In the first quarter of 2020, Ethereum ( ETH ) 2.0 entered public testing of its operations. Different development teams, including Prysmatic Labs, PegaSys, Sigma Prime and Nimbus, have published their testnet environments for validators.

First ETH2 fork

As reported by Afri Schoedon, a seasoned Ethereum ( ETH ) contributor, the Schlesi testnet designed for public testing of ETH2 operations, suddenly branched off. This happened on May 17, 2020, at slot 141.184. Mr. Schoedon published details of what had happened.

This means that a testnet has experienced an involuntary split and different time slots (ETH2 existence periods) have been independently validated.

So far, this is the first disclosed range of the Ethereum ( ETH ) 2.0 multi-client testnet sandbox since its recent launch.

A stable testnet and a public safety audit are two crucial steps to enter the first step of the main Ethereum ( ETH ) 2.0, Phase 0 or Beacon Chain network.

Good or bad?

Some contributors from the Ethereum community ( ETH ) discuss whether such distributions are good or bad for the progress of network tests.

Tyler Smith of ConsenSys believes that such events have positive effects on the research of the mechanisms of the Ethereum network ( ETH ) 2.0:

This is exactly the right attitude. The test nets are made to be broken. In fact, I was getting nervous that the Schlesi testnet was a little too stable.

As previously reported by PassionCrypto , the main developers of the Ethereum Foundation ( ETH ) planned to launch Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 by mid 2020 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the main ETH1 network.

However, Vitalik Buterin recently rejected these plans, stressing that the third quarter of 2020 is a more reasonable target.