As a world-class blockchain platform, Ethereum has realized the first blockchain underlying architecture that supports programmable smart contracts, becoming a representative of the application of blockchain technology. However, Ethereum itself still has many problems to solve: on the one hand, although the PoW algorithm of Ethereum can safely ensure the authority and imtampability of block data, at the same time, it will sacrifice the transaction throughput and scalability of the network. Any transaction requires all nodes to spend computing resources to hash. You can use dex screener. On the other hand, due to the existence of Gas[Gas refers to ether coins used to transfer between nodes of Ethereum value network and can also be used as "fuel" to participate in node consensus computing activities] mechanism, high fees are easily caused when transaction volume is expanding across the network. Users, DApp (decentralized app), Decentralized applications) must pay high Gas fees before they can be quickly packaged into the block by miners. For DApps with high transaction frequency requirements, they may switch to other underlying public chains due to high Gas costs, and the advantages of Ethereum will be weakened by competitors. The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade was designed to overcome these problems.
Ethereum 2.0 will be designed with "layering" and "shards", rather than a single main chain that handles all transactions. Specifically, Ethereum 2.0 will set up a three-tier network consisting of the existing PoW backbone, bea-con chain, and sharding chain. In this network structure, the fragment chain is relatively independent, and they are responsible for completing specific transfer, contract and transaction services, while the beacon chain is mainly responsible for cross-chain coordination and communication. Specifically, the beacon link network will consist of tens of thousands of nodes that become validators when they pledge 32 BETH (Ethereum 2.0's new tokens). The verifier can form a committee, each committee contains 128 randomly selected nodes. The nodes in each committee are responsible for the consensus and verification process of the beacon chain and the individual shard chains, ensuring that the entire network remains consistent. Only one-way exchange from ETH to BETH is supported before connecting the beacon chain of Taifang 2.0 with the main chain of Ethereum 1.0. BETH will only serve as a non-transferable asset for authenticators and users for the time being, and will not be able to support transfers.
Ethereum 2.0's beacon chain will use the Casper Consensus mechanism. This mechanism belongs to the category of PoS. Besides inheriting the characteristics of PoS mechanism, such as low energy consumption and 51% attack prevention, it also introduces an economic penalty mechanism, which can solve the problem of "no interest attack" that PoS mechanism cannot solve.
The sharding chain was introduced to solve the expansion problem that has plagued Ethereum for a long time. According to the plan, the entire Ethereum 2.0 network will be divided into 64 shards, each of which will handle different transactions in the network, which will effectively improve the system's concurrent processing throughput.
In the early days of operation, Ethereum 2.0 will not support smart contracts, but with eWASM, the new virtual machine will be able to execute smart contracts. Each shard chain will manage an eWASM, including accounts, contract code, status, receipts, and other abstractions. It can be predicted that this will effectively improve the transaction performance after the expansion of Ethereum.
To be clear, the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is not a simple hard fork upgrade. In past hard fork upgrades of Ethereum, the old chain stopped functioning as the new one ran. However, in Ethereum 2.0, the old PoW chain will coexist with the new PoS chain for at least 3-5 years, and may allow the PoW chain to eventually exist as a shard chain of Ethereum 2.0 for a long time.
According to the information leaked so far, the overall upgrade plan for Ethereum 2.0 will be divided into four phases:
Phase 0 is expected to begin in the third to fourth quarter of 2020. At this stage, the beacon chain is rolled out.
The first stage is likely to start in 2021. The fragmentation chain will be launched in this stage. After the launch, it will only be a trial operation, and money transfer and smart contract will not be supported.
Phase 2 will launch eWASM, a new virtual machine, with smart contracts and cross-shard transfers. This phase is likely to go live in 2022.
Phase 3, which will begin after 2022, will introduce cross-shard transactions, exponential sharding and other features.