A couple of weeks ago everyone was wondering whether or not Phase 0 of Eth2.0 would be launched on the target date.
The big hurdle that developers had to overcome was the recruitment of enough validators to set up the staking network. This week that minimum threshold was reached, and so the genesis time was set for December 1st at 12:00:23pm UTC.
But what exactly will happen on Tuesday?
Phase 0 of Eth2.0 implementation is the shipping of the Beacon Chain.
The Beacon Chain is a new blockchain that will coordinate the expanded network of shards and validators (stakers). It will basically be the backbone blockchain that will support the whole system. But it isn’t like the ETH mainnet we have today. It doesn’t have accounts and it can’t handle smart contracts but it will have two important responsibilities.
One responsibility of this chain is to allow validators to enter the staking system and build the blockchain instead of the miners. This chain will validate the validators, so to speak, and keep a record of all valid validators in the network.
Those entities or individuals who sent the 32 ETH to register on the contract in the Ethereum blockchain shall be able to activate the validator software and start earning ETH. The Beacon Chain will distribute the shards to the validator nodes randomly in order to prevent fraud by collusion.
The second responsibility of this blockchain is to store references to shard state called attestations. These attestations are hashes that are created and certified by the validator indicating the state of the shard.
By keeping this ledger the Beacon Chain secures the integrity of the validated shards.
To summarize, the Beacon Chain will introduce proof-of-stake to Ethereum by registering and validating the validator nodes that will certify the transactions. And this chain will also serve as a depository for the confirmations of the state of the shards in the network.
Now that staking is coming to Ethereum you might be tempted to get in on it in order to make some ETH. There is one catch. There will be no way for you at his point to collect the ETH you make as a validator.
In order to collect you would have to take that money to an ETH blockchain that supports staking. That means that early stakers will have to wait for the shipping of the first PoS shards before they can cash in on their earnings.
It’s quite a testament to the attractiveness of this new ETH that so many people have ventured into staking ETH at such an early stage. Seems the smart crypto-money has spoken, and ETH2.0 has gotten their blessing.
It must be noted that there is always risk associated with dealing in cryptocurrencies. This is an unregulated market, so care must be exercised to contrast the information provided in this article before you commit any funds. This article is not intended as financial advice.
