Hey, yo what is going on with the viewers of the tuuuuuubbee!
First I would like to introduce myself as Tyler, the host of the crypto channel, that
knows money corrupts even some of your most respected heroes….you know how they charade,
it’s time for Chico Crypto!
Well it’s no charade for one of my favorite crypto projects who is about to change here
soon.
That project, I’m sure you could tell from the thumbnail, is Ethereum who is beginning
the stages of moving over to a proof of stake blockchain, with the launch of the beacon
chain and the proof of stake testnet...the initial stages of Ethereum 2.0
Proof of stake, beaconchain, testnet...ethereum 2.0?
What the freak are you talking about Chico??
Well if you are confused about the future of Ethereum….you are in the right place,
because today we are going to be breaking down, everything Ethereum 2.0, what it is,
how it will work, why are they doing it….and finally how you can join the 2.0 testnet today,
and get prepared to STAKE IT UP BABY NOW!
So to begin...what is ethereum 2.0, what is the beacon chain, and what is the testnet
people are talking about??
Well to begin, let us understand what ethereum 2.0 is.
A basic explanation is this is ethereum’s move from a proof of work blockchain, secured
by miners like bitcoin...to a proof of stake blockchain, secured by staking node validators.
That alone, is a massive transition, which has a ton of unknown...for one...will it work,
and even more...will it be more secure, will it be faster, or will it lead to centralization
faster than mining?
And there are case studies out there, which say things might not go as smooth as people
think.
Tezos, is a great example of a functioning and launched proof of stake blockchain.
And I’m a fan & hold some tezos...buuuuutt there is research that came out in the beginning
of this year from Harvard that showed that there is the possibility for selfish baker
behavior, in the tezos blockchain, as bakers start baking bad.
Baking is staking in tezos if you didn’t know...and from the research paper, they analyzed
the october 2019 babylon update, and demonstrated that, under certain conditions, rational participants
are incentivized to behave dishonestly.
In doing so, they provided a theoretical analysis of the feasibility and profitability of a
block stealing attack that they called selfish endorsing…
But why would Ethereum be doing this if it wasn’t proven to work & with the unknowns?
Well Ethereum is valuing in my opinion, scalability over security.
According to Etherchain, ethereum is only moving at 9 transactions per second...and
with sticking to a base proof of work, like they are, Ethereum has a max transaction capacity
of 15 tps on the base layer chain.
It’s not enough to become the world’s common database, the world computer as some
have called it...and even in 2014, before Ethereum officially launched, Vitalik knew
they would be possibly moving to proof of stake, he wrote a blog post about it, in january
of 2014...titled Slasher: A Punitive Proof-of-Stake Algorithm which he said “The purpose of
this post is not to say that Ethereum will be using Slasher in place of Dagger as its
main mining function.
Rather, Slasher is a useful construct to have in our war chest in case proof of stake mining
becomes substantially more popular or a compelling reason is provided to switch.
And that is why Ethereum has been and is taking a slow measured approach to the launch of
the proof of stake chain.
The damage of moving too fast could be a killer to the protocol, and what has been built...the
smart contracts & DeFi as a whole.
So the road to staking, the road to serenity has been a long one...began with Ethereum
launch in 2015, and the changes and preparations for proof of stake have been in the works
up to today, as we can see phase0, the beacon chain is releasing in 2020 which is the initial
proof of stake blockchain & all it will do is stake, that is it.
In 2021 phase 1 begins & the shard chains will be released, which will allow parallel
processing improving scalability, in 2021/2022 begins phase 2.. the ethereum virtual machine,
upgrades to eWASM & shard chains get full functionality.
And finally 2022, ethereum begins phase 3 continuous improvement, which includes the
release of the light clients.
Which means by then the network should be fully stable & able to handle the largest
of transactional loads.
But where are we with phase 0 the beacon chain, and what is that??
Well let’s begin with the beacon chain, like mentioned it’s the proof of stake blockchain,
and in phase 0, the only thing that chain does is make sure the blockchain is secured
through proof of stake, no smart contracts, or anything complex down in this chain.
So you must be asking yourself, where do the smart contracts happen then?
Well, the beacon chain will run in parallel with the proof of work blockchain, a smart-contract
on the current Ethereum proof of work blockchain will allow validators to participate in the
proof-of-stake protocol by taking deposits of exactly 32 eth.
Smart contracts will all still run on the top proof of work blockchain, as there is
no ethereum virtual machine in the beacon, because validators can only interact with
the chain in a very limited way for initial launch security but as time goes on the beacon
proof of stake chain, get more abilities & eventually takes over the proof of work chain entirely
But….Initial launch?
When is it happening?
Well Ethereum 2.0 client devs had a meeting 1 week ago, and they spoke about the future..Afri
Schoedon said this about the beacon chain testnets “First attempt at testnet failed
due to issue with timestamps around genesis.
This was swiftly fixed, and Schlesi was launched with Prysm and Lighthouse.
Initially poor performance, but improved rapidly.
