Ethereum’s roadmap is ambitious. In our last article, we described the Ethereum 2.0 vision.

As a recap, Ethereum 2.0 combines these key projects:

Proof-of-stake (Beacon Chain, Casper FFG)

Sharding

eWASM

Once delivered, Ethereum 2.0 will support massive on-chain transaction throughput, while balancing decentralisation and security. With this foundation, Ethereum has the potential to be:

A key piece of infrastructure for the world’s transfer of value;

A platform for new economic systems;

A hub for global collaboration;

Ethereum 2.0 is not being developed by a corporation; Ethereum is decentralised on multiple levels.

Vitalik says it best:

Blockchains are politically decentralized (no one controls them) and architecturally decentralized (no infrastructural central point of failure) but they are logically centralized (there is one commonly agreed state and the system behaves like a single computer) Vitalik Buterin (Meaning of Decentralization)

Additionally, Ethereum is operationally decentralised (no single entity is responsible for keeping the blockchain running).

So if no one controls Ethereum, how is Ethereum 2.0 being built?

This is one of many fascinating aspects of Ethereum. It has an organic quality that hopefully will contribute to how human organisation can scale up but remain inclusive.

The Ethereum protocol describes the interactions necessary to produce the Ethereum blockchain. It is a massive open source project. A large community of researchers and implementors propose ideas, discuss, refine, and implement the Ethereum protocol. The Ethereum Foundation are influential in this process and have highly regarded researchers and implementors, but decisions are made by the community through consensus.

The software used to run Ethereum is called a client or node. Many Ethereum client implementations exist, written by different software development groups (all are open-source).