Ethereum 2.0 Proof-of-Stake Testnet Beacon Blockchain Is Now Live

After many months of challenging work, the Ethereum group announced the public testnet release of Ethereum 2.0 proof of stake beacon chain, which will allow customers to stake ether (ETH) and get incentivized, according to a Medium Blog article on May 7, 2019. So, it implies that Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) testnet beacon blockchain is now alive.

Preston Van Loon, co-founderof sharding developer Prysmatic Labs, through a Medium Post, revealed the development. Ethereum 2.0 is the latest innovative Ethereum chain with improved safety, scalability and decentralization.

Ethereum 2.0 is created out of many years of difficult work intended to create a completely decentralized, permissionless platform for cryptocurrencies.

The group has rendered it apparent that ETH2 is a completely unique blockchain network, so it will not be upgraded as a hard fork on the current PoW chain. Alternatively, funds and value will be transmitted to it from the proof of work chain, through a “one-way deposit smart contract.”

Particularly, in order to turn into validators and engage in the proof of stake consensus to receive profits, interested people should stake 3.20 ETH from the Goerli test network. Goerli Testnet is a cross-client, proof-of-authority screening system for Ethereum.

Once an organization becomes a validator, incentives or fines are accrued throughout its lifespan, based on its operations. The group further explained that:

“The protocol favours liveness, that is, the chain can continue even if a large number of validators are offline, although being offline will cause deposits to eventually become penalized and for those affected individuals to lose capital.”

The announcement also specifies that shards are Ethereum 2.0’s key idea. Shards are private chains that handle smart contracts, activities and remain organized by the beacon chain, which is the root chain. Van Loon’s article describes the benefits of sharding execution:

“Having shards allows for horizontal scalability of the system, as transactions can be processed in parallel compared to the current Ethereum Proof-of-Work chain.”

Loon argues the testnet is freely accessible and offer links to a devoted website manual, which illustrates how to begin staking. The present testnet model does not provide smart contract assistance, has only one user and has a distinct setup than anticipated from mainnet ETH 2.0.

Other distinct features included in Testnet are as follows:

Ethereum core programmers indicated that code for the initial-stage switch to a PoS consensus algorithm could be done by the end of June. It can be noted that in April, ether volume on decentralized apps (DApps) recorded a fresh high, but fresh DApps launched on Ethereum chain are relatively small.