January 2nd, 2020 2022: Ethereum 2.0 to be more scalable, secure, and sustainable (Serenity phase) Currently, we are at the still developing Serenity stage. Also known as Ethereum 2.0, this version aims to advance Ethereum to a level that can be broadly used without encountering security or high-volume issues. Specically, it intends to solve two main challenges Ethereum is facing: a clogged network that can only handle limited number of transactions per second (with increased gas fees for faster transactions), and the large consumption of energy that comes with the proof-of-work mechanism. 7 Two of the major upgrades include the shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake and the implementation of shard chains 8 which would spread the workload of the network. sustainable, although when (or if) it will ultimately be implemented, and other fall-out issues, remain unclear. Ethereum 2.0 is envisioned to be more scalable, secure, and

Figure 1: Ether price and development stages Source: WisdomTree, Bloomberg, as of 5/20/2021. November 2013 May 2021. WisdomTree.com +44 (0) 207 448 4330 WisdomTree INSIGHT ARTICLE Historical performance is not an indication of future performance and any investments may go down in value. Istanbul, Muir Glacier, and Berlin are three sub-hard forks in Ethereums development stages. Conclusion After seven years of development, Ethereum has gone from an idea to a vivid ecosystem, supported by one of the largest developer community in the crypto space. As a software platform, it needs to evolve to address its issues. Its community is progressist and has implemented several signicant changes over time. Some of the most important changes still lie ahead, and we will address them more in details in future posts.

Sources 1 2 as of 6/23/2021. 3 Early founders included Vitalik Buterin, Anthony Di lorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, Amir Chetrit, Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, Jeffrey Wilcke. 4 Launched in 2016, The DAO was an early decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) intended to act as an investordirected venture capital firm. 5 Gas refers to fees that need to be paid in ether to miners in order to facilitate transactions and execute smart contracts. 6 The acronym zk-SNARK stands for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge, and refers to a proof construction where one can prove possession of certain information, e.g. a secret key, without revealing that information, and without any interaction between the prover and verifier. 7 Proof-of-work is a consensus mechanism that is used to verify blockchain transactions validity, through solving of computationally intensive puzzles using min

8 Proof-of-stake is another consensus mechanism that is used to verify blockchain transactions. However, it does so by using miners existing coins as a stake in the validation process, which demands less computer processing power.