The Medalla network was successfully launched on August 4, but suffered some minor glitches that delayed the completion of the genesis block. Developers are still discussing the possible causes of these glitches.
Despite the successful launch of the multi-client test network Medal, the network of validators of the new update of Ethereum, Ethereum 2.0, during its first hours the network presented some minor failures that delayed the end of the genesis block. Although the Bit2Me News team addressed the news and it was revealed that the developers waited for the network itself to solve the current problem, which is what happened, the problem arose when only 57% of the validators registered in the network actively participated in the consensus.
The developers also announced that the low participation during the first hours of the network launch could have been caused because many of the registered validator nodes did not have the validator software necessary to participate in the network. Now the developers explain that a few days before the launch of Medalla they discovered bugs in the peering, which prevent the successful connection of multiple nodes, so they rushed to fix them by integrating a new update that perhaps many validators did not have at the time of launch.
Although most of the issues are already fixed or are being fixed and the network is working properly, Medalla is still not 100% stable, as some issues related to core clients are still present.
It may interest you: Ethereum 2.0 developers announce the successful launch of Medalla, although the testnet presented some errors
Problems detected by developers
Prysmatic y Lighthouse Medalla are two of the main clients of the Ethereum 2.0 Medalla network, which have actively participated in the development of other testnets that preceded the Medalla testnet. These clients still have bugs regarding validation that developers continue to investigate, considering that they support around 90% of the validator nodes on the network.
In addition to client errors, developers also identified other minor issues with validators. For example, many users made multiple deposits of 32 ETH considering that they would have multiple validators. Also, many of the validators did not have the minimum knowledge or experience necessary to prepare their equipment in time for the launch, so the percentage of participation in the network was lower than the minimum expected by the developers. As of the date of this publication, Medalla has more than 75% participation in the consensus, according to the data shown by Beacon Chain.
Importance of Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum is the second most important blockchain within the cryptographic ecosystem, after Bitcoin. ETH is a blockchain that allows for endless innovative applications that are not possible directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, for example the creation of Tokens, decentralized applications (dApps), smart contracts (smart contracts) and more recently decentralized finance ecosystems (DeFi). However, despite its many qualities and potential, Ethereum faces almost the same problems that Bitcoin and other blockchains present: the Scalability.
Scalability is the ability of a blockchain to process payments quickly and at a low cost, ensuring support for hundreds or billions of users without any problems. As we know, Bitcoin currently does not allow instant payments, and there are times when the network collapses, commission rates for miners increase due to increased network demand, and microtransactions become unfeasible. Therefore, Bitcoin transactions often become slow and are not confirmed until several hours have passed. To solve this problem, developers have come up with second-layer solutions such as Lightning Network, which allows you to make payments and microtransactions in Bitcoin quickly and cheaply.
In Ethereum, the same thing happens, the network can process between 20 and 30 transactions per second and at times when demand grows and the network collapses, gas fees increase significantly, making transactions and interactions between the different applications on the network very expensive. So, although Ethereum also has a solution that seeks to address the scalability problem, known as Liquidity Network, this is a second layer network external to the Ethereum blockchain.
With Ethereum 2.0, however, developers are looking to tackle the scalability problem at a higher level. The new major version of Ethereum, which is just a few steps away from being officially released, will allow the Ethereum consensus protocol to be migrated from Proof of Work (PoW) a Proof of Participation (PoS), eliminating the need for mineros by validators. This reduces the costs of operating the network and ensures that transaction validations are much faster and more accessible. The update will also integrate a chain fragmentation technique, known as sharding, which will allow the blockchain to operate much faster, ensuring greater scalability and decentralization for the network. It is expected that with the new update, Ethereum will acquire greater utilities and increase its value.
Continue reading: SEC turns its sights on the burgeoning DeFi ecosystem and smart contracts
