Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain launches with over $400m staked

Decentralised computing platform Ethereum has successfully launched its beacon chain for 2.0 with supporters currently staking over $400 million.

Ethereum 2.0 pivots the world’s most popular decentralised app platform to a faster and more efficient Proof-of-Stake consensus.

Proof of Stake is a monumental upgrade of the crypto-economic incentives that already make Ethereum an automated, objective foundation for trust. We are collectively deepening the commitment to building a maximally decentralized network.

— Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) December 1, 2020

Developers are building innovative new applications for just about every industry—but there’s one that Ethereum has become synonymous with, decentralised finance.

Ethereum is now the global settlement layer for ~$1 trillion in digital assets on the decentralised web. This monumental growth hasn’t come without its problems, with slow transaction times and high fees becoming regular issues.

The beacon chain for Ethereum 2.0 launched today is part of ‘Phase 0’ of an expected multi-year rollout that should one day see the network processing around 100k transactions per second.

Fortunately, it won’t take multiple years for scalability to be addressed and innovations for Ethereum 1.0 should be sufficient for some time:

A quick recap of the short and medium term of Ethereum scaling.

TLDR:

1. Ultra-high scaling with sharding + rollups will be possible *in phase 1*
2. Sharding is NOT "cancelled"
3. Get on a rollup asap; you get 100x scaling even without eth2 pic.twitter.com/fXW0Q3iAxu

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 5, 2020

Some of Ethereum’s rivals have already delivered faster transaction speeds but at the cost of decentralisation. The so-called “trilemma” in blockchain development is that trade-offs between speed, decentralisation, and security must be made.

Ethereum is focused on being decentralised as there are already plenty of fast and secure centralised platforms to choose from.

And it's also not decentralised. But if you lower the buy-in to something even halfway accessible while still trying to keep security high, it takes forever to get the guarantees. You can take turns faster, but then your whole chain fills up with signatures. It gets bad fast.

— Jeff Coleman | Jeff.eth (@technocrypto) November 21, 2020

While plenty of “Ethereum killers” have emerged, none have come anywhere close to stealing the crown. Ethereum simply has multitudes more developers and daily active users than any other decentralised platform.

The Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain launched with more than 21,000 validators around the globe and over 674,000 ETH staked. For a six-year-old project, the growth, community, and excitement around Ethereum is astounding.

Perhaps more importantly, real-world companies are building on, exploring, or supporting Ethereum—including large multinationals like Microsoft, Intel, Accenture, and others that just a few years ago most would never have expected.

Ethereum is also gaining traction as a currency and investment asset. While Bitcoin is the leader in mainstream recognition – and currently has more store-of-value properties – several SEC-reporting Ethereum ETFs have appeared this year.

We look forward to seeing what decentralised app developers build in the coming years. An Ethereum-based peer-to-peer stack for collaboratively building software even launched this week.

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Tags: beacon chain, blockchain, dapps, decentralised, decentralised apps, defi, Developers, eth 2, ethereum, ethereum 2.0, featured