#48: All Eyes on Eth2
This newsletter is supported by Chorus One, a provider of staking services in decentralized networks.
Today marks a very special day, the threshold of 524,288 ETH needed to be deposited for the launch of the Beacon Chain has been met. In other words, the Beacon Chain will launch December 1st — cheers, Ethereum community!
To celebrate this milestone, the Staking Economy team has decided to organize a virtual event focused around Eth2 staking. It will take place December 3, 6–8pm UTC and feature speakers from client teams (Prysmatic Labs and Lighthouse), staking pools (Rocketpool and Lido), as well as an intro to Eth2 and it’s economics by Collin Myers from ConsenSys Codefi.
🌐 Ecosystem
Eth2 AMA
The Ethereum Foundation held an AMA about Eth2 on Reddit with Vitalik Buterin and members of their research team. Providing an exhaustive report on the AMA would go beyond the scope of this newsletter. Hence, we’ll only share our caveats and highly encourage you to check out the whole discussion on the r/ethereum subreddit.
Instead of a sequential, phased roll-out, there is now a “parallelization of phases. […] Essentially, (i) light client support, (ii) data sharding (aka “phase 1”) and (iii) the merge are all being specced in such a way as to be independent of each other, so each piece can be implemented “when ready” regardless of what stage the other pieces are at.” According to Vitalik, sharding could be implemented fairly quickly, however, seeing the merge of Eth1 becoming a shard of Eth2 within the next 12 months “is not realistic.” In the short-to-medium term, eWASM has been de-emphasized in the roadmap. This tweet by Vitalik provides a big picture overview of the Eth2 roadmap for the next ~5 to 10 years.
Instead of becoming obsolete, layer-2 scaling solutions could “become much more powerful with Eth2”. Having a “massive data availability layer” would remove current bottlenecks and L2’s could become the execution environments for Eth2.
Staking Rewards Ultimate Eth2 Guide
A guide to all the different ways on how ETH holders can participate in staking nicely broken down into what kind of holders specific solutions are targeting. If you are looking to get involved with staking on Ethereum or just want to get an overview of what is out there, this is probably the best place to start!
Validator Operator Choice for Eth2
One of the Eth2 staking pool solutions, Lido, published a post on how their design is mitigating risks for ETH holders that decide to stake via the staking pool. The post specifically goes into slashing and the risk of node operators going out of business before transfers are enabled on the new Ethereum network. If a node operator shuts down their node(s), it will result in staked ETH being held hostage without earning rewards until transfers are enabled on the new chain. Lido plans to mitigate this by only allowing professional staking providers to host staking nodes for their protocol. By doing that, the goal is to minimize both types of risks, with further mitigations, e.g. through insurance protocols, also being up for discussion to be adopted by the Lido DAO treasury. Providers will be accepted into Lido through a vote by the Lido DAO. Check out the post for more information.
⛓️ Network Updates
Oasis Mainnet Launch
The Oasis mainnet upgrade successfully took place on November 18. After transfers were enabled, ROSE tokens are now available to trade. Almost a week after the launch, already 47% (~3.6bn of the 7.7bn total tokens (excluding staking rewards)) of the token supply are currently staked across the 80 validators that support this network. If you are looking to stake ROSE tokens, make sure to check out Anthem, which enables you to delegate with Ledger, as well as get other information about your account.
Solana Foundation Delegation Pattern
The Solana Foundation committed 80% of its treasury (10MM SOL) to their delegation strategy. The main objective is to maximize the minimum number of nodes comprising 33% of the total stake on the network. Maximizing this number results in more decentralization and censorship resistance. The strategy will first be implemented on Solanas incentivized testnet, Tour De Sol, before coming to Mainnet Beta towards the end of the year. In the first of three blog posts, which will provide a clear picture of Solanas staking mechanics, the foundation provides deep insights into their strategy as well as requirements for node operators to receive foundation delegations.
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Staking Economy is written by Felix Lutsch from Chorus One with contributions by Chris Remus (Chainflow), and Robert Dörzbach (Staking Facilties). Join us in the Staking Economy Telegram to discuss staking. Opinions expressed are our own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our companies. All content is for informational purposes only and not intended as investment advice.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on November 24, 2020.
