The State of Eth2, Jan 2021
The State of Eth2: A Comprehensive Update
At the start of December, the Ethereum community bootstrapped the new beacon chain proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, marking a significant milestone in the development of Ethereum 2.0. The launch was a resounding success, and the operation of the beacon chain has proved stable and robust. As we write this, the beacon chain is live with over 2.5 million ETH securing its consensus. This is the state of Eth2 today, but what's next? What's on the horizon, and where are we going?
The Eth1 + Eth2 Equation
The terms "eth1" and "eth2" are often used to describe the different layers of the Ethereum stack. However, these designations imply a false sequentiality, suggesting that eth1 will be deprecated in favor of eth2. Instead, eth1 and eth2 represent different layers of the stack, with eth1 being the user-layer and eth2 being the core consensus mechanism.
Eth1 is primarily the operation and upgrading of Ethereum's user-layer, including state, transactions, accounts, and smart contracts. Eth2, on the other hand, is a series of upgrades meant to overhaul Ethereum's core consensus mechanism, moving from proof-of-work to a more sustainable, scalable proof-of-stake.
The Beacon Chain: A Proof-of-Stake Consensus Mechanism
The beacon chain is a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism secured by validators that have staked ETH. As of today, the only thing that this consensus mechanism comes to consensus on is itself. It does not, yet, come to consensus on anything that end-users care about, such as transactions, user accounts, or smart contracts. This is by design, as the path to upgrade Ethereum's core consensus must be conservative and iterative in rollout.
Consensus on Ethereum (Eth1)
The first and foremost goal of Eth2 is to provide a more secure and sustainable home for Ethereum. The hotswap of Ethereum's consensus from proof-of-work to the beacon chain's proof-of-stake will provide a more secure and sustainable home for both today and tomorrow's decentralized applications. By swapping the consensus mechanism while holding the rest of the protocol (the user-layer) stable, Ethereum will provide an uninterrupted and continuous experience for existing users and applications.
Sharded Data: A Scalable Home for Ethereum
In addition to a secure and sustainable home, Ethereum also needs a scalable home. The current L1 of Ethereum will not, alone, provide the throughput needed to support the global demand for decentralized applications. Although Ethereum's current L1 coupled with L2 scalability techniques (rollups, channels, etc.) will help massively in the next 12 months, even then Ethereum will continue to see demand outstrip supply as global adoption continues.
Upgrades Along the Way
A first set of upgrades to the beacon chain is actively being specified and discussed. Some of the changes proposed are iterative improvements to validator incentives and state management, while others bring new, but relatively modest, features to the beacon chain, such as native light client support.
The State of Eth2 Clients
In general, we are in a great place with Eth2 clients. We have four production mainnet clients (Nimbus, Teku, Lighthouse, and Prysm), each with a share of validator usage. Additionally, Lodestar is currently running mainnet in more of an alpha state while continuing to provide excellent JS tools and libraries to the growing Eth2 developer ecosystem.
Client Diversity
As far as we can tell, client diversity is not optimal today. According to some estimates, Prysm nodes account for at least 50% of mainnet nodes, and although this does not map 1:1 to the amount of stake being secured by each client, it is likely directionally representative.
Client Development in 2021
Client teams will spend much of 2021 improving security and stability of mainnet clients while at the same time pushing toward production implementations of the various upgrades discussed above. In early 2021, much of this will be R&D as specs are vetted and refined, but in the latter half of the year, we'll begin to see production testnets of merge and/or sharding upgrades.
Additional Context
Stateless Ethereum and EIP 1559 are also being developed in parallel to Eth2. Stateless Ethereum is focused on making the L1 state more sustainable, while opening up a spectrum of node-types that ultimately provides users with more choice on how to interact with the network. EIP 1559 is a highly anticipated upgrade of Ethereum's fee market, which is also sufficiently independent of Eth2 and can technically happen either before or after the Eth1+Eth2 merge.
Community and Tooling
The community and tooling around Eth2, although still early, is currently thriving and rapidly growing. There are many community-organized initiatives, such as EthStaker, Ethereum Due Diligence Committee, Ethereum Studymaster, Secret Shared Validators, and more, all actively enhancing the validator experience and new open-source projects and contributions to tooling each week.
Wrapping it Up
All in all, there is a ton of work to do in 2021, but what's new? The successful launch of the beacon chain was a huge milestone for engineers, stakers, and the community at large. We now have the foundation for Ethereum's sustainable future. Although there are many moving pieces and innumerable winding threads, across the board the Ethereum community has shown its unbelievable resilience and ability to deliver. Here's to a great 2021!
Source: https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2021/01/20/the-state-of-eth2-january-2021
