Launched on December 1, 2020, the Beacon Chain has “blossomed into the strongest blockchain foundation ever seen,” according to Ethereum developer Justin Drake.
The beacon chain genesis happened four years ago on Dec 1, 2020. With a modest 0.5M ETH staked on day one, the parallel PoS chain provided zero immediate benefits to users. And yet the seed blossomed to become the strongest foundation blockchains have ever seen:
→ 10K consensus…
— Justin Ðrake ?? (@drakefjustin) December 1, 2024
The cryptographer noted that it all began with a “modest” 0.5 million ETH staked on the first day into the Ethereum network’s consensus layer deposit contract. At that time, the parallel PoS chain offered no immediate advantages to users, he added.
Among the achievements of the Beacon Chain, he highlighted:
- 10,000 consensus participants;
- economic security of $125 billion;
- recovery from a 51% attack through L0—slashing;
- economic finality thanks to L1 slashing;
- 100% uptime.
“No other PoW or PoS blockchain comes close to this — the gap is huge. This is the power of long-term thinking, a long and hard journey,” Drake noted.
The expert expressed confidence in Ethereum’s potential to establish itself as the settlement layer for the internet of value. According to him, the Beacon Chain is far from perfect. The modernization process will span years.
In particular, there is a need to enhance censorship resistance and improve MEV handling. Smaller deposits, better delegation, and faster finalization will also be required.
“We want smarter issuance. We need full chain validation, post-quantum security. Alongside the consensus layer, full danksharding at the data availability layer and native rollups at the execution layer are necessary,” he continued.
Drake promised that Ethereum will achieve its goals. Many L1 innovations will gradually emerge each year over many years. Some improvements, such as chain snarkifaction and post-quantum security, are likely to benefit from a comprehensive redesign.
The developer stated that these improvements will provide “stunning performance gains in months, not years.”
“Fast UX? Explore pre-configured ping-latency. Low fees and unlimited throughput? Look into horizontal scaling of execution and data availability layers. Synchronous composability? Study joint sequencing and real-time verification,” he suggested.
In conclusion, Drake expressed confidence that Ethereum will become “the most ambitious and exciting project in human decentralized computing.”
Back in November, the developer revealed details of the “most ambitious” Beam Chain proposal for a “from scratch” upgrade of Ethereum’s consensus layer, which took him “months.”
Earlier, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on solving Ethereum staking economy issues. He addressed this aspect in the third of six parts of an essay on the network’s “potential future.”