Why ETH 2.0 will take blockchain adoption to the next level

The blockchain space has grown exponentially over the last few years. When you think of its small beginnings when BTC was traded among a handful of privacy fanatics online to the giant space that's grown up around it today, it's nothing short of remarkable. But while Bitcoin's growth and the growth of blockchain applications have been exponential, it's ETH 2.0 that will likely take blockchain adoption to the next level.

Bringing Blockchain to the Masses

No one can deny Bitcoin's place in the market as an alternative to the traditional financial system. It has proven its resilience amidst a global crisis and shown its worth as a store of value, transfer of value, and speculative trading asset. Yet, the Bitcoin blockchain is still not equipped for mass adoption. In fact, no Proof of Work blockchain yet has the capability to make cryptocurrency truly massive, although many scaling solutions are being worked on from the Lightning Network to Liquid.

This scalability problem was made particularly obvious to the world in 2017 when the Ethereum blockchain saw insatiable demand for collectible digital felines that clogged the network. Its Proof of Work consensus mechanism limited the on-chain TPS, making it almost impossible to process multiple transactions or run large-scale applications.

While the realization of turing complete and the execution of smart contracts will always be Ethereum's first brilliant achievement in the space, the technology is evolving. Its community has taken the bold decision to transform into Proof of Stake and migrate to an entirely new blockchain: ETH 2.0. This will allow it to grow for massive use.

With the largest developer community in the space, Ethereum certainly has the brainpower and the manpower to do it. With the use of PoS, sharding, and other technologies, ETH performance will be changed beyond recognition, eliminating the problem of network congestion caused by its current low TPS.

This means that ETH will be able to scale and promote more applications from DeFi and gaming to commercial and retail apps. The growth of the ETH 2.0 ecosystem will be huge allowing the blockchain space to achieve mass adoption at last.

Committed to the Growth of Ethereum

OKEx is committed to innovation and growing the crypto space through our continually expanding suite of products and striking up strategic partnerships that enable us--and the space as a whole--to expand. That's why we're taking the lead on educating on ETH 2.0 to push for mass adoption. It was a natural decision to support the move to ETH 2.0 with OKEx's mining pool, OKPool, the fifth largest mining pool in the industry, collaborating with Prysmatic Labs to become one of the first validators on the Topaz test network (the testnet for ETH 2.0).

The Topaz testnet will act as a bridge as Ethereum transitions from PoW to PoS and, following its transition expected in July 2020, OKEx will offer ETH staking to our mining pool members. OKEx's mining pool will be particularly key in extending ETH 2.0 block rewards to smaller market participants. We hope to bring them value as the increased demand in staking will limit the supply of ETH and create additional scarcity for the coin.

Through this bold move, we aim to help accelerate the growth of Ethereum while actively innovating in our mining pool and generating traffic for ETH 2.0. We're proud to be on the cutting-edge of crypto's most awaited event, contributing to the ETH ecosystem and promoting its continued development. In fact, our belief in Ethereuem's ability to bring blockchain to the masses is another reason behind OKEx's decision to launch ETH options trading.

Growing Options Trading with ETH

Ethereum's move to ETH 2.0 is going to be epic in the space, but so too is the rise of crypto derivatives. We firmly believe that the derivatives market will outgrow spot and become four to five times larger over the coming years attracting many more institutional traders. We also believe that this growth will be fueled by the addition of more trading capabilities and sophisticated instruments, such as options trading.

Options trading gives traders more versatility to hedge their risk and there's less risk involved than traditional futures contracts as traders have the right--but not the obligation--to buy or sell on the agreed-upon date. The fact that they have rights and not obligations can help traders to securely lock-in future value for their crypto assets without being forced to take an undesirable action in a volatile market.

BTC options have been so successful on OKEx since our launch at the end of last year that we quickly saw the potential demand for ETH options as well. Every additional product we offer helps the market to become more interesting and suits the demands of a growing pool of traders, allowing them to keep their pricing strategies more flexible while diversifying the market.

Final Thoughts

ETH 2.0 has all the promise of taking blockchain and crypto adoption to the next level and, at OKEx, we're ready to join hands with Ethereum all the way. Every company in this space should be actively helping the ecosystem to grow right now and making sure that the infrastructure is ready for mass adoption the next time around.