The Ethereum Project: Saying Goodbye to ‘Mapping Out Eth 2.0′

The announcement that the podcast is coming to a close, but finishing strong.

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ABOUT

In the latest episode of “Mapping out Ethereum 2.0,” CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington announce the podcast is coming to a close but finishes strong, discussing Visa’s $165,000 CryptoPunk purchase, “orphaned blocks” on the Beacon Chain and the Ethereum gas limit debate.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.

Visa announced on Monday it acquired a member of one of the most valuable non-fungible token collections within crypto, called a “CryptoPunk.” CryptoPunks are 24x24 pixel art images depicting eccentric cartoon characters with mixed traits and accessories.

Kim noted that Visa’s purchase of an NFT “wasn’t so much an investment decision as … really [an experiment] with NFTs wanting to learn more about how they work.”

Even so, market participants responded to the news by making investments in NFTs of their own. $100 million in trading volume took place in the 24 hours following Visa’s announcement, Edgington said.

The duo also discussed a recent issue with the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain that caused network participation rates to drop a few percentage points and some validators to miss out on rewards.

The root cause of the issue originated with validator operations by staking as a service Lido. Due to a misconfiguration of their validator software client, Lido was producing orphan blocks that had ripple effects on validators across the network. Orphan blocks refer to blocks proposed by validators that are not included in the blockchain.

Edgington noted that the issue has since been resolved and participation rates are back to 99% from their recent lows between 96%-98%.

Joining Kim and Edgington for their final episode, CoinDesk Research’s Teddy Oosterbaan discusses a recent debate in the Ethereum community about the governance process for raising Ethereum’s block gas limit.

To learn more about the significance of gas limits on Ethereum and the controversial project seeking to improve governance around changing the gas limit, listen to the full episode of “Mapping Out Eth 2.0.”

Links:

The Ethereum Gas Limit Project Twitter - https://twitter.com/ETH_EGL/status/1429530226908930048

HOSTS

Christine Kim

Christine is a research analyst for CoinDesk. She focusses on producing data-driven insights about the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. Prior to her role as a research analyst, Christine was a tech reporter for CoinDesk mainly covering developments on the ethereum blockchain.

Cryptocurrency holdings: None.

Edward Oosterbaan

Edward Oosterbaan was an analyst on the CoinDesk Research team focusing on Ethereum and DeFi. In 2021, Edward graduated from University of Michigan's Ross School of Business with a degree in finance and accounting. He holds ETH, AVAX, OHM and a small amount of other cryptocurrencies.