Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has added a mirrored version of the Ethereum blockchain's native token Ether (ETH) to its crypto toll index, only ahead of a fundamental network upgrade on Dec. 10.

Dubbed "ETH2," the symbol appeared to have been tracking the original Ether market information synchronously. For instance, the cost to purchase ETH2 came out to be the same as that for ETH. Meanwhile, their market capitalization, volume, circulating supply and price changes were as well identical.

Notwithstanding, unlike the original, the ETH2 token had no Trading Activity, Popularity Score, or Typical Hold Time, underscoring that its role — for now — is to merely track the ETH market data until at least mid-2022.

ETH vs ETH2.0 marketplace information. Source: Coinbase

That is probably as ETH2 seems to have been posing as the native token of Ethereum's ongoing upgrade, dubbed Ethereum two.0, which is expected to go fully live by June 2022. But the Coinbase's index listing appears closer to "Arrow Glacier," a fork that would give developers more time to prepare for Ethereum ii.0.

Before Ethereum two.0

The Pointer Glacier update aims to delay a so-called "difficulty bomb," an incentive hardcoded within the Ethereum blockchain since its launch in 2022, which would make it difficult for people to mine Ether. In doing so, the Bomb, if triggered, would boring down the Ethereum network, for as long as it remains proof-of-work.

Tim Beiko, one of the core developers working on the Ethereum upgrade, noted that Arrow Glacier might exist the terminal upgrade before Ethereum two.0 goes live next twelvemonth. Meanwhile, Coinbase appears to take been treating the Arrow Glacier fork to ensure that there would be a new token called ETH2 after the Ethereum two.0 upgrade.

In detail, Ethereum two.0, also known as "Serenity," would enable significant changes to its pattern, including a full-scale transition from energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) — also used past Bitcoin (BTC) — to proof-of-pale (PoS).

In the current version, nodes must validate every transaction to maintain Ethereum's public ledger. But the Ethereum two.0 upgrade would launch "sharding," which would divide the network into diverse segments (called shards) and randomly assign nodes to each shard.

Buoy Chain and Sharding. Source: Vitalik.ca

That would remove the need for each node to scan the unabridged concatenation, theoretically improving the speed and costs required to maintain the network. Meanwhile, individual shards would share the transaction details with a and so-called Buoy Chain, which serves every bit the backbone of Ethereum two.0.

ETH2 is not a new crypto

Buoy Chain, which went live in December 2022, would validate the transactions on each shard, thus assisting the entire Ethereum 2.0 network In reaching consensus. It would besides detect dishonest validators and initiate penalties by removing a portion of the validator's stake from circulation.

Related: Vitalik Buterin outlines 'endgame' roadmap for ETH 2.0

At the core of Ethereum 2.0's PoS design would be ETH (or ETH2), which primarily serves equally a staking token for validators to participate in the network consensus and, in turn, receive block rewards.

Buoy Chain's deposit contract has received over 8.42 million ETH tokens from 55,300 unique depositors (validators) since its launch in Dec 2022.

The residual of the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract divided by the total ETH supply. Source: CryptoQuant

That existence said, ETH2 is non a new coin and would not change the ETH amount one holds. Instead, as Coinbase'south index list suggests, ETH2 may stop up becoming a rebranded version of the original Ether, without needing holders to swap one version for some other.

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