Ethereum is an open-source, public, distributed blockchain computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality, which facilitates online contractual agreements.
The last planned release of ethereumEthereum originally named Serenity plans to include features to transition ethereum from a proof-of-work consensus protocol to the a proof-of-stake based on the Casper protocol being developed by Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir, and others. SerenityEthereum 2.0 is also scheduledplanned to implementcome shardingin four phases that incrementally adds features such as the Beacon Chain (Phase 0), Shard Chains (Phase 1), Sharded Mainnet (Phase 1.5), and Fully Formed Shards (Phase 2).
2020
The first stage of Eth2, called Phase 0, is planned to launch in 2020