The Death of Ethereum Mining

Ethereum is a world computer that is able to execute peer-to-peer smart contracts. The best way to understand how Ethereum works is to visualize it like this: think of Ethereum as the OS of the Internet and Ether (ETH) as the native currency of this OS. The second version of Ethereum, commonly known as “”Ethereum 2.0” will be much more than a simple upgrade. New features will allow users to build decentralized applications on top of Ethereum in new ways, while also making it faster and lighter — perfect for IoT devices. So what exactly are these new features? Let’s find out!

The Ethereum 2.0 Roadmap

The original Ethereum roadmap was published in 2016, and it included two phases. Phase 1 was intended to be completed in 2017 and was supposed to be a “minor upgrade” to the network in order to make it work efficiently with a large number of users. Phase 2 was supposed to bring a full “rewrite” of the Ethereum blockchain with new architecture intended to support large-scale decentralized applications. Unfortunately, due to some unexpected issues, the development of Phase 2 was postponed. Now, Ethereum developers are working hard to finish Phase 1 and start Phase 2. Phase 1 is expected to be complete in 2020, and Phase 2 will follow shortly in 2021.

Sharding

Sharding is also known as “state partitioning”. It is a process in which different nodes of the network store different parts of the blockchain. This allows the network to scale efficiently, as only a certain number of nodes need to be online to process a given transaction. The nodes that host a specific part of the blockchain are called “validators”. The Ethereum team designed sharding in such a way that nodes can be added or removed from a validator group. The team also developed a system by which a validator group can “vote” to make a change when necessary. Sharding is expected to make Ethereum 2.0 much more scalable, allowing it to process thousands of transactions per second.

Ether re-usage

This is a process that allows the same Ether to be used multiple times in different ways, similar to how gas is used by smart contracts. Gas is used to process a transaction and is paid in Ether. It is impossible to use the same Ether twice, but with Ethereum 2.0, it will be possible to have the same Ether used by two different smart contracts. This will also help with scaling, as the network will be able to process more transactions with the same amount of Ether. Ether re-usage is also expected to increase the speed of transactions on the Ethereum 2.0 network. When many transactions are processed at the same time by the network, they are prioritized based on how much Ether the user paid. If you pay more, your transaction is prioritized higher and is processed first. Ether re-usage will allow the network to process these transactions more efficiently.

eWasm: a new execution context for Ethereum

Ethereum is written in a programming language called Solidity. eWasm is the new execution context for Solidity, which makes it possible to write decentralized apps (DApps) on the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain. The eWasm programming language was developed in collaboration with a team of developers from the WebAssembly project. It is a low-level programming language designed to run on the Virtual Machine. The eWasm virtual machine was designed to be compatible with the EVM, and it will be used to execute Solidity code on the Ethereum 2.0 network. This means that it will be possible to run decentralized apps created in Solidity on the Ethereum 2.0 network. The eWasm virtual machine will also be used to execute smart contracts on the Ethereum 2.0 network, which makes it possible to use many different programming languages to write smart contracts.

Conclusion

The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will bring many new features to the network, making it faster and lighter than it is now. One of the most important features of Ethereum 2.0 is sharding, which will allow the network to scale efficiently. Ether re-usage will also help with scalability, making it possible for the network to process more transactions with the same amount of Ether. eWasm makes it possible to run decentralized apps created in Solidity on the Ethereum 2.0 network. These new features will make the network more efficient and ready for large-scale decentralized applications.