Ethereum to Combine Casper and Sharding Upgrades

Ethereum developers have recently discussed the most significant upcoming updates to the ETH network at Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #40 that took place Friday, June 15.[LIVE] Ethereum Core Developer Meeting #40 [06/15/18] https://t.

The key point of the recent meeting is rescheduling the releases of two main Ethereum chain upgrades such as Casper and sharding.

Casper should have been released as a smart contract separately from the sharding upgrade.

The new proposals suggest that Casper may be released on a shard, or a sidechain instead. Sharding, announced by Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin in April 2018, is a method of increasing the number of transactions that a blockchain can process.

The idea of sharding is that the nodes store just a part of the distributed registry, but each element of sharding i.e. a node can rely on the information of others.

Casper FFG was first published in October 2017, as a "Proof of stake-based finality system which overlays an existing proof of work blockchain." It intended to solve "Open questions of economic finality through validator deposits and crypto-economic incentives."

In late April, the Ethereum Improvement Proposal #1011: Hybrid Casper FFG was introduced, aiming to solve the issues associated with crypto mining by providing a hybrid system of consensus.

"The Casper component is somewhat more separate from the main chain. That means it can be developed less intrusively in some ways, it can be developed as a separate chain and can have its own rules."

Recently, Cointelegraph reported that Internet giant Google tried to recruit Vitalik Buterin to join their team, as Buterin reportedly tweeted May 20.

Erin posted and subsequently deleted a tweet with a screenshot allegedly from a Google recruiter who asked if Google "Make[s] sense for you now or in the future." Included was a poll to the Twitter community asking whether he should take the job.