An (extensive) summary of the first phase of the beacon chain rollout.
Recently, I read yet another conflicting report about the proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism to be adopted in Ethereum 2.0, and I about lost my mind. I thought I understood what was coming, but with every new Medium post, tweet, and news article I read my certainty diminishes. I figure, if I spend roughly 50 hours a week reading and writing about Ethereum and I don't know, odds are that a lot of you don't either.
I've heard that Eth2.0 will bring[1] "pure proof of stake." I've read that Casper FFG is the PoS mechanism to be implemented in Serenity but that Vlad Zamfir's Casper CBC is the real pure proof of stake.[2] I've read that Casper FFG is only a finality gadget to be used every 50 blocks[3], or every 100 blocks[4], over a PoW system for block finality.
So what's actually going on?
There are existing, accurate articles, but amid the confusion, correctness seems to need signal boosting. (If you're looking for a solid software engineer-centered analysis focusing more heavily on the rollout process, I'd check out James Prestwich's article[5] on Hacker Noon.) This article is focused on disambiguating between what has been considered for Ethereum 2.0, what is currently planned, and the relationship between Casper CBC, Casper FFG, the fork-choice rule, proof of stake, the beacon chain, and Ethereum 2.0.
A Refresher Course: Terms You Need to Know to Understand This Article
Ethereum 2.0: The future, scalable version of the network (aka ETH2.0 aka Serenity aka Shasper aka Ethereum with sharding and Casper).
