Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has spoken reassuringly about the imminent launch of Ethereum 2.0, saying that it is “moving forward on all fronts” at the Consensus: Distributed conference on May 11.
Buterin spoke of the release of the ETH 2.0 multi-client testnet, which is a mandatory requirement for the switch to ETH 2.0. Nicknamed “Schlesi” , the network’s nodes are split evenly between ETH 2.0 development companies Prysmatic Labs and Lighthouse, with Teku and Nimbus founder soon to join clients as well. The signs for multi-client testnet seem good, with Prysmatic Labs’ Raul Jordan even saying that the Schlesi network “is more stable than anticipated.”
With this pivotal requirement in place, Buterin believes that the July 30 release of Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0 is still on track, but also gave credit to other efforts being made, including the Optimistic Rollup solution presented by synthetic assets platform Synthetix and Optimism. Buterin continued,
“There’s a lot of work on scalability. There’s also a lot of work on the cryptography and privacy that will make the technology possible to implement on the Ethereum public chain. It’s moving forward on all fronts.”
Ethereum 2.0 will be released in three phases. Phase 0 will bring changes to the manner in which consensus is reached i.e. it will bring in the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. Phase 1 will bring sharding, which is expected to greatly increased the scalability of Ethereum through parallel transactions. Phase 2 will unify the entire functionality and introduced “Execution Environments (EEs).”
The Consensus: Distributed conference, held from May 11 - 15 and coinciding with the Bitcoin halving, sees the likes of Blockstream CEO Adam Back, musician Akon, Trust and CEO founder Caitlin Long, former CFTC chairman Christopher Giancarlo, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin and others discussing a variety of topics.
On the table is the discussion of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), Giancarlo’s Digital Dollar project, cybersecurity, enterprise applications and impact of the technology on various countries.
