ConsenSys developer Ben Edgington has published an update that predicts the ETH 2.0 beacon chain genesis will happen within the next six to eight weeks.

In a post announcing the launch of ‘V1.0.0 release candidate 0’, Edgington revealed the protocol’s deposit contract address feature should be announced this week. The deposit contract allows ETH to be sent between Ethereum and ETH 2.0, and is one of the few remaining updates needed to facilitate the roll-out of ETH 2.0 phase 0:

“As I understand it, we are good to go: deposit contract in the next few days; beacon chain genesis 6-8 weeks later.”

However, the PegaSys engineering group developer emphasized his prediction “is not an official statement.”

To complete phase 0’s launch, 500,000 Ether will need to be locked for staking after the beacon chain goes live, followed by a week-long genesis delay to give the network time to prepare.

According to Edgington, the new release also strengthens Ethereum against denial-of-service attacks, implements the genesis delay and a temporary quadrupling of penalty fees.

Penalties were increased in response to the “slightly bumpy” genesis “dress rehearsal” on the Spadina test network at the end of September, and what is now “very low participation” on the Medalla testnet.

The developer described the fee hike as “a temporary measure to give stakers more confidence in case we hit trouble.” Despite low testnet participation, Edgington firmly believes the network is ready to transition into phase 0:

“I think people are getting a bit bored of testnests. It’s time to move on […] we need to launch Phase 0 asap.”

Edgington’s post comes after a successful trial on the Zinken testnet last week, which Set Protocol’s Anthony Sassano described as the “second last dress rehearsal testnet before we finally set an ETH 2 phase 0 mainnet launch date.”