Farmer minds his crops
An optimistic outlook
The fields are aflame
tl;dr
- Medalla chugging alongside easily
- Consumer range is a should
- eth1+eth2 (Section 1.5 aka The Merge) end-to-end demo
- Testing and audits proceed as we method Section 0 launch
Medalla wanting good (after some enjoyable)
A quiet testnet is a suspicious testnet.
For those who’ve adopted Medalla in any respect previously few weeks, you will 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 latest weblog posts ([1][2]) for a high-level evaluation. Consumer groups labored by way of the weekend following the incident, deploying sync and peering patches to resolve the extremely fragmented community.
Whereas the incident induced unbelievable stressors on the testnet, it gave all purchasers an opportunity to harden themselves in opposition to a few of the wildest of situations. I can truthfully say that shopper software program is a lot extra strong following this incident. I will really sleep a bit of bit higher now main as much as eth2 mainnet launch.
For the reason that incident, Medalla has chugged alongside fairly easily: now with 39k lively validators and one other 12k within the activation queue (that is 12 days price)!
Consumer range is a should
Whereas there are numerous [excellent, viable, robust, usable, etc] eth2 purchasers beneath lively growth, the community is presently dominated by a single shopper — Prysm.
There’s good historic motive for this — Prysm has prioritized early testnets, neighborhood engagement, and value for nicely over a 12 months now. Kudos to the Prysmatic group. Neighborhood constructing is concurrently extremely tough 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 neighborhood, should consciously search to treatment this. As somebody who has tried all of the eth2 purchasers on Medalla, I can let you know first-hand that the majority purchasers are strong and nicely documented, and all shopper groups are actively engaged on discord and github that will help you work by way of any points chances are you’ll run into.
Shield your self
Consumer range not solely makes the eth2 consensus extra strong, but additionally helps defend you in excessive situations: because of the anti-correlation incentives present in eth2, the extra your unfavourable 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 steady 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. For those who run client-A, you stand to lose an rising quantity every epoch that the finality outage continues (we name this an “inactivity leak”). Whereas in case you run client-B or C, your stability 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 isn’t a “inactivity leak” incurred by the offline validators, solely regular penalties. So these working client-B, solely obtain minor penalties in comparison with the primary situation above.
Purchasers making it straightforward to swap
Along with the neighborhood efforts to attempt new purchasers, shopper groups are working laborious to make sure that switching purchasers is each straightforward and protected. With the addition of some cross-client standards, you will quickly have the ability to hop from one shopper to a different with minimal downtime and no threat of unintentional slashing.
Such requirements, which stop shopper lock-in, are a essential element to a sturdy eth2 community. Ease of fixing software program will allow the neighborhood 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 achieve Section 1.5 (aka The Merge), at which level the prevailing 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 Section 1.5 is designed to be as seamless as attainable to current customers and functions. Eth1 purchasers stay the work horses for state, transactions, and execution. By leaving the overwhelming majority of this person layer untouched, Ethereum will have the ability to leverage current instruments and APIs to energy transactions and dapps, identical to they do in the present day.
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 quite a lot of 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 in case you choose to go a bit deeper, you’ll be able to construct and run from source.
Continued testing and audits, eyeballing Section 0 mainnet
Enterprise as ordinary 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 
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