The One-Way ETH ‘Burn’ That Will Kick-Start Ethereum 2.0

With final preparations for the launch of Ethereum 2.0 soon to be underway, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim spoke with developers Raul Jordan and Eduardo Antuña Díez about what’s left to do and what comes next.

The final preparations for Ethereum 2.0 launch will soon be underway. 

Lead developer at Prysmatic Labs Raul Jordan, who has been building Ethereum 2.0 software for over two years, explained his team would be wrapping up all feature development by October 15. 

“At that time, it’s all hands on deck to just have good documentation, good user experience, fix up security holes [and] basically prepare for launch. That’s where we are today if all remains on track,” said Jordan. 

The final features currently in development by Prysmatic Labs and other software development teams include making sure different code implementations of Ethereum 2.0, also called “clients”, are interoperable and can be used interchangeably by a user without running the risk of losing validator rewards. 

It’s not only client developers who are beginning final preparations for this network upgrade. Ethereum startups building hardware and tooling for users to participate in the Ethereum 2.0 launch are also working on adding last-minute features to their products. 

Eduardo Antuña Díez, project lead at DAppNode, said, “The most important thing that we realized after the first [Ethereum 2.0] testnet is that people need to know the status of their validators. Having a good monitoring system to be able to know when your validator is down … we are working in that direction.” 

Before Ethereum 2.0 goes live, Jordan and Díez both noted that a new contract will be created on the current Ethereum blockchain to receive deposits of 32 ETH. Only once this contract accumulates a minimum of 524,288 ETH, which is worth roughly $181 million at time of writing, will the new Ethereum blockchain officially kick-start at midnight UTC the following day. 

About the security of the deposit contract, Jordan said, “There’s no way to retrieve [funds]. … It’s considered a burn in the short term. It’s not like there’s any sort of admin key or any sort of way to take those funds out. There’s no way somebody can take all the ETH that is locked in there.”

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For more information about Ethereum 2.0, you can download the free research report featuring additional developer commentary about the upgrade on the CoinDesk Research Hub.