The launch of Ethereum 2.0 is set to take place on December 1 after all, following concerns that the staking threshold required to set up the Beacon Chain, an interim blockchain that will operate alongside the current network, would not be met.
Just over a week ago, it seemed unlikely that the threshold would be met with the Ethereum 2.0 staking deadline looming. The threshold meant that 16,384 validators needed to stake a minimum of 32 ether (the cryptocurrency underpinning the network), equivalent to around $14,800 at current market rates.
However, on November 24, Ethereum 2.0 researcher Justin Drake tweeted that the genesis time for the Beacon Chain launch had been set for December 1 at 12:00 UTC, confirming that the necessary ether had been deposited.
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The second coming
All of Ethereum 2.0’s primary implementations have agreed upon the same precise code origins for the new blockchain. Although having a genesis date set in stone is only the first step on the way to launching Ethereum 2.0, it is an important hurdle to clear.
“I would say we are comfortably half-way through the overall effort to make [Ethereum 2.0] feature complete,” Drake told CoinDesk over direct message. “The research (which lasted years!) is largely done and the phase 0 genesis is definitely a significant implementation milestone. Phase 0 lays the heavy-duty foundations (signatures, Merkleisation, networking, Eth 1 deposits, randomness, PoS, etc.). Many of the upcoming hard forks will layer relatively thin infrastructure on top of these foundations.”
The process of rolling out Ethereum 2.0 is a long one and Drake does not expect the new cryptocurrency to formally launch until mid-2023. It could be worth the wait, however, bringing a number of improvements, particularly in terms of the number of transactions it can manage.
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Via CoinDesk
