Vitalik Buterin Not Sure ‘When ETH 2.0’ but Says Clients Can Launch it Alone

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin does not know when the second iteration of the network might be going live, but said that, in theory, clients can launch it on their own.

One of the most asked questions in the crypto space, particularly this year, has been “when ETH 2.0”? After being pushed back several times, the exact date for the launch of Ethereum 2.0, aka Serenity, is still up in the air. Not even the project’s co-founder knows when it might be coming, with numerous supporters urging others for patience.

Answering a “when ETH 2.0” question, Buterin replied with “dunno.” But then he added that: “Theoretically if the client teams get too angry at us for not saying “SHIP IT” they could just do it themselves. <shrug>”

Buterin is suggesting that even if the project founders and researchers, do not give an official green light for the Phase 0 of ETH 2.0 to go live, the clients could launch it anyways.

Per ethereum.org, a client is “an implementation of Ethereum that verifies all transactions in each block, keeping the network secure and the data accurate.” When we discuss ETH 2.0, particularly when reporting on the testnets, we often talk about Prysm, Lighthouse, Nimbus, and Teku clients.

And Buterin’s response from above seems to have also been a response to a report by Decrypt that smart contract auditing company Quantstamp completed their audit of Teku, which is the ETH 2.0 client for institutional staking developed by ETH-focused blockchain company ConsenSys.

Per their statement, “Ethereum 2.0 is on track to deliver Phase 0 in the very near future,” Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma was quoted as saying. He also reportedly added that “Client teams have spent countless hours coordinating, testing, and working with auditing firms to ensure that the foundation of Ethereum 2.0 is ready for delivery.”

It’s further said that the company found the codebase to be “of the highest quality,” and that the Teku team resolved reported issues quickly, including: missing validation logic, errors that could’ve potentially resulted in clients falling out of sync, and an unlimited inbound messaging queue which may have left individual nodes open to DDoS attacks.

Just a week ago, as Cryptonews.com reported, ETH 2.0 and ConsenSys developer Ben Edgington said that the protocol’s deposit contract might be ready for launch any day now. This will be a major step before the ETH 2.0 Phase 0 launch. However, according to the Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan, it will not go live before it passes an audit of a critical crypto library, BLST, performed by cryptography audit firm NCC Group, which may happen in early or mid-November.

That said, the community seems to want the Phase 0 lift-off by the end of this year, as Ethereum 2.0 researcher Justin Drake said several months ago, commenting that “the community wants phase 0 genesis in 2020—not one day late.”

At 9:29 UTC, ETH is changing hands at nearly USD 393. It dropped 3.4% in a day and went up 4.6% in a week.

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Learn more:
Ethereum 1.0 Has ‘A Major Role’ To Play Before Merging With ETH 2.0
Will Ethereum Reach Serenity This Year?