Danny Ryan Says Ethereum 2.0 Launch Delayed Because of Multi-client Approach

Ethereum 2.0’s multi-client paradigm, even though it is considered heavily important for security reasons, stands as one of the most important reasons the launch process is taking so long, according to project leader Danny Ryan.

The ETH 2.0 team has constantly been postponing the launch schedule for Phase 0, the first step in the network’s multi-stage rise. Although developers firstly set the launch date for January 13, they had to delay at the last minute in order to change to the network’s technical design. Since then, members of the team have given shifting predictions.

In February, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin estimated that the launch would happen in the second quarter of this year.

Asked if the overhaul to the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap was really coming in July and is the world ready for it, Buterin answered positive but added that July might have not been the right date.

Ethereum Foundation Still Hasn’t Managed to Put Out an Official Test Network

He said:

“I re-listened to the interview. The question indeed contained ‘July’, I don’t recall hearing ‘July’ so it sounds like it’s my fault for mishearing. Apologies for that. My actual stance is that eth2 is ‘on track’ in that there aren’t any unexpected bumps in the road, testnets are coming along, etc, but I defer to the client devs on timelines and if they are now saying ‘Q3’ more broadly then I believe them.”

Still, the amount of work that has been left to be done with has constructed some questionings over the team managing to make that deadline. For one, the Ethereum Foundation still hasn’t managed to put out an official test network, for which the team claimed it will need to run without any mistakes made for two months before it can release the mainnet.

Ryan, ETH 2.0’s lead developer, said that the project’s multi-client model is also providing to the launch postponing.

For now, there are seven ETH2.0 client applications: the Ethereum Foundation’s Trinity, Prysmatic Labs’s Prysm, Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse, Status’s Nimbus, ChainSafe’s Lodestar, PegaSys’s Teku, and Nethermind’s Cortex.

Danny Ryan Explains Ethereum 2.0 ‘Specification-First’ Approach

For being able to construct a foundation that each client can work from, the ETH 2.0 team took a “specification-first” way, meaning that they will first finish with the entire protocol design and then move on to the implementation process. This design philosophy should allegedly set the path for what the developers call the “multi-client paradigm.”

Ryan claims that in order to have numerous clients is of most importance for cultivating a strong level of network security.

He said:

“If there’s a critical bug in a single client and it goes down, the network can continue moving forward because the majority of nodes may not be running on that client.”

According to Ryan, the history of the Ethereum network at the moment, completely supports his evaluation. Both the Geth client and the Parity client have been jeopardized before, but the mainnet managed to stay up.

However, on the other hand the fact is that it simply takes longer to completely finish all the details.