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 Author | Ben Edgington Translator | Moni Planning | Chu Xingjuan The original text of this article comes from The Block, translated by Odaily Planet Daily, and reprinted by InfoQ with permission. We are expected to know by the end of 2021 whether Ethereum can successfully solve the scalability problem. At the end of 2020, we finally welcomed the smooth launch of Ethereum 2.0. Previously, many people felt that the ETH 2 beacon chain had a lot of work to do and would be difficult to deliver on schedule, but in the end the developers did it. But in fact, this is just the beginning, Ethereum needs to go further, because now we can see more problems and opportunities. Before officially entering the topic, I would like to introduce Ethereum’s three-fold roadmap for 2021: ETH 1 and ETH 2； Sharding； "Merge" between lightweight clients. These are three separate directions that will run in parallel. It's an end and a new beginning The beacon chain is the future foundation of Ethereum. It uses proof of stake instead of proof of work as its consensus management mechanism, and can also support scalability and security. It is expected to support Ethereum in the next few years. This is what was released on December 1, 2020, which I would actually prefer to call a “proof of proof of stake,” showing that securing a massively distributed global, permissionless network in this way actually works. However, the beacon chain has not done much yet beyond running the launch itself, which we will continue to discuss as the beacon chain remains the most challenging deliverable of the Ethereum 2.0 project. Since the birth of the Ethereum 2.0 genesis block, everything has been progressing relatively smoothly. The Beacon Chain already dwarfs any other proof-of-stake system: over 2 million Ethereum tokens have been committed to the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract, with a total value of over $1.5 billion ； There are more than 46,000 active validators participating, as well as 30,000 validators waiting in line and 20,000 validators in the application status. Additionally, Ethereum deposit rates show no signs of slowing down. Although the confidence of Ethereum 2.0 stakers is in a relatively good state, it is still in its infancy. The beacon chain participation rate is about 99% (Planet Jun’s note: the participation rate is a key indicator of the health of the blockchain network), and there has not been a single problem or incident. Over the past two and a half years, hundreds of people have been involved in the design and construction of the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain. But in fact, the beacon chain is a large-scale open project, led by the Ethereum Foundation and implemented by client development teams like ConsenSys, and supported by many different types of contributors. This has been an incredible journey, but it is also just the first step in Ethereum’s 20,000-mile journey. Sorting out development routes So, what’s next for Ethereum 2.0? A year ago, Ethereum 2.0 had a neat, linear development roadmap: Phase 0 (Beacon Chain) followed by Phase 1 (Scalable Sharding), then Phase 2 (Abstract Execution Engine), and finally, ETH 1 would be merged into ETH 2 on top of this superstructure. The design of Phase 2 looks to be taking longer than expected, and the pressure is starting to build to get ETH 1 merged into ETH 2 as early as possible. Therefore, the Ethereum 2.0 development team inserted a phase 1.5 that can directly "lift and shift" ETH 1 into the ETH 2 shard. In addition, Ethereum 2.0 also introduces a new scaling paradigm called "rollups" that does not rely on sharding at all. In October 2020, Vitalik Buterin proposed a new Ethereum development roadmap centered on rollups as one of the ways to achieve scalability. Rollups are a so-called second-layer technology that moves the bulk of the computational and storage burden off the blockchain, allowing users to benefit from its security guarantees by simply performing verification operations on the blockchain. After all the above steps, the three-phase roadmap has now evolved from Vitalik Buterin’s latest update into a “spider web”. Ethereum often suffers from a "counter" criticism: we are constantly rewriting our roadmap, which makes it look like we're not working hard. But in fact, one of the main driving forces behind Ethereum's success is that the Ethereum community has a group of pragmatists who do their best to get things done. When the market changes, the Ethereum community changes accordingly ； When opportunities arise, the Ethereum community seizes them. Expand, expand Using rollups as a central hub for scalability enables developers to separate many redundant tasks and accelerate to the next phase. Therefore, 2021 will be a three-pronged year: the “merger” between ETH 1 and ETH 2, sharding, and light clients. In the new model, each is a separate task, but will be performed together simultaneously, and the order of delivery does not matter. Merging is an operation by Ethereum developers to move ETH1 from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, and currently the best option to achieve this is to build ETH1 directly into the beacon chain you already have. Unlike originally envisioned, ETH 1 will no longer be an execution environment or even a distribution, which means that the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) will remain the core engine behind Ethereum. This will make the switch simpler for developers and application providers, as almost all transactions and operations will remain the same, Ethereum just has the mining functionality turned off. In Ethereum’s previous development roadmap, shutting down proof-of-work was an out-of-reach thing and needed to be completed after the second phase. But in the new plan, this will be done soon, as Ethereum is considering implementing a testnet. The second piece of work is sharding (previously required to be implemented in Phase 1). Currently, sharding is almost ready to be implemented on the client side. Under the new development roadmap, the sharding approach has changed. Previously, sharding was responsible for both sorting and executing data, which added complexity to many tasks, such as cross-shard transactions. With a rollups-centric roadmap, sharding only needs to take care of sorting the data, the rollups will handle as much data as they need, and the more data they have, the faster they can go, like a turbocharged car. This is interesting, but also serves to illustrate how rollups and sharding can be combined to enhance the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The Ethereum Virtual Machine has proven to be powerful and flexible, but lacks the oxygen it needs to accelerate data: data. Rollups greatly increase available power by compressing data (just like a fuel-air mixture) and forcing it into the engine under pressure, like a turbocharger in a car or a compressor in a jet, all of which can be implemented on the current Ethereum blockchain. When we add slicing, it's like we strap another 64 compressors to the front of an already turbocharged engine (multi-stage turbine). The combination of Rollups and sharding can provide huge scalability. The third piece of work, which is probably smaller compared to sharding, is setting up the infrastructure for lightweight clients. Lightweight clients can make the Ethereum 2.0 system more efficient for users who don't want to license the entire Ethereum program. The lightweight client will allow users to verify transactions that occur in Ethereum 2.0 without running an ETH 2 node. This feature will become increasingly important in sharding because the main purpose of sharding is to not require everyone to run every shard. Assuming the beacon chain continues to run smoothly, Ethereum's main focus in the first few weeks of 2021 will be fleshing out these three workflows into the delivery schedule. Expand or die For Ethereum, scale or die. The earliest reference to Ethereum 2.0 was written by Vitalik Buterin about six and a half years ago. At that time, Vitalik Buterin wrote in somewhat prophetic terms: “We have changed a lot of plans over the past few months, and Ethereum will solve scalability and consensus issues, otherwise the project will likely fail. ” The beacon chain solves the consensus problem. We are expected to know by the end of 2021 whether Ethereum can successfully solve the scalability problem. About the author: Ben Edgington is the main product leader of the ConsenSys Teku Ethereum 2.0 client and a long-term recorder of the development of Ethereum 2.0. Recommended articles this week The source code of Microsoft, Cisco and other companies was sold online by hackers, with a package price of US$1 million Overseas IT veterans talk about 996: Talents are not created by working overtime. I hope some companies can stand up and break the situation. 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