A New Test Network Just Activated and Ethereum 2.0 Will Be Using It

A highly anticipated upgrade to ethereum is gearing up for its first dry run, and the test network of choice will be an unfamiliar name to many.

Though the community-driven ethos surrounding the creation of Görli is important, Preston Van Loon, co-founder and technical lead of Prysmatic Labs, admitted that there is a different reason why it decided to launch Prysm on this particular test network.

"It's like the initial value for launching the test network We'll start at block zero with this amount and move on from there."

As explained by ethereum core developer Justin Drake during an "Ask Me Anything" Reddit forum last week, the full Serenity upgrade is envisioned to be rolled out piecemeal onto the main ethereum blockchain.

Phase zero - the one that will be tested by Prysmatic Labs - will include, among other features, a beacon chain, or a proof-of-stake blockchain functioning as the "Heartbeat" of the new ethereum network, as ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin put it on a Reddit thread. As a caveat, Van Loon told CoinDesk the release would not be "a 100 percent complete phase zero implementation," explaining that validators do not stand to lose their staked ether if they misbehave.

By staking a set amount of GöETH, users of the Görli network will be able to participate on a separate Prysm test network as "Validators."

As Van Loon explained, these validators are basically the new miners of ethereum 2.0.

Görli will actually function as the test network to initiate new validators, while a separate test network engineered by Prysmatic Labs and featuring beacon chain technology will monitor the activity and "Work" of these transaction validators.

"The purpose of the testnet is to explore connectivity between other [software] clients, so we're hoping that we'll launch ours and then another team will launch their test network and we can have ours talking to each other and start finding problems sooner rather than later."

Looking ahead, Van Loon added that in terms of continued research and development on ethereum 2.0, ethereum researchers are actually ahead of implementors like Prysmatic Labs and other client teams.