Crypto Industry News:
According to a January 14 release, a research team supported by the Ethereum Foundation is currently organizing a framework for a backwards-compatible Beacon chain change scheduled for mid-2021.
"This hard fork is not really a hard fork in the traditional sense," commented Ben Edgington, Teku project manager. Rather, it is a warm-up before sharding and combining Eth 1.x and Beacon Chain.
The word "fork" is heavily overused in a blockchain context. In fact, after doing this update, it shouldn't even fork, in the sense that the network ends up in a lot of competing chains, "Edgington wrote in a January 15 Eth 2.0 blog post.
The update will most likely include the following changes to the code (although these have not yet been fully agreed upon):
- Light clients service infrastructure via the sync committee. Solutions of this type enable chain verification without as much burden as with a typical validation device.
-New function balance_denominator to change activity penalties for non-participating validators. The current punishment method is the Service Denial of Service (DOS) vector while the new feature increases chain performance, wrote Danny Ryan on GitHub.
- Rewards will be based on mining periods (epoch) (similar to block), not on closure as is currently the case.
An additional feature under consideration is the addition of a difficulty bomb, also known as "Ice Age". The difficulty bomb - which triggers at fixed block heights - is a mining control mechanism that was originally added to the Eth 1.x blockchain in 2015. Over time, mining becomes more and more difficult to motivate developers to build Eth 2.0.
Technical Market Outlook:
The ETH/USD pair tried again to break through the short-term trend line resistance, but failed and reversed lower towards the level of $1,274. If this level is violated, then the next target for bears is seen at the level of $1,233. The momentum is pointing down around the neutral level, so the sentiment might be flipping to negative in the short-term. The nearest technical resistance is located at the level of $1,376. The higher time frame trend remains up.
Weekly Pivot Points:
WR3 - $1,927
WR2 - $1,665
WR1 - $1,545
Weekly Pivot - $1,286
WS1 - $1,156
WS2 - $897
WS3 - $767
Trading Recommendations:
The up trend on the Ethereum continues and the next long term target for ETH/USD is seen at the level of $1,500, so any correction or local pull-back should be used to open the buy orders. Please notice, the up trend starting to go vertical, so the volatility will be higher than average. The bullish scenario is valid as long as the level of $830 is broken.
