I want to add more clarity on where Ethereum currently stands. I am one of the devs that worked on proof of stake and the future of the Ethereum protocol, bundled into an umbrella term called "Ethereum 2.0".

Eth2 is a monumental research effort to create a blockchain that makes no compromises on security, scalability, and decentralization. Given Ethereum is live today, secures a ton of value, and runs a lot of applications, it is almost impossible to upgrade to 2.0 via a simple network upgrade. As such, the project is split into phases. The first phase is a proof of stake chain that runs _in parallel_ to Ethereum today. People can join as validators via a "one-way burn" smart contract. The next phase is then "merging" the state of Ethereum today with this new chain using proof of stake via a docking process. That is, Ethereum will continue to function normally, but mining will be disabled and consensus will utilize proof of stake instead. My implementation of Eth2 is a client called Prysm written in Go here (https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm).

Previous attempts at proof of stake were either too expensive, too centralized, or hard to scale to a large enough number of validators. After many years of research and hard work, and leveraging really awesome cryptography for signature aggregation called BLS (Boneh–Lynn–Shacham), the first phase launched December 1st, 2020 and the current proof of stake chain is now securing over $10bn worth of value at the consensus layer.

A few important things to keep in mind:

- Ethereum development for its future is quite decentralized, with 4 different teams having implemented high-quality, production clients for proof of stake. These teams are independent of the Ethereum Foundation. Most other blockchains have only one, canonical client implementation that has very large majority share

- The "merge" is happening later this year or possibly very early 2022

- The technology used in Eth2 is quite a breakthrough in cryptography and I urge those curious to dig deeper. Using BLS signatures, the protocol can support millions of validators at the consensus layer

EDIT: readability

There's a gold rush to accumulate ETH for staking reward payouts, and there is a new fee burn mechanism that will make ETH more scarce than BTC on a production basis. Demand for ETH seems to also be driven by DeFi products, NFTs and huge enthusiasm for the upgrade to PoS (July/Aug).

I don't have an ETH position, but this is my understanding of price action.

https://twitter.com/DocumentEther is a pretty interesting read

I have high hopes for Ethereum. Bitcoin has no plans to ever move away from the "burn arbitrarily increasing quantities of electricity" approach to security. Ethereum is willing to experiment, and is willing to be pragmatic in the pursuit of scaling while still not sacrificing decentralization/uncensorability.

There are a number of innovations coming out on smaller alternative chains, but the Ethereum community still seems humble and nimble enough to adopt any of those innovations that work. That combined with its strong network effect make it likely to win.

ETH is the only crypto I’ve bought because it’s the only one that seemed to bring real value. It seems that with ETH2 it’s going to be the backbone for everything in this space, which will mean built in long term liquidity.

As far as I can tell, liquidity from every other coin seems to only come from constantly trying to convince people to buy it.

PoS is coming to ETH and MimbleWimble to LTC, good times ahead. It's hard to keep up.

And tether breaks $52 billion, $31 billion this year. With that exponential rate of printing we'll soon see six and then prob seven figure prices of bitcoin and co

How many events have the ability to single-handedly takedown the crypto-ecosystem?

Edit: I'm asking because this is now mainstream and this is a thought experiment that should be well understood by now. It's hard to get a straight answer about the real world value of these instuments, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised of the [non-]response here. The problem is if questions like this continue to be scoffed at then a lot of people can get hurt.

looking forward to see L2 scaling in JULY :)

Will the transaction fees for ETH ever adjust downward?