Ethereum 2.0: No Date, High Gas Pushes Projects Away

Ethereum 2.0 has no date and high gas costs expel projects

When does Ethereum 2.0 launch? The question repeats every year, and the answer drifts further away each time. In discussions open since early 2022, predictions range from "never" to 2024, while Vitalik Buterin himself admits completing the roadmap could take another six years. There is no official date. The update meant to retire mining and lower transaction costs still lacks a calendar.

While waiting, the network loses projects for a very non-ideological reason: fees. And that, more than the roadmap, is what moves money.

When does Ethereum 2.0 launch? No date and a six-year threat

The circulating estimates are not optimistic. Some do not expect it this year; others state directly that it will not arrive before 2023. A third, sharper view argues that it never will: those who collect fees will not give them up. Then there is the reference to Buterin, cited in a publication estimating about six years of pending work.

Buterin's most recent proposal to reduce fees points to the same conclusion: it is necessary but arrives late. Developing such a solution is measured in years, not quarters. The precedent cited is Polygon Zero, a project started in 2019 whose latest milestone, Plonky2, is announced only now, and which is not yet operationally real.

Gas pushing projects out of Ethereum

The most repeated argument is not technical, it is accounting. Migrating a project from Ethereum to Polygon, BSC, Fantom, or Harmony takes a month or less, because they all use the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the same language: Solidity. Jumping to Solana requires three to six months, because programming in RUST is needed and few know it. And jumping to Cardano simply does not happen: one must learn Plutus, a variant of Haskell, and the programmer market is residual.

The conclusion is uncomfortable for the narrative of perfect decentralization: the decision is not made by technology, it is made by liquidity. If the money is on a network, projects trinc, even if that network goes down.

The cost of buying an NFT on each network

To compare, the example given is the purchase of an NFT:

• Ethereum: $40
• Fantom, BSC, and Solana: $1
• Polygon (Matic): $0.05
• Harmony: $0.00001

The difference between the main network and cheap alternatives is three orders of magnitude. This explains why an NFT marketplace can live on Polygon and Ethereum and add BSC in a week, while Solana remains parked on the priority list. The fine detail lies in how long the bridge back to Ethereum takes: on Polygon, it can be around a week. To move money, that is an eternity.

Solana, the trendy alternative that collapses alone

Solana lives its own mirage. Minting NFTs with Candy Machine costs about $5 compared to $160 on Ethereum, and this has triggered a boom in projects. The problem is that the network has completely gone down several times in a year—five, according to some counts—and much of what is built on top is the same copied pattern: marketplaces set up again and again.

Some argue that crashes do not matter, that Ethereum also went down during every flashy ICO, and that what decides is not reliability, but where the money flows. It is a crypto version of VHS vs. Beta.

The triple halving and the promise of $40,000 to $150,000

Against pessimism about timelines, the bullish thesis has its own calendar. The so-called triple halving would bring Ethereum's inflation from 4.3% to 0.4% and change the model: from the miner selling daily to the holder staking. The parallel with Bitcoin is explicit, multiplied by three. From this come price targets for 2023 ranging from $40,000 to $150,000.

It is a bet, not data. And it does not matter if the merge comes sooner or later: the thesis rests on the supply effect, not the date.

RUST, Plutus, and the programmer bottleneck

The real brake in the sector is not scalability, it is labor. The profile sought—frontend with React and web3.js, backend with Rust—has well-paid jobs and almost no competition. For EVM, knowing Solidity is enough. For Solana, Rust is required, and for Cardano, Plutus.

The result is an unequal migration: fast toward Polygon, BSC, Fantom, or Harmony; slow toward Solana; and practically zero toward Cardano, not due to lack of interest, but because there is no one to program it at market price. A project built on Solana ended up hiring someone from the founding team itself, paying a premium.

In the end, the date for Ethereum 2.0 remains an exercise in faith. What remains is the joke circulating in these conversations, which is more accurate than any roadmap: the transition always arrives six months after the date you are reading this. With that schedule, it has been punctual for years.