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Produced by Yuxing ｜Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)
On the evening of December 1, the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain was officially launched. As of 11:00 on December 2, 920,000 Ethereum had been pledged. Ethereum 2.0 is intended to solve the consensus and scalability problems of Ethereum, and the Beacon Chain proposes shard chains based on the scalability problem. As the core of the entire system of Ethereum 2.0, the beacon chain is of great significance to Ethereum. Today, I will talk to you about what the beacon chain is and what functions the beacon chain has.
01What is the beacon chain?
Beacon Chain, English name is Beacon Chain, Beacon, which means lighthouse, signal buoy. It is actually the core of the Ethereum 2.0 system.
The beacon chain is a brand new proof-of-stake (PoS) block chain , which is to solve the consensus problem, and the shard chain (Shard Chains) is to solve the scalability problem of Ethereum.
The reason why the shard chain can solve the performance problem is that it is equivalent to processing transactions through multi-slice technology to improve the efficiency and performance of the system. The following figure shows the structure diagram of the beacon chain and the shard chain. The beacon chain is in The coordination layer is responsible for coordination and management, while the shard chain is in the data layer and is responsible for the data part. We can see in the figure, why do we need a beacon chain? The beacon chain is like a core spine, supporting and connecting the shard chains. In fact, the beacon chain is the core of injecting vitality into the entire Ethereum 2.0 system and is responsible for commanding and coordinating all participants in the system. So what can it do?
02What can the beacon chain do?
First of all, this chain is a proof- of- stake (PoS) blockchain , which allows verifiers to participate in the pledge system and replace the role of miners to become the chain builder. That is to say, the list of verifiers and the task of sharding verifiers are managed on the beacon chain.
How can I become a verifier of the beacon chain?
First, you need to send a deposit (32 Ether) to a contract on the current Ethereum main chain. After a series of audits, you will receive an electronic receipt (event in the Ethereum smart contract). The receipt is equivalent to a VIP card. With this card, you have the qualifications for verification and become a verifier. If you are "active", you may be selected as a block proposer.
After becoming a verifier, the beacon chain will arrange tasks for you .
It will randomly assign you to one or two shards for verification. We know that under the proof-of-work mechanism, that is, on our current Ethereum main chain, miners generate the next block through mining, but under the proof-of-stake mechanism, there is no mining, and the next block is generated by Selected by the verifiers. This choice is random and is not controlled by a validator, which also reflects the characteristics of decentralization.
If you are not very "active", after the beacon chain assigns you to a shard, you need to select a new block together with other validators of the shard.
Then the block proposer of the shard will collect transactions for this shard and include these transactions in the block just selected by the validators, although since you are not the proponent of the block, there is no The power to incorporate transactions into new blocks, but you as the verifier can verify whether the block proposer behaves properly in this process.
If you perform well, you will be rewarded for doing what you should do as a validator. On the contrary, if you violate the rules, you will be punished. The penalty is to deduct part of the 32 ETH you pledged. When the deposit is less than 16 ETH After the coin, the beacon chain will remove you from the validator list.
If one day you don’t want to be a validator, the Ether you pledged plus the rewards you get and the Ether you deduct due to the penalty will not be returned to your previous Ethereum main chain, but will be deposited Enter a certain shard chain.
In addition to managing verifiers, the beacon chain also needs to store some authentication (Attestation).
We know that the current Ethereum blockchain stores the data information of our usual transactions such as asset transfers, but the beacon chain is different from the current Ethereum main chain. It stores a series of calculated strings.
The generation of this string is based on a hash operation in the computer, it is like in life after you put the beans into the soymilk machine for processing, you can not judge the shape and size of the previous beans based on the soymilk obtained. And suppose you add an extra bean, the soy milk you get will be greatly changed. You can't determine which of the particles in the soy milk your bean is. This soy milk machine is like a hash algorithm and cannot pass the hash. The result is to derive the look before the hash, and as long as the data before the hash changes a little, the result after the hash will change greatly.
In the beacon chain, the verifier verifies and signs a transaction, such as a transfer transaction, which is then hashed into a string, and this string is stored in the beacon chain. At this time, the string represents a transaction Transaction data. The advantage of this is that you don't need to go deep into which shard the transaction occurred in.
Once the state in the shard changes (such as a slight change in the balance of an account), the verifier will report the change to the beacon chain. Therefore, the beacon chain tracks the changes of the shards in real time, and also establishes a connection and communication between the shards.
03 summary
Generally speaking, the beacon chain is like a signal light, directing various behaviors of the system and storing a large amount of authentication data. But this kind of command is decentralized. For example, the voting behavior of the verifiers participating in it is determined by the verifiers themselves, and the beacon chain cannot be controlled.
How do you think the launch of the beacon chain will affect Ethereum? Welcome to share your views in the message area!
This article is a reissue of an old article with slight adjustments.
Original link: What is the beacon chain in Ethereum 2.0?
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"Sound Description: This series is only for entry-block chain science learning, does not constitute any investment advice or recommendations. If there are any errors or omissions, please leave a message to point out. 』
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