PoW will exit the stage of history after the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is completed?
Wu Shuo Author | Wu Zhuocheng
Editor of this issue | Colin Wu
Wu Shuo Author | Wu ZhuochengEditor of this issue | Colin Wu
Will Ethereum's proof-of-work mechanism (PoW) exit the stage of history after the 2.0 upgrade is completed?
This sentence contains two questions: first, whether the Ethereum PoW must be terminated; second, whether the termination occurs after the 2.0 upgrade is completed.
Answering these two questions first requires understanding the logic of sharding. At present, the Ethereum network has only one public chain, and the upgraded Ethereum will set up multiple public chains (64 are planned in the early stage, and more will be added in the future). Each chain only needs to keep the current data, and does not need to verify the data of the entire Ethereum network, so the nodes will be smaller and more lightweight. The beacon chain launched on December 1 last year can be understood as the leading chain of Ethereum 2.0. Its main mission is to realize the PoS mechanism and replicate all the states of 1.0. After the shard chain goes online, it will be connected to the beacon chain, and the current Ethereum public chain will be docked on the entire network as one of the shard chains.
Therefore, many miners believe that PoW mining can continue to provide accounting services for one of the shard chains. This possibility did exist in the early days, because the initial planning of the beacon chain was only responsible for realizing the basic functions of PoS, and the functional contracts could only be executed after merging the current main chain. However, according to the current upgrade process, the Beacon Chain is already replicating the state of 1.0, so all the functions of the current Ethereum can be realized without PoW.
Not only that, because the number of nodes required for each chain is reduced, the difficulty of attacking a single chain will also decrease, resulting in a decrease in network security. The PoS mechanism can punish malicious nodes by confiscating pledged coins, but it is impossible to confiscate miners' hardware facilities under the PoW mechanism, so the existence of PoW is a hidden danger to the security of the network. Judging from the current public views of some large mining pools, there are fewer and fewer voices supporting the continued existence of PoW as a shard chain mining method or forking the existing Ethereum.So, does the end of PoW happen after the 2.0 upgrade is completed? It depends on the priority of merging and sharding. The sharding phase of Ethereum 2.0 will start around the second quarter of 2022. In the early point of view, since there are a large number of decentralized applications on the Ethereum 1.0 main chain, in order to allow these applications to transition smoothly to the PoS mechanism, the Ethereum community will allow the remaining 63 shard chains to connect to the beacon chain first. After the smart contract is executed normally, 1.0 and 2.0 will be merged. But it now appears that if the beacon chain successfully replicates all the features of 1.0, then the merge will not need to wait until the end of the shard.
Judging from the existing regular news channels, almost all opinions believe that merging is earlier than sharding.In other words, the current Ethereum chain will be connected to the beacon chain as the first shard chain, which means that the merger will be completed by the middle of next year at the latest, at which time PoW mining will exit the stage of history. Of course, the premise of all this is that the sharding phase is carried out as scheduled. If the upgrade plan of Ethereum is delayed again, the lower limit time for the merger will continue to be postponed.As for the upper limit time of the merger, you can pay attention to the specific opening time of the difficulty bomb. As part of the London upgrade, EIP-3554 postponed the difficulty bomb originally planned to be implemented in July this year to December, when the daily output of miners will be greatly reduced. therefore
The final opening time of the difficulty bomb can be regarded as a leading indicator of the end of PoW.If other protocols continue to delay the difficulty bomb after EIP-3554, it means that the upgrade conditions have not been fully met at that time, and a significant reduction in miners' income will cause harm to network security. Naturally, it is impossible to cancel the PoW mechanism. In fact, it is precisely because the Ethereum community considers that the current network cannot be maintained without a large number of miners that EIP-3554 will be launched to delay the difficulty bomb, which also makes the most radical views (think that the merger can be completed by the end of 2021) was adjudged wrong.
