Buterin proposed ideas for improving Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin put forward a number of ideas to address some of the obstacles to the development of the Ethereum 2.0 ecosystem, which is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2020.

The main differences between the new Ethereum chain are the switch to the Proof-Of-Stake algorithm, staking support and the use of sharding to increase throughput.

Ability to transfer ETH between networks 1.0 and 2.0

It is assumed that with the current design of Ethereum 2.0, the creation of a two-way bridge between the two chains will be possible in years. This is due to security issues. Since there will be a limited number of validators in chain 2.0 for the first time, it is potentially vulnerable to attack. If there is two-way communication, by creating unconfirmed eth2 blocks, the attacker will be able to get ETH in chain 1.0.

Buterin proposed two possible ways to create a bridge in a closer perspective. One of them is to use the 2.0 light client chain 2.0 in chain 1.0 to obtain information about the state of the latter.

The second way is to create a voting period in the network 1.0 to confirm eth2 blocks, in order to give time “for human intervention if something goes wrong”.

For greater security, Buterin proposes to include a bridge for large transactions (for example, from 5 million ETH) and set a high voting threshold (for example, 80%).

Both solutions to the problem will require changes on the side of Ethereum 1.0.

Problems migrating users and developers to Ethereum 2.0

In another report in the blog founder Ethereum drew attention to possible failures in the transition from the initial chain 2.0. According to him, ordinary users are not threatened with the implementation of the roadmap.

Developers may experience crashes due to changes in gas prices. Therefore, Buterin invited them to make sure that their application does not require a large number of witnesses. It’s better to limit the number of storage slots and contracts for one transaction, he said.

Initial Ethereum 2.0 network bandwidth increase

Using sharding should increase the bandwidth of Ethereum 2.0, but it is assumed that due to the low capacity of the network, it will initially be even lower than that of 1.0.

To solve this problem, Buterin proposed to radically reduce the number of shards – from the planned 1024 to 64. According to him, this will provide an advantage at the initial stage due to faster and easier connections between segments. In the future, the number of shards can be increased, he said.

Recall, the Ethereum 2.0 test network was launched in May.

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