Vitalik Buterin Highlights the Latest Developments in Ethereum 2.0

By Swati Kishore

Vitalik, the Co-Founder of Ethereum 2.0, detailed about the development of Ethereum 2.0 at the recently held Ethereum San Fransico event. Buterin illustrated that the term Ethereum is used to describe a combination of concepts. He added that these multiple concepts are a part of the path which is envisioned to fundamentally transform the Ethereum Blockchain. The Ethereum community has been hard at work on Ethereum 2.0 project for quite a few years.

Vitalik mentioned that the the focus of the team is on concepts such as the Proof Of Stake protocol called Casper and sharding. He also added that Ethereum 2.0 will have many improvements such as enhanced protocol economics and abstraction. Buterin mentioned that he has already authored a paper on ‘protocol economics’. “Ethereum 2.0, is basically the next gen Ethereum that will take all of these different improvements and put them together to create what we believe is the best possible design for a general purpose Blockchain,” he added.

Buterin further stated that their primary goal is to develop a road map to migrate Ethereum beyond Ethereum 2.0 over the next couple of years. The Co-Founder also mentioned that the high level of research that went into the project has made him very confident about its future. Vitalik believes that as such there is no unsolved theoretical problem; on the other hand, the problem lies more in the realm of security check, validation, and detailing.

The Ethereum Co-Founder recalled the time it took from drafting the white paper to materializing it in the form of Ethereum 1.0. He said that the timeline for the next generation Ethereum has been developed on similar lines:

“Right now, we’re actually very ahead of the initial white paper. So like I would say right now with Ethereum 2.0 and with where the protocol is, and where the software development is, is probably where Ethereum 1.0 was possibly in maybe the fall of 2014.”

 Vitalik expects the project to get to testing very soon. He also stated that in parallel the team will work on the Testnet, verification and auditing of protocols, implementation of code, etc, which will eventually result in the release of the Mainnet.