ConsenSys CEO is confident that Ethereum 2.0 will arrive by Q2 2022

• Lubin praised the developments taking place in the Ethereum ecosystem as we head closer to The Merge.
• He also spoke about the strong infrastructure changes that will make Ethereum 2.0 more robust and secure.

Ethereum investors and supporters have been eagerly waiting for the launch of the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Ethereum 2.0. Joe Lubin, the Ethereum c-founder and ConsenSys CEO is pretty confident of its release in the next few months.

Lubin’s recent precision came while speaking at the Camp Ethereal crypto event in Wyoming, last week. “The merge is happening, surprisingly, on that same timeframe. So my estimate stays the same. We have a team working strongly, heavily on it,” he said.

With the recent launch of its Kiln Merge testnet, Ethereum is already getting closer to The Merge. Currently, Ethereum developers are actively working on the transition from Ethereum 1.0 to a ghost network working in the parallel dubbed the Beacon Chain. This will further evolve into Ethereum 2.0 which many currently refer to as the “consensus layer”.

The job of the Beacon Chain isn’t executing real transactions. Rather, it seeks to provide a home for validators and to stake their ETH. Thus, it’s laying the groundwork for a smooth transition from the PoW Ethereum 1.0 to the PoS Ethereum 2.0.

The transition will make Ethereum more energy-friendly and will improve scalability by reducing the gas fee. The Ethereum 2.0 will also help in hosting a lot more DeFi apps, DApps, and NFTs without the issue of network congestion. It will also help in preventing the 51% attack from miners. But if validators get caught for adding fraudulent transactions, they might face heavy penalties.

One Step At A Time

Although Ethereum has been slow in its progress with Ethereum 2.0, they have been moving the needle ahead. The successful launch of the Kiln testnet earlier this week is a step towards moving ahead with The Merge.

One of the most important developments with Ethereum 2.0 is shard chains and rollup technologies. They can help in increasing the speed of the transactions while lowering costs. Speaking at Camp Ethereal, Lubin said:

The merge will lay to rest proof-of-work, will lay to rest Ethereum’s carbon or energy footprint problem, that all goes away. Orders of magnitude less expensive, energetically. And another exciting thing about about moving to proof-of-stake is that proof-of-work requires a lot of issuance of ether in order to incentivize these people with heavy infrastructure, to lend their resources and validate transactions on the network. And so if you have very light infrastructure, then you can issue much less ether per block that’s constructed.

Lubin further added that the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 will turn ETH into “ultra-sound money”. Lubin also commented on the latest EIP-1559 implementation that introduces a burn mechanism to destroy a certain amount of ETH with each transaction. Lubin said:

When the merge happens. We’re going to be burning more ether every single day than is issued, because much less ether will be issued to secure the network, and so ultra-sound money is about to come into existence.