Vitalik Buterin proposed the option of a smooth transition to Ethereum 2.0

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and chief ideologist of Ethereum, proposed a more lenient transition from the Ethereum 1.0 network to the Ethereum 2.0 version of the protocol.

The essence of the proposal is to accelerate the transfer of the blockchain based on the Proof of Work consensus to the “beacon chain” that underlies the blockchain architecture using sharding. The update proposed by Vitalik will require only light clients without state preservation (stateless clients), but he will not need miners. This will require significantly fewer changes at the architecture level.

The first step is to transfer the chain of Ethereum 1.0 blocks to the zero shard 0 of network 2.0. Subsequently, with the development of the ecosystem, some functions from the first version of Ethereum will be gradually transferred to the second. Vitalik writes:

The zero shard of the system will contain the entire ETH1 blockchain.

We are adding new markers for nodes compatible with ETH1. That is, validators that support the ETH1 network must set the appropriate eth1friendlyvalidators token. They can expose or remove it at any time.

The block creator in any slot in shard 0 is randomly selected from nodes with the eth1friendlyvalidators marker.

Zero shard validators confirm the blocks generated in this shard, and the blocks must contain information for light clients. Confirming nodes of other shards can check and confirm information in blocks of zero shard, however, they cannot participate in confirming the state of shard 0. All final calculations occur only in zero shard.

Thus, the ETH1 system will be able to continue to operate as the zero shard of the ETH2 system. Full nodes of the current network will be able to support the new one without any problems, except for the simultaneous installation of the Ethereum 2.0 client. That is, such nodes will have to simultaneously support both networks until the need for the old one disappears. However, the main will be the “signal chain” (beacon chain) of the new version.