Ethereum 2.0 has fully converted to use BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) signature as its core signature algorithm.

Rollup is a collective name for a large class of Layer-2 capacity expansion schemes.

Another minor change is the CREATE2 of EIP 1014. It has a significant effect on the design of the second layer.

Over the past few years, the expectations in the rise of blockchain technology have not achieved. However, many new explorations have come up and were proven to be quite helpful and applicable.

They have been absorbed and made the blockchain a more robust system. In addition to technology, people have also explored the governance of open source communities and the funding of public goods, and have come out of some ways. Some of these innovations are in Ethereum, which discussed here.

Rollup is a collective name for a large class of Layer-2 capacity expansion schemes. It refers explicitly to performing complex calculations and state maintenance off-chain first. Then it uses the cheaper CALLDATA to save the data related to state changes through the contract.

The Layer-2 scalability solution called Rollup has been gaining momentum, but, may not be essential whether Rollup used. The Layer-2 solution uses Validity Proof or Fraud Proof.

The previous Layer-2 solutions, like the status channel and Plasma, cannot prevent the operator or user from submitting non-latest status when the user withdraws.

Presently, Ethereum 2.0 has fully converted to use BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) signature as its core signature algorithm.

The original design of BLS signature is to find a digital signature scheme with a shorter signature length in the low-bandwidth communication environment so that it can replace the traditional RSA signature (1024bit signature length) and ECDSA signature (320bit signature length).

These advantages make BLS signatures very suitable for various authentication designs in Ethereum, including Ethereum 2.0.

Ethereum 2.0, will have hundreds of thousands or even millions of validators. The Beacon chain will be used to assign the validators to the committee according to absolute randomness, and the committee will vote on the proposed block.

There was also an addition to the function of verifying Equihash PoW (Zcash’s PoW) in the Ethereum contract. This opened the possibility of relay transactions and atomic swap transactions between Zcash and Ethereum.

If you consider Zcash and ETH as two separate ledgers, verifying the Equihash PoW in the Ethereum contract is to ensure that Zcash can confirm the changes to the Zcash ledgers in the Ethereum contract.

Ethereum has two types of accounts. One of them is an external account. It is a user account controlled by a key. Its function is fixed and can only perform necessary transfers and generate contract accounts.

Since the contract can customise logic, the features of the contract account are extensible. Another minor change is the CREATE2 of EIP 1014. It has a significant effect on the design of the second layer.

Presently, Ethereum cannot predict the contract address when the contract deployed. This is because the contract address is determined by the sender’s address and the sender’s nonce when the agreement implemented, but the sender’s nonce cannot predict.

CREATE2 helps provide a new contract deployment method. This contract address determined by the sender address, salt, and initialisation code.

All thee suggest that Ethereum is doing everything in its will to expand and provide better functions and technology to its users. It will be interesting to see what it has to offer this year.