Crypto industry still wants a 2020 Ethereum 2.0 launch despite skepticism

A big story in the crypto industry over recent days has been the roll-out of Ethereum 2.0 - an upgrade slated to overhaul the inners workings of the blockchain to make it exponentially more usable and decentralized.

In a statement published in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything," prominent Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake said that he thinks to ensure ETH 2 launches safely, programmers will need until at least Jan. 2021.

The launch in question is the launch of ETH 2.0's first phase, "Phase 0," which only activates staking.

Despite his prominence as a developer and researcher for the Ethereum project, many of his peers were quick to rebut the sentiment, saying that ETH 2 should go live in 2020.Other Ethereum stakeholders beg to differ.

Hudson Jameson, also of the Ethereum Foundation, simply said he thinks the upgrade will launch in 2020.

Preston Valoon of Priysmatic Labs, a development company working on Ethereum 2.0, bought "32 ETH worth of YES shares for ' Will Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 launch before 2021?' prediction market on Omen." And DeFi protocol Set's Anthony Sassano said that he bet 1,000 USD Coin on those same YES shares.

For ETH 2.0 to properly go live with the support of all stakeholders, there will need to be somewhat of an agreement amongst developers, holders, miners, and firms operating with Ethereum.

Whatever, the case, core to Ethereum's bull case is that Ethereum 2.0 will need to launch as soon as possible.

Over the past few weeks, Ethereum has been subject to transaction fee highs not seen since the peak of the 2018 bubble.

So long as ETH 2.0 is not fully rolled out, there's an obvious opportunity for a highly scalable blockchain to dethrone Ethereum.