If there is one thing anybody within the crypto industry wants to know, it is when Ethereum 2.0 will be launched.
There have been different predictions as to when the highly anticipated upgrade would happen, which would make the blockchain highly scalable and, at the same time, help to reduce the energy consumption to the barest minimum.
What is Ethereum 2.0?
ETH 2.0 is an upcoming update to the current ETH 1.0, which operates on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus. While the current consensus is PoW, the anticipated update aims to migrate to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
When this finally flies, it will help advance the network transaction throughput. This means that the average number of transactions per sec will increase from the current 15 to thousands.
Apart from that, the ETH 2.0 upgrade will also help address the historic high gas fee of the network. The gas fee is expected to decrease drastically to the level of its competitors.
Some analysts have even predicted that when the ETH 2.0 finally launches, it would send the asset’s price into a new ATH. According to some of these predictions, Ethereum’s price could rise to $13,000 or even higher, depending on the analysts.
When Should We Expect the Launch?
Per available information, some analysts within the industry had projected that the upgrade would happen within the second quarter of this year, but recent revelations by developers of the project show that the date might not be tenable, which has pushed many to believe that Ethereum 2.0 will not fly fully until 2023, citing pending phases as reasons.
Ordinarily, the launch is expected to come in three phases. The first of these stages is known as the “Phase 0,” where we would see the launch of a proof-of-stake blockchain dubbed Beacon Chain, launched primarily to function with Ethereum 2.0.
The second stage, dubbed Phase 1, would see the blockchain created in Phase 0 merged with Phase 1. This means the Beacon Chain and The Merge will join together to change the consensus entirely from a Proof of Work mechanism to a Proof of Stake scheme.
While in the last phase, the current chain, Ether 1.0, will incorporate ETH 2.0, functioning as one of 64 shards. These shards will help simplify the network loads as each shard will have a load allocated to them.
Only one of these phases, Phase 0, has been completed. Others have been met with different snags which are delaying the full launch of the network.
Thus, given all of the reasons above, the launch could happen towards the end of this year or by 2023.