chains will be added to the network.
The Ethereum community has recently discussed pushing the merge ahead of sharding, the policy supported by Buterin.
The document outlines a lighter version of the Executable Beacon Chain — a proposal to attach proof-of-work Ethereum onto the Beacon Chain, the currently running proof-of-stake Ethereum.
The recent tensions between miners and Ethereum developers over EIP-1559 involve the burning of a portion of the gas fee with every transaction, ultimately allowing users to pay a fair fee for transacting on the network. The supply of ETH would also be reduced, which would benefit holders.
While miners have shown discontent over the proposal, support has been abundant enough to be included in the London hard fork in July. The proof-of-work mechanism costs ETH users over $1 billion monthly.
With mining to disappear eventually on Ethereum’s road map, proof-of-stake has also come into focus.
Proof-of-work Ethereum also referred to as "ethpow," will only see the required change that the client must have a communication channel with a trusted beacon node and must change its fork choice rule, according to Buterin.
A quick merge to PoS would only require one honest miner, but of course, multiple honest miners would allow for a smooth transition to the Beacon Chain, Buterin explained.
Justin Drake, a researcher working on Ethereum 2.0, showed in his poll results that 86% of those who responded are in favor of fast-tracking the update to launch in 2021. Drake added that he is confident that Ethereum could ship the merge in 2021.
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