The Ethereum platform continues to be one of the main engines of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, and Ether managed to remain the number one competitor of Bitcoin, even though new promising tokens were launched in the past year.
Following the successful implementation of the Constantinople update, the Ethereum developers are starting to hint towards a new transition phase called Serenity. Since the network’s inception, they have been aiming towards a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and that could become reality by January 2020.
Serenity and Ethereum 2.0 possible launch date
So far, 2019 had been a good year for Ether and people who trade ETH with Atecs Capital saw the second-largest cryptocurrency almost doubling in market cap, currently standing above $28 billion.
What is being known as Ethereum 2.0 will bring some important changes to the blockchain as it will include proof-of-stake transaction validation. Unlike the current proof-of-work system used by Ethereum at the present time, rewards will be generated to users who attest to the validity of the blockchain by locking a portion of their tokens on the network. Based on the amount stored, miners will compete for network rewards.
Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, already made some mentions towards that direction, since he suggested opening up the deposit contracts for staked Ether in October this year. The official announcement will be made during the Devcon event, an annual meeting held by the Ethereum Foundation:
“The idea here is to try and launch the deposit contract ahead of the targeted genesis date so that we allow time for validators to make their deposits… One idea is to do a deposit contract ceremony at Devcon. One of the reasons for having this very public ceremony is so that we can all agree on the exact address of the deposit contract and avoid scam deposit contracts.”
Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum founder, recently told CoinDesk that a January 2020 implementation of the Serenity Proof-of-Stake transaction validation is “feasible”. Also according to Drake, researchers are targeting a minimum 2 million ETH staked on the Ethereum 2.0 network in order to have a stable launch.
Overall, the latest news coming from Ethereum are encouraging and suggest that the network will continue to dominate the blockchain industry. Even though the transition to a completely different verification mechanism could pose some challenges, Ethereum developers seem determined to move along with their view.