Ethereum 2.0 Launch Inches Closer as Genesis Block Gets Mined on Testnet

The Ethereum team has announced the successful mining and validation of the Ethereum 2.0 genesis block on testnet. Vitalik Buterin and the entire development team are working tirelessly to ensure Ethereum’s transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm becomes a reality by July, according to a recent Reddit post.

Ethereum Inches Closer to Proof-of-Stake

As reported by BTCManager on April 14, 2020, Prysmatic Labs, one of the Ethereum development teams announced the launch of the ETH 2.0 Topaz testnet as a replacement to the Sapphire testnet, as part of efforts to ensure the roll-out of the much-anticipated Ethereum 2.0 is as frictionless as possible.

Fast forward to April 17, 2020, and the Ethereum team has reached another significant milestone in their journey towards ETH 2.0 as the genesis block was mined and validated successfully.

A testnet is an environment set aside for the sole purpose of testing. It allows application developers to experiment without wreaking havoc on the network. 

For the uninitiated, Ethereum 2.0 is designed to transition the smart contracts blockchain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, replacing the current proof-of-work (POW) system which is computationally intensive.

Also, ETH 2.0 is designed to eliminate all the issues plaguing the Ethereum network, including scalability, security and most importantly, it will allow those who hold large amounts of Ether (ETH) to receive more tokens as rewards for verifying Ethereum transactions.

What’s more, Ethereum 2.0 will be faster and more robust, as it will support sharding, a process that splits up processes on the Ethereum network into smaller nodes, enabling it to handle more transactions.

At current, the Ethereum blockchain network can only handle a meager 15 transactions per second, which is a piece of cake compared to Visa’s 45,000 transactions per second, however, the team plans to change that with ETH 2.0.

If all goes as planned, ETH 2.0 is expected to go live later in July 2020, as the original launch date of January 2020 was pushed back due to a change in the sharding plan.

Earlier in March 2020, ETH 2.0 passed a security audit by Least Authority, a blockchain security consulting firm. 

At press time, the price of Ether (ETH) sits at $181, with a market capitalization of 20.0 billion as seen on Coinmarketcap.