The Ethereum 2.0 Testnet Launches in Two Weeks

The ethereum 2.0 public testnet is to launch on August 4th at 1 or 2PM London time according to Danny Ryan, the ethereum 2.0 coordinator.

In a public statement in the testnets discussion board following the announcement of the attacknet on Monday, Ryan said:

“After discussions with client teams, the next multi-client testnet (mainnet config including min validator numbers) will have a min genesis time of aug 4 (likely 1 or 2pm utc).

We’ll also be showcasing ‘Launchpad’ on this net, the educational deposit interface aimed at hobbyists. I expect the deposit contract and config to be made public in next couple of days.

Note, ‘min genesis time’ is approximately the time the network will start if min validator deposits are made prior to 48 hours before that time. Otherwise, the time will be triggered by meeting the min validator count whenever it does.”

The deposit contract interface has previously been leaked with it all looking pretty slick and it’s to launch now in a couple of days.

People are meant to deposit fake eth in there, with that fake eth then going to the testnet which is to launch in precisely two weeks.

The testnet is then meant to run for about three months, meaning until November 4th. So the genesis block of ethereum 2.0 may well launch on November the 5th.

That genesis block creates a new Proof of Stake (PoS) network that has skeleton sharding in it.

That is, and in very simple terms, validators/stakers are bundled in their own node grouping, their own shard, with the beacon node coordinating their ‘movement.’

Initially these stakers don’t do much except reach consensus within the shard and within the whole PoS network regarding the Proof of Work (PoW) blocks.

Then the stakers will be given more work, starting with keeping stuff in their laptops or servers in the second stage of storage sharding.

After that stage the PoW chain is to be discarded by being merged into the PoS chain.

How such merger will happen exactly is not clear at this stage, but if they can do it then ethereum’s inflation will drop to near zero (0.22% a year).

Then full sharding will launch and if it does all work, theoretically ethereum should be able to reach world level scalability.

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