RESEARCH: 3 Things You Should Know Before Staking on Ethereum 2.0
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
It wasn’t long ago the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade went live on an official test network. Developers have been catching mission-critical bugs in the code ever since.
This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.
“This is the biggest testnet launch that Ethereum 2.0 has seen. … So we learned about things that were frustrating for people. We found some bugs. We’ve been troubleshooting a very interesting and elusive bug at the moment that can cause nodes to crash,” said Paul Hauner, the lead developer of the Ethereum 2.0 Lighthouse client.
Also testing the new Eth 2.0 mock network – called “Medalla” – and finding some surprises along the way is staking-as-a-service startup Staked. In the mind of Tim Ogilvie, co-founder and CEO of Staked, all of the bugs and unexpected issues on the Medalla network thus far are relatively minor and give no cause for concern.
“We run 25 other proof-of-stake networks and so we’re used to running in testnets,” Ogilvie said. “We see a lot of the same issues in testnets, which is that sometimes the software doesn’t communicate perfectly or has issues where the network needs to be restarted. I think [Eth 2.0] is in pretty good shape relative to a lot of the other testnets we’ve seen.”
That said, both Hauner and Ogilvie agree there are important features about the Eth 2.0 network that users need to understand before staking their ETH.
A “really important one,” according to Ogilvie, is the fact that once ETH is transferred to the Eth 2.0 network, it cannot be transferred back to the original Ethereum blockchain.
“It is a one-way trip until the next phase [of Ethereum 2.0 development] has been enabled. Your funds are not liquid. Really, the only thing you can do is participate in staking. People have to understand that fundamentally before they get started,” Ogilvie said.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What you don't want is a large proportion of the network having the same type of problem at the same time, |
| 0:09.0 | whether that's 40% of the network goes offline, or there's a bug in client software. |
| 0:15.0 | Everybody's using AWS and AWS goes down. |
| 0:19.0 | In ETH2 and in other systems, if you go down at the same time as |
| 0:25.5 | lots of other validators, you get a higher penalty than if you're uncorrelated. |
| 0:32.7 | This episode is brought to you by crypto.com, bitstamp, and nexo.io. |
| 0:38.7 | Hello, everyone. You're listening to Developer Perspectives, Ethereum 2.0 from CoinDesk |
| 0:44.8 | Podcasts. I'm Christine Kim, a CoinDesk research analyst, and over the next five weeks, we'll be discussing |
| 0:51.7 | the hotly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 upgrade and its potential impact |
| 0:56.7 | on crypto markets with a number of distinguished guests. In this series, we'll speak with the |
| 1:02.5 | folks inside the Ethereum developer community itself and take a look behind the scenes at what |
| 1:08.0 | comes next. For this first episode, we'll be talking about the staking dynamics of Ethereum 2.0. |
| 1:14.7 | So get ready. |
| 1:15.9 | For today's show, I'm joined by Paul Howner, the co-founder of Sigma Prime. |
| 1:21.4 | Sigma Prime is one of several developer teams building the technology, which users will |
| 1:25.9 | run on their computer or other devices, |
| 1:28.7 | to connect to the Ethereum 2.0 network. |
| 1:31.8 | Sigma Prime's Ethereum 2.0 software client is called Lighthouse and is currently one of four |
| 1:37.8 | being tested on the official Ethereum 2.0 Medala test network. Say hi, Paul. |
| 1:43.8 | Hello. Great to have you. We also have on this episode, |
| 1:48.4 | Tim Ogilvie, the co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency staking platform staked. Through staked, |
| 1:55.5 | users can earn returns on their holdings of cryptocurrency like ETH. In preparation for Ethereum 2.0's launch, |
... |
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