Ethereum 2.0 launch in 2020 after all? Buterin speaks out

July 14, 2020 John Ethereum 0

  • The launch of Ethereum 2.0, as agreed by some Ethereum core developers, is now scheduled for 2020 after all.
  • The “agreement” was also made under pressure from Ethereum inventor Vitalik Buterin, but an exact date remains questionable.

The launch of Ethereum 2.0, phase 0 is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated events in crypto-space in 2020, but expectations were put on hold last Friday when Justin Drake, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, stated in a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything session that he expects Ethereum 2.0 to be delayed further. According to Drake, the Thanksgiving on November 26th and the holidays in December make it unlikely that Ethereum 2.0 will be launched before 2020.

As such, I’m now inclined to say that the earliest practical date for genesis is something like January 3, 2021 (Bitcoin’s 12th anniversary).

Drake justified his statement with the fact that before the leek there must be at least one public testnet with more than 3 clients, an “attack network” provided with incentives, a bug bounty program as well as a public testnet with more than 3 clients each, which runs smoothly for at least 2 to 3 months. Although the inventor of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, also expressed similar requirements for the launch in the past, he contradicted Drake:

I personally quite disagree with this and I would favor launching phase 0 significantly before that date. Eth1 took four months from the first multi-client testnet to launch (~end of March 2015 Olympic to end of May 2015 for eth1 launch), and I’d argue the four-month clock started ticking for us at the beginning of July when Altona launched.

From the ranks of the Ethereum Core developers, other voices supporting Buterin also spoke out. Danny Ryan from the Ethereum Foundation, for example, explained that he still expects a launch in 2020.

I and others are still betting on the year 2020.

Another influential voice of the Ethereum core developers, Hudson Jameson, also expressed his support for Buterin’s statement. Preston Valoon of Prysmatic Labs, a development company working on Ethereum 2.0, bought 32 “Yes-ETH shares” on the Omen prediction market, betting that ETH 2.0, Phase 0 will be launched before 2021.

Because of the numerous contradictions Drake finally gave in and declared that he heard the criticism and wrote that he wants to deliver ETH 2 in 2020.

Loud and clear! 🙂

The community wants phase 0 genesis in 2020—not one day late. The goal is set; let’s ship.

Finally, he also pointed out that the development of Ethereum 2.0 has been made unnecessarily difficult by many design iterations, many community clients versus the Ethereum Foundation-led client and “libp2p vs. devp2p; BLS12-381 vs.BN254”. According to Drake, a launch a year or two ago would have been possible if those decisions had not been made. However, this will “pay off for decades”, says Drake

Despite the “agreement” that now seems to have been reached, the Ethereum 2.0 launch date remains more questionable than ever. In order to actually realize the launch of ETH 2.0, all stakeholders, i.e. miners, client developers, core developers and companies involved in Ethereum must give their “Go”. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether this can actually be achieved by the end of the year.


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