Expected to launch in 2020, Ethereum 2.0 marks a long-anticipated upgrade to the Ethereum public mainnet. Learn what it’s about, and prepare for the next phase of development.

Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2) is a major upgrade to the current Ethereum public mainnet, designed to accelerate Ethereum’s usage and adoption by improving its performance.

The History of Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum 2.0 is not a new idea in the Ethereum community. A shift in Ethereum’s underlying consensus mechanism to address the restrictions of a Proof of Work blockchain has existed since the blockchain’s genesis. Ethereum 2.0 arrives on the heels of many planned upgrades to the Ethereum mainnet following the mainnet Frontier launch in July 2015, namely:

Homestead, March 2016
Metropolis: Byzantium, October 2017
Metropolis: Constantinople, February 2019
Istanbul, December 2019
The launch of Ethereum 2.0 is especially significant compared to past upgrades because of the implementation of a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, moving the network away from its existing Proof of Work architecture.

For more detail on the history of Ethereum upgrades, read A Short History of Ethereum.

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https://consensys.net/blog/blockchain-explained/what-is-ethereum-2/

ConsenSys announced today the PegaSys Ethereum suite — which includes Hyperledger Besu, PegaSys Plus and PegaSys Orchestrate — will be available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. In addition, The Microsoft Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum will now support Hyperledger Besu directly.

New York, NY — ConsenSys announced today the PegaSys Ethereum suite — which includes Hyperledger Besu, PegaSys Plus and PegaSys Orchestrate — will be available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. In addition, The Microsoft Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum will now support Hyperledger Besu directly. These offerings will help developers deploy multi-node networks with explorers, monitoring, and dashboards to run the tools needed to manage a fully-fledged Enterprise Ethereum network.

PegaSys Ethereum Suite on Microsoft Azure Marketplace

The PegaSys team at ConsenSys built and maintains Hyperledger Besu, the open-source Ethereum client written in Java. In 2019 it was contributed to Hyperledger, a multi-project open source collaborative blockchain effort hosted by The Linux Foundation. PegaSys Plus is the commercial subscription of Hyperledger Besu offering additional capabilities and support guarantees. PegaSys Orchestrate is an Ethereum transaction orchestration system that enables organizations to build on any Ethereum network by providing functionality to manage transactions, smart contracts, private keys and more. Together, the PegaSys Ethereum Suite has been downloaded over 130,000 times by enterprise developers.

Developers will be able to access the PegaSys Ethereum Suite through the Azure Marketplace to build private networks and operate on the Ethereum mainnet. PegaSys tools can be used to build enterprise applications requiring secure, high-performance transaction processing. Additionally, the PegaSys Ethereum Suite features privacy, permissioning, and security capabilities to meet key enterprise requirements. With these offerings on Azure, deploying PegaSys tools becomes that much simpler for developers, leaving more time to focus on dApp development.

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https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/consensys-and-microsoft-collaborate-to-bring-ethereum-to-enterprises-with-the-pegasys-ethereum-suite/?utm_campaign=PegaSys&utm_content=128912673&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&hss_channel=lcp-11679372

Today ConsenSys Health announced the Stop COVID-19 Virtual Hackathon to start April 13 and run through to May 11. Sponsors of the initiative include Gitcoin, Hyperledger, ConsenSys, One Million Developers and OpenMinded. The first virtual panels by mentors will be available today.

The project brings together three open source communities from Ethereum, Hyperledger and OpenMinded.

“Working together for the first time with a very specific toolset, this interdisciplinary group will rapidly create highly-relevant solutions with the potential to have both immediate- and long-term positive impact,” said Heather Leigh Flannery​, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys Health. “The core of our effort is to leverage converging innovations like blockchain, tokenization, zero-knowledge cryptography, and federated machine learning to advance immediate and long-term public health goals while preserving individual privacy.”

Healthcare and life sciences volunteers will mentor developers. The group aims to address many of the issues highlighted in the news. The areas include clinical trials for vaccines, galvanizing supply chains for ventilators, location tracking without compromising privacy and other topics.

The award for first place is $10,000, with second and third place receiving $7,000 and $3,000, respectively.

The panel of judges so far includes ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin, Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger and four executives from ConsenSys Health. ConsenSys Health recently spun out of ConsenSys.

A week ago a few members of Hyperledger including HACERA, IBM and Oracle agreed to collaborate to collate Coronavirus data. And to the surprise of some, U.S. Homeland Security listed blockchain as a critical service in the context of COVID-19.

Source: https://www.ledgerinsights.com/covid-19-blockchain-hackathon-consensys-health/

Hitachi Solutions will work with ConsenSys to streamline the development of decentralized applications, enabling trustless and secure transactions with PegaSys Plus.

Tokyo, Japan — ConsenSys announced today a partnership with Hitachi Solutions, Hitachi’s systems integration, enterprise consulting, and core IT subsidiary. Starting April 1st, 2020, Hitachi will offer PegaSys Plus, the commercial implementation of the enterprise Ethereum client Hyperledger Besu, to the Japanese market through a reseller agreement.

Hitachi Solutions and ConsenSys will collaborate to provide comprehensive services and solutions for decentralized applications built on PegaSys Plus, from the introduction of PoCs to development, operation, and client education.

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