• After its launch the Topaz Ethereum 2.0 testnet has reached about 20,000 active validators.
• The testnet has the configuration that Ethereum 2.0 is expected to use when its phase 0 is launched.

After its launch on April 15, 2020, the Ethereum 2.0 testnet registers about 20,000 active validators. According to Etherscan, the “Topaz” testnet has 18,605 active validators, at the time of publication, while 1.015 validators have a “pending” status – all this in less than a week after its activation.

Progress on the transition to Ethereum 2.0

As reported by CNF, Ethereum has made significant progress over the past two months. In February, the formal verification (PV) of the deposit smart contract byte codes and the audit of the phase 0 specifications were completed. Both were important achievements for Ethereum in its transition to Ethereum 2.0.

Ethereum 2.0 is also known as Serenity, and its phase 0 will mark the beginning of the transition from Ethereum and its poorly scalable proof of work (PoW) blockchain to the highly scalable proof of stake (PoS) blockchain. For this purpose, the basic functionalities of the Beacon Chain will be introduced first. Ethereum’s core developers have indicated that the launch of Phase 0 is planned for July 30th this year, the fifth anniversary of Ethereum. However, the date depends on the progress and development of “Topaz”, which will be actively tested for about three months.

After the Ruby and Sapphire testnet, this is the latest achievement in the run-up to the launch of Ethereum 2.0 The first block was mined and validated on April 18th and will use the same configuration that will be deployed with launch of Ethereum 2.0, as the team behind the development, Prysmatic Labs, explained. The minimum deposit for a validator to be part of the test network is 32 ETH.

Prysmatic Labs also published the recommended system requirements for participation in the testnet. The recommended operating systems are a 64-bit Linux operating system, Mac OS X, Windows, an Intel Core i7-4770 or AMD FX-8310 or better, 8 GB of RAM, 100 GB of available SSD storage, and a broadband Internet connection.

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, recently responded to the critics of the proof of stake in a series of tweets. Buterin responded in particular to the co-creator of the cryptocurrency Grimm, Andrew COP, who questioned the sustainability of the block rewards within the PoS. Buterin replied that the PoS is quite profitable:

(…) are proportional to 1/sqrt of amount deposited, so if deposits become very low reward rates go extremely high to motivate more people to deposit. For example at 1M ETH deposited, rewards are ~18% per year.

And if a system is forced to be txfee-only, then it maintains this property: assuming 100k ETH/year fees, 1m ETH deposited could still earn 10% annual rewards.

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