Farmer minds his crops
An optimistic outlook
The fields are aflame
tl;dr
- Medalla chugging alongside easily
- Consumer range is a should
- eth1+eth2 (Part 1.5 aka The Merge) end-to-end demo
- Testing and audits proceed as we method Part 0 launch
Medalla trying good (after some enjoyable)
A quiet testnet is a suspicious testnet.
In case you’ve adopted Medalla in any respect previously few weeks, you may be very conscious of the key 5-day incident that occured on Friday, August 14th. Try Prysm’s post-mortem for particulars on the technicals and timeline, and Ben’s current weblog posts ([1][2]) for a high-level evaluation. Consumer groups labored via the weekend following the incident, deploying sync and peering patches to resolve the extremely fragmented community.
Whereas the incident induced unimaginable stressors on the testnet, it gave all purchasers an opportunity to harden themselves in opposition to a few of the wildest of eventualities. I can actually say that shopper software program is a lot extra strong following this incident. I am going to really sleep just a little bit higher now main as much as eth2 mainnet launch.
Because the incident, Medalla has chugged alongside fairly easily: now with 39k energetic validators and one other 12k within the activation queue (that is 12 days value)!
Consumer range is a should
Whereas there are lots of [excellent, viable, robust, usable, etc] eth2 purchasers underneath energetic growth, the community is at present dominated by a single shopper — Prysm.
There’s good historic cause for this — Prysm has prioritized early testnets, group engagement, and value for properly over a yr now. Kudos to the Prysmatic workforce. Group constructing is concurrently extremely troublesome in addition to essential to our trade and open supply at giant.
That mentioned, the incident on Medalla was considerably amplified by the failure of the dominant Prysm shopper, and as we transfer towards mainnet, we, as a group, should consciously search to treatment this. As somebody who has tried all of the eth2 purchasers on Medalla, I can inform you first-hand that the majority purchasers are strong and properly documented, and all shopper groups are actively engaged on discord and github that will help you work via any points it’s possible you’ll run into.
Defend your self
Consumer range not solely makes the eth2 consensus extra strong, but additionally helps shield you in excessive eventualities: because of the anti-correlation incentives present in eth2, the extra your detrimental behaviour is correlated with that of others, the extra you extra you stand lose.
For instance, suppose 60% of the community goes offline for a number of days due an outage in client-A, however client-B and client-C stay secure and on-line. Though the chain will proceed to be constructed by B and C, the chain is not going to finalize because of the >33% outage. In case you run client-A, you stand to lose an rising quantity every epoch that the finality outage continues (we name this an “inactivity leak”). Whereas when you run client-B or C, your steadiness is protected because you stay on-line. [Note — an inacivity leak is much worse than normal offline penalties.]
Suppose that as a substitute a minority client-B (with 20% of the community) experiences a essential error inflicting a shopper extensive outage. On this case, the chain can proceed to finalize (since 80% of the community are nonetheless taking part). There is no such thing as a “inactivity leak” incurred by the offline validators, solely regular penalties. So these operating client-B, solely obtain minor penalties in comparison with the primary situation above.
Shoppers making it simple to swap
Along with the group efforts to strive new purchasers, shopper groups are working onerous to make sure that switching purchasers is each simple and secure. With the addition of some cross-client standards, you may quickly be capable of hop from one shopper to a different with minimal downtime and no danger of unintentional slashing.
Such requirements, which stop shopper lock-in, are a essential part to a strong eth2 community. Ease of adjusting software program will allow the group to extra rapidly resolve points (just like the Medalla incident) if/when a single shopper fails.
eth1+eth2 end-to-end demo
One of many major objectives of eth2 is to succeed in Part 1.5 (aka The Merge), at which level the present Ethereum chain’s consensus can be built-in into eth2. From there on, the chain we all know and love can be constructed by proof-of-stake validators as a substitute of the present power hungry proof-of-work consensus.
The transition to Part 1.5 is designed to be as seamless as attainable to current customers and purposes. Eth1 purchasers stay the work horses for state, transactions, and execution. By leaving the overwhelming majority of this consumer layer untouched, Ethereum will be capable of leverage current instruments and APIs to energy transactions and dapps, similar to they do right this moment.
To this finish, Mikhail (TXRX) and Guillaume (geth) not too long ago launched an end-to-end demo of a multi-sharded beacon chain (with an eth1 chain as a kind of shards). Within the video of the demo launched, Mikhail sends numerous transactions to the eth1 shard chain utilizing an unmodified metamask pockets.
You may try and play with a dockerized version of the eth1+eth2 demo, or when you favor to go a bit deeper, you possibly can construct and run from source.
Continued testing and audits, eyeballing Part 0 mainnet
Enterprise as common on this entrance.
Consumer groups are working their asses off, auditors are digging into each nook and cranny, and preparations are being made for mainnet launch 🚀
