One of the biggest Ethereum narratives over the past few months is ETH 2.0.
For those that are unaware, Ethereum 2.0 is a new version of the network that will dramatically improve usability, bandwidth, and speed. Developers intend to accomplish this by implementing technologies like Proof of Stake and sharding.
At the Ethereum Asia Supermeetup in March 2019 in Hong Kong, Vitalik Buterin explained:
“[It is] a way to bring technical improvements, like PoS and sharding, together to improve the Virtual Machine, Merkle Trees, the efficiency of the protocol, and a whole bunch of small technical things that you have never heard of.”
Because of the changes it will implement, the upgrade has been deemed one of ETH’s most bullish catalysts. If you ask many investors in the cryptocurrency, in fact, many will cite the upgrade as the reason they are investing.
Yet the Ethereum bull case was just dealt a blow with a recent statement from a prominent community member. This comes as ETH has approached multi-month highs.
Chart of ETH’s price action over the past seven weeks from TradingView.com
Ethereum 2.0 May Be Delayed, Says a Researcher
Coming into 2020 and for most of Q1, the common sentiment was that Ethereum 2.0 was going to go live by July or August of 2020. But this may be changing.
Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said on July 10th that he personally thinks the upgrade’s first phase cannot go live this year.
In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” he said that for the upgrade to be smooth, he wants a public testnet, bug bounty, and “attack net.” According to him, all this cannot happen in Q3 2020.
“All the above cannot happen in Q3 2020. With Thanksgiving on November 26 and the December holidays I’d say the latest practical opportunity for genesis in 2020 is mid-November, 4 months from now. As such, I’m now inclined to say that the earliest practical date for genesis is something like January 3, 2021 (Bitcoin’s 12th anniversary).”
Notably, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has politely disagreed with the sentiment. Yet the discourse shows that there is considerable uncertainty about the upgrade.
According to Kelvin Koh, a partner at the Spartan Group, this is somewhat bearish for Ethereum.
The former Goldman Sachs partner said that the uncertain economic implications and potential technical shortcomings of the upgrade make him more bullish on BTC than ETH.

ATM I am more bullish on $BTC.
We are observing the ETH2.0 transition closely to understand the crypto economic implications and impact on $ETH price.
At some point, we may turn more bullish on $ETH. It is a big event but at the moment there is considerable uncertainty.
— SpartanBlack (@SpartanBlack_1) May 22, 2020

When It Arrives, It Will Be Big
When Ethereum 2.0 arrives, though, analysts expect the upgrade to have a dramatic effect on the market.
Ethereum proponent and investor Adam Cochran shared in April that ETH 2.0 will create “the largest economic shift in society.” He attributed this to staking and other incentives being activated around the upgrade that could force Ethereum higher.

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ETH 2.0 is only a few months away, and could prove to be the largest economic shift in society for a few key reasons.
Here is my 7 economic cases for how ETH will preform with the ETH 2.0 rollout. pic.twitter.com/fxIqu07xAb
— Adam Cochran (@AdamScochran) April 17, 2020

Featured Image from Shutterstock
Price tags: ethbtc, ethusd
Charts from TradingView.com
Researcher Says Ethereum 2.0 May Be Delayed — Increasing Risk to ETH Bulls