Finality is now almost perfect for the last week.
Teku joined a week ago: both syncing and validating.
Nimbus clients are also progressing with synchronising.
Lodestar managed to connect and sync some blocks.
Given the current stability, will start working on coordinating a multiclient testnet for
v0.12, with 16k genesis validators, and maybe 3 different clients at genesis.
Could do dry-run deposit contract ceremony.
Target June for this, potentially to allow clients to update to version 0.12.
Ya, that is next freaking month guys & gals...gals, because almost 10 percent of my viewers are
now the ladies from my stats.….sup babes.
Are you ready to get a little nerd horny?
Because the next thing I’m going to do is show you…...not my schlong, but how to get
set up as a validator for the Ethereum 2.0 testnet, launching in June.
Now there is a great place to expand your knowledge of the next phases of the protocol,
and that is the ethereum knowledge base, which has a great step by step guid to joining the
ethereum 2.0 testnet.
I have included the link in the description, if you are more of a tactile learner like
myself & like to do things your way.
But for those auditory and visual learners, let’s begin Chico’s walkthrough.
So first the system requirements to join: recommended...8gigabytes of RAM, 100Gigabytes
Solid State Drive, and the metamask wallet installed on the system.
Minimum, is 4igabytes of RAM, and 20 gigabyte solid state drive...what I find great too,
is from the knowledge base requirments they have a diagram of what is going on with staking
and validation..and as we can see vitalik’s slasher from 2014, is included in the base
proof of stake protocol, to prevent malicious validators.
So to officially begin, I will be doing this example in windows, but there is a written
guide for mac as well in the knowledge base.
And step 1 is to create a folder, name it prysm, as that is the testnet we will be joining
prysmatic labs.
You will need to create this folder in your c:\
directory, as seen on screen.
Next you need to open up your command prompt, which is easy type command prompt into search,
which will pull it right up.
Now I like to split my screen in half with command prompt, and the guide, as you can
copy and paste what you need into command prompt...first you will need to copy from
the guide and paste next to your user name, what is right there step 1, first in the grey..press
enter in command prompt...and then this should show up in command prompt, and after that
piece, you will copy and paste the github link, second piece of grey in the guide...once
copied and pasted, press enter…..
The next step is just a cosmetic step, and not required but I did it, although to do
it, you need to bring up a new command prompt, and then after your user name in there, copy
and paste from the guide, what is in the grey from step 2...and press enter…
Now comes the fun part...step 3, starting the beacon node, go into your c:directory,
with the prysm folder we created, in that foler, shoulder be the prysm.bat file, take
the file, and drag it right into command prompt, and it should begin…..and will take a few
hours to sync with the blockchain, so wait it out…
But once the synce has finally taken place, you will know it’s complete because you
eventually sync to the slot, and the command begins syncing and applying state transitions
to new blocks.
So the beacon chain is running..what is step 4?
Well 1st we need to get us some testnet ethereum….to do this, you need metamask, and you will need
to open it and set it up to connect ot the testnet...to do this, you need to click up
top to change the network, and click custom RPC...and then type into new RPC URL... https-colon-backslash,
backslash, g-o-e-r-l-i-dot prylabs.net….and then click save.
Then you should be get to go on the testnet with 0 ETH….now how do we get them?
Well we need to go to pryslabs.net/participate, all links are in the description btw….and
if you did it correctly, on step 2 get goETH-Test Ether, and then click on metamask, it should
recognize your address, and then ask if you want to get some, click the need goeth button.
Next click yes please, wait it out and then check your metamask for over 32 eth...boom
it’s there...
Now step 5... it’s time to create your Ethereum keys, start the validator and make your 32
ETH deposit..To do this, open up your command prompt once again, and then drag and drop
the prysm.bat file into command like we did earlier..
Now you will take and copy the grey shaded text, in step 4 create ETH keys and paste
into into the prompt and press enter….
Some goobly gobbly will go on, but then you will be greeted with your raw transaction
data in command prompt.
Copy this….and then you will go the participate page from prysmatic, and in step 3, generate
public and private key, you will paste that data into there….Now step 4...is starting
up the validator client, open command prompt..copy and paste the prsm.bat file into their, then
in step 5 start the validator, copy and paste the grey shaded area and press enter….Your
validator should fire up...and now it’s time to make the deposit, go back to the particpate
page, and step 5, click make deposit, and it should fire up metamask...confirm, and
then go back to the validator in command prompt, and wait to see that it is deposited...but
full activation, take another few hours, so wait it out once again…
But once you are included, for validation, you can check your stats at beaconcha.in by
copying your public key, which can be found from the transaction you sent, or from command
prompt and you can see which slot you are expected to be accepted in, we are slot 238
thousand, 113….which if we check out the explorer, they are on block 236 thousand,
159...menaing we got some time to wait until we start validating and receiving rewards….Well
viewers, I hope you guys get set up and test staking here soon, because the more ready
you are for go live...the better.
Cheers I’ll see you next time