Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin believes the Ethereum (ETH) platform, which is the world’s second largest cryptocurrency network, will become around 1,000x more scalable within the next 18 to 24 months.
According to Lubin, the Ethereum blockchain will be able to handle 1,000x more transactions during a given time period – after the set of upgrades associated with Ethereum 2.0 have been activated.
New Ethereum Clients Being Developed
Lubin, whose comments came during an interview with Cointelegraph on May 11th, 2019, said that the Ethereum 2.0 updates, also referred to as Serenity, have been divided into four different phases. At present, there are eight research and development (R&D) teams that are working on building new Ethereum clients, which will be used when Ethereum 2.0 goes live.
Commenting on Ethereum’s ongoing development, Lubin remarked:
In a [few] months, we should have a fully operational testnet and possibly, by the end of this year, we’ll have a fully operational phase 0 Ethereum 2.0.
The founder of Ethereum development studio, ConsenSys, mentioned that the blockchain network’s developers are working on various approaches which involve connecting the old Ethereum chain to the upgraded, or latest, chain.
Upcoming Upgrades Have Undergone Extensive Testing
According to Lubin, Ether tokens will be transferred from the existing Ethereum chain to the newer one (after Ethereum 2.0 activation) and that “there may be bidirectional mechanisms” used during the process.
Going on to address concerns related to network security (among other issues), when Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake (PoS)-based consensus, Lubin noted that the planned PoS update has been subjected to extensive research and testing.
Currently, Ethereum’s developers are also working on integrating private transactions (as an option), Lubin revealed.
Ethereum PoS Testnet Now Available
On May 7th, 2019, Preston Van Loon, the co-founder of Prysmatic Labs (an organization focused on scaling the Ethereum protocol with sharding and PoS), confirmed that Ethereum 2.0 will feature significant improvements in security.
Preston also noted that Ethereum’s testnet is now publicly accessible and that there’s also a website, which provides guidance and detailed instructions on how users may stake their coins or tokens on the newly launched network.
However, recent reports indicate that staking, after Ethereum 2.0 related upgrades have been activated, will not yield significant profits.
As suggested in a proposal by Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, transaction validators on the smart contract platform may receive 5% interest (per annum) on a minimum deposit of 32 ETH (appr. $6,173 at current prices). However, Ether miners may only earn around $41, or a 0.8% return on investment – after factoring in the costs of purchasing hardware equipment and electricity costs.
