Ethereum 2.0 gets underway

With Ethereum going backwards due to a lack of updates, Ethereum 2.0 addresses the central issue of scalability along with efficiency, sustainability and flexibility.

Ethereum 2.0 combines the three projects which are Proof-of-Stake (PoS), Sharding and EVM 2.0 which is eWSAM.

From PoW to PoS

Ethereum used to work on a Proof-of-Work consensus protocol however now it will move into Proof-of-Stake. Thus digital currency deposits will secure the blockchains which allow for validators to propose and vote for new blocks of transactions.

Sharding

Sharding will break the network into smaller units called shards, which helps the current situation of transactions in sequence. It allows for parallel processing of transactions, wherein each shard acts like a separate blockchain with its own account balance, smart contracts and transaction history.

The introduction of eWASM

However, the most highlighted update is the existing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) being replaced by eWASM which helps double the transaction on throughput rate in comparison to the EVM.

EVM is the main heart of Ethereum, and so eWASM gives a significant pump to the old heart. As Lane Rettig, an Ethereum developer explained to Coindesk the problem of EVM,

“I would make the case there wasn’t an enormous amount of design thinking put into it at the beginning. It was kind of like a tool – a swiss army knife is a way I would describe it – it does a bunch of things but not incredibly well.”

The ability to code Ethereum Smart Contracts in more languages

EWASM is similar to the Web Assembly Code which was created by the World Wide Web Consortium which maintains and standardises the web. Thus eWASM unlike its predecessor the EVM will allow developers to code in multiple programming languages, not just Ethereum’s language- Solidity. Therefore Ethereum now can give a fight back to the newcomers stealing its show like Tron which offers the same freedom to developers.

Zaki Manian a Twitter user shared his viewpoint on the problems of EVM in reply to the article by Coindesk on Twitter.

Come on the EVM is a terrible design. The 256 bit registers and the lack of a proper calling convention. It’s obviously a bad design that was basically driven by the need to easily implemented gas model and weakly informed by tons of relevant prior art — Zaki Manian (@zmanian) September 17, 2018

The eWASM code was built with hardware instructions and production in mind.

To get back up-to-date with the Ethereum market, take a look at our latest technical analysis article.