Yes, there might be the setback of the Constantinople hardfork, but ethereum core developers are looking far ahead towards a brighter future for the ethereum blockchain. One of those areas is the Ethereum 2.0 the next major upgrade that will solve most of ethereum’s scalability problems.
The co-creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin recently talked up plans towards the “future of ethereum” including the Proof of Stake era and Casper consensus system. During his speech at the recently concluded edition of the Blockchain Connect Conference which held in San Francisco, Buterin declared that Casper would launch on a test network as early as this year much to the excitement to the teeming community ethereum supporters.
What does Casper Mean?
Ethereum is currently the third largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalization. It has been plagued by issues of blockchain scalability—which essentially means the limits on the amount of transactions the network can process. Part of the solution to this problem lies in a new consensus system which is based on a Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm as against the Proof of Work (PoW) currently being used. This is known as Casper.
In this PoS consensus, nodes who will participate in the network verification process stake a percentage of their ethereum holdings as a safety precaution to prevent the node from acting maliciously. Also, the main blockchains not determined by the longest chain rather using the GHOST consensus algorithm; particularly the Last Message Driven chain rule.
There are, however, two variations of the Casper implementation; first the Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG) pioneered by Vitalik Buterin and then Casper the Friendly GHOST: Correct-by-Construction (CBC) pioneered by developer Vlad Zamfir. Buterin had earlier explained that the Caper protocol as emphasis on Finality.
Buterin’s Casper combines the PoS with PoW and will ease the transition into the new era. It will be the first to be implemented before the CBC Casper which Buterin agrees will have more elegance to it.
What will happen to Constantinople hardfork?
Later today (Friday), ethereum core developers will have a conference call where they will set a new launch date for the Constantinople hardfork. After the security bug was found just before launch, the developers agreed to postpone the launch noting that there was not enough time to fix the vulnerability before the launch time.
Though the delay, a second time for this particular upgrade, raised concerns and even affected the price of Ether, it will be seen as the right decision to prevent security threat and loss of funds. Emphasis now is on all nodes to upgrade to the latest version of the client software so as not to be forked out of a consensus when the upgrade eventually launches.
Constantinople is expected to begin the transition from the PoW to the PoS leading the way for ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0: What to Expect
Buterin, while taking questions at the blockchain conference, expressed his confidence that the Beacon Chain, the second layer of the Ethereum 2.0 overall architecture. He noted that the Ethereum 2.0 will be able to manage the Casper protocol and achieve sharding function—shard chains are on a more advanced layer of the architecture.
| Name | Price | 24H % |
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Ethereum (ETH) Price Watch
Ether [ETH] is currently trading at $123 to the USD, making very little change in the last 24 hours. It is however down by almost 4 percent week on week. ETH market cap is still around $12.8 billion putting it at third position on the coinmarketcap leaderboard still below Ripple’s XRP.
Solomon Sunny is the market reporter for Smartereum, one of the global leaders in Ethereum, blockchain and currency news. He produces technical price updates on digital currencies and writes recent developments about blockchain.
