Ethereum has been around for a few years now and its value has skyrocketed. This has created a lot of attention from governments who are looking to do a lot with technology. Russia, China, and Iran have all made announcements that they are exploring creating their versions of Ethereum.
This attention has huge repercussions for both Ethereum and other blockchains. If the scalability issues aren't solved, this will drive more users to other blockchains and away from Ethereum. If this happens, the price of Ethereum could fall causing a ripple effect of decreased confidence.
This is why the team is planning a huge upgrade to the ethereum network, called "Eth2". The completion of this update will be a huge turning point for Ethereum and will ultimately determine its success. Phase 0 will see the launch of the " Paradigm Shifter " soft-fork, a long-planned set of upgrades that will allow Ethereum to become more energy-efficient and more scalable. The soft-fork will allow the addition of a second transaction layer to the network, which will cut back on the number of interactions the network has to make.
The second phase of this upgrade, known as Phase 1.5, will launch in 2022. This phase will introduce new features to the network, such as sharding and the Casper protocol. The Casper protocol is a set of rules that the network follows to reach a consensus about the order of events in the past. This includes the order of transactions, which makes it much faster to process. It also includes the order of blocks, which makes it much more energy-efficient.
The final phase of the update, known as "Eth2.0," is planned for 2023. It will introduce the "Turing Complete Language (TCL)," which will be a Javascript-like language that can be used to write smart contracts and also run programs on the ethereum network. It will also introduce token standards and public APIs that will let any application communicate with the network.
Phase 1.5 will be a huge turning point for Ethereum, potentially changing the world as we know it. Once Phase 1.5 is complete, Ethereum will be able to handle millions of transactions per second. This is 10 times faster than the peak of Visa's 24 million per day and a million times faster than the peak of Mastercard's 24,000. If successful, this technology will lead to "World Computer," a massive worldwide computer where everyone can access any application in a matter of seconds.
It will also lead to so much innovation that it will essentially change the world into a "Singularity" that has never been seen before. The only concern with this plan is whether or not it will be successful. Everything is going well with the update so far, but there are still many bugs to be found and fixed. If this fails, it could lead to a massive loss of confidence in the network and cause a crash similar to what happened with Bitcoin in 2014. This is a risk that the Ethereum team is fully aware of and is planning for, but at the same time, they don't want to compromise on the quality of the update.
I believe that they will be able to complete this ambitious project successfully, but it is still very much a gamble. I think it's more likely that the team will push through with Phase 1.5 and then scale up with future updates, but there is always the chance of a hack that puts the network out completely. Whichever path they chose, I know that the potential that this technology offers is going to have a large effect on the world in the future, and in my opinion, it can't fail. Ethereum is the people to do this, and they will succeed.
