The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract is now active, Etherscan.io shows, while the Ethereum Foundation assures that the network's most anticipated update will be available on December 1.
If everything goes as planned by the developers of Ethereum, network update, call > and known as Ethereum 2.0, will be available on December 1 of this year, starting at 12:00 pm UTC, according to a release recently issued by the Ethereum Foundation. This update, the most anticipated by the crypto community, will allow the Ethereum network to be migrated from the proof-of-work protocol (Proof of Work – PoW) to the proof of stake protocol (Proof of Stake – PoS), and instead of needing miners, the new network will employ validators who will stake their holdings and be responsible for confirming transactions within the network. blockchain.
The idea of developing this update was born in 2013, with the aim of providing greater scalability, speed and security to the transactions carried out with the ETH cryptocurrency, and since its announcement, it has been one of the most acclaimed and anticipated updates by the crypto community. Now, after 7 years of development, it is nearing completion. Recently, one of the main developers of ETH 2.0 published several of the advances of this update, including the launch of the deposit contract, announcing at the time that it "would be ready in a few days."
Now, the Ethereum Foundation announced the release of version v1.0 of ETH 2.0, including the mainnet deposit contract address 0x00000000219ab540356cBB839Cbe05303d7705Fa.
Source: Etherscan
It may interest you: The Ethereum 2.0 update is closer than you imagine
2020, the year chosen by Vitalik Buterin to launch Ethereum 2.0
In the middle of this year, when the progress of Ethereum 2.0 was delayed by some failures within testnet implementations, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and lead developer of Ethereum, announced that it would once again delay the launch of the network, which was scheduled for the middle of the current year. However, Buterin assured that the network would come into operation by the end of this year.
These statements generated great debate in the crypto space, with several of the developers and researchers of the update disagreeing due to the problems that the network presented. For example, Justin Drake, a well-known Ethereum 2.0 researcher, assured that this update would not be available until 2021, since the initial stage, Phase 0, would not be ready until mid-November, and would then require several tests to verify its correct operation.
Now, with the announcement of the Ethereum Foundation, it seems that Buterin was right, and that the crypto community will be able to begin to enjoy this update in 2020 in a progressive manner. In June, the network's co-founder highlighted that the launch of the Altona test network began the countdown to the birth and implementation of ETH 2.0, and that a testing period of 4 months would be sufficient to verify its operation, operability and operability. .
For its part, Danny Ryan, another important developer of this network, told CoinDesk that the launch of this network has the entire cryptographic community excited, where the developers, researchers and engineers involved in this development have put their all into it. Ryan stated that:
“This has been a long time coming, and countless researchers, engineers, and community members have put blood, sweat, and tears into this project. “It feels good to finally kick off the long-awaited Ethereum proof-of-stake consensus.”
The deposit contract, a bridge between the two protocols
Although the network developers estimate that the final transition from Ethereum to Ethereum 2.0 will take a couple of years, the launch of the deposit contract represents a bridge for the connection of the two protocols, PoW and PoS, which will coexist for some time until the final network transaction is completed. This contract allows the sending of ETH between Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0, and is one of the final steps to launch Phase 0 of ETH 2.0.
Likewise, a warning for those who wish to become ETH 2.0 validators is not to send ETH to the deposit contract directly, but to use the staking mechanism available on the launch platform. ConsenSys, one of the blockchain technology companies behind this development, warned on its Twitter account that sending funds in ETH directly to the deposit contract “will result in a failed transaction, and does not mean that you are staking in "ETH 2.0."
Minimum requirements to start
To begin the generation of the genesis block in ETH 2.0, the Ethereum Foundation revealed that it is necessary to have at least 16.384 validation deposits of 32 ETH each, in 7 days before December 1. Otherwise, if these conditions are not met, the generation of the genesis will be carried out 7 days after this threshold has been reached, according to the Foundation. Thus, once the 16.384 deposits in the contract are completed, with a total of 524.288 ETH, in the required time, the Beacon Chain will go into action triggering the genesis event, which will begin the first phase of the new network.
After the Ethereum Foundation and several developers announced this news, the price of ETH began to rise, reaching the $402,7 USD per unit, showing 5,3% growth at the time of this edition.
Continue reading: Heath Tarbert Claims Ethereum and DeFi Fit Under US Securities Laws
