• According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum is on track towards the market launch of phase 0 of ETH 2.0 in July with the two most recently launched testnets.
• Buterin commented on the launch of the Optimistic Rollup demo as a success that will allow Ethereum 1.0 to reach 1,000 transactions per second.

Vitalik Buterin has taken the stage for the Consensus Distributed event and spoke about the progress for the launch of Ethereum’s 2.0 phase 0. The inventor of Ethereum spoke about the two testnet that are currently active and showed his optimism on the launch of phase 0 by July this year.

Also known as Serenity, Ethereum 2.0 has had several delays in the past. However, in the last few months the Ethereum core developers have managed to launch the «Topaz» testnet which is supposed be active for about 3 months to test all parameters of the future phase 0. In addition, the first multi-client testnet, also known as Schlesi v0.11, was launched.

During his participation in the Consensus Distributed event, Buterin emphasized the importance of both testnets. As reported by CNF, the Topaz test network has an identical configuration as the mainnet in phase 0. For Topaz, the validators have to deposit 32 ETHs on the Goerli ETH1 testnet in order to participate. Schlesi differs from Topaz in the sense that it is a slightly modified version of the configuration of the mainnet, which is focused on the different Ethereum clients. Schlesi aims to work with the following clients: Prysm and Lighthouse, Cortex, Lodestar, Nimbus, Teku and Trinity.

Both test networks are part of the prerequisites for phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0. According to Ethereum’s core developers, phase 0 is scheduled to be launched on July 30th,, the fifth anniversary of Ethereum’s birth. When asked whether this date can be met, Buterin explained:

I think so, Ethereum 2.0 already has two testnet, Topaz and Schlesi, launched a week ago (…) That’s the first phase of ETH 2.0 that will bring the Proof-of-Stake (…) It’s moving forward on all fronts.

In contrast, a recent BitMEX study found that the introduction of Ethereum 2.0 is highly likely to lead to complications. This is due to the complexity of the project and the amount of variables involved, according to BitMEX

Ethereum 2.0 is exceptionally complicated. With so many committees, shards and voting types it seems reasonably likely that something will go wrong and that there will be significant further delays.

Ethereum could reach 1,000 transactions per second

On the other hand, Buterin referred to the Optimistic Rollups demo launched by Synthetix and the Optimism research group. The launch of this second layer solution is an important advance to improve Ethereum’s scalability. According to Buterin, Optimistic Rollups could theoretically increase the number of transactions that the Ethereum network can process up to 1,000 transactions per second (TPS):

There’s a lot of work on scalability. There’s also a lot of work on the cryptography and privacy that will make the technology possible to implement on the Ethereum public chain.