tl;dr
- Merge progress — minor spec updates, engineering full steam forward
- No progress in shopper range. Be egocentric, run a minority shopper!
Merge replace
To begin with — unbelievable work to all the engineering groups on the Kintsugi dash, which culminated within the launch of the Kintsugi Merge testnet. It’s unbelievable to see 3 execution purchasers and 5 consensus purchasers for a complete of 15 completely different pairings working on a unified entrance.
Kintsugi
, the primary long-standing Merge testnet, was not with out pleasure. The #TestingTheMerge effort hammered the testnet with transactions, dangerous blocks, and various different chaotic inputs, effervescent up some bugs in state transition, sync, and extra. We look forward to finding such bugs in early testnets, however with every iteration, purchasers change into an increasing number of secure.
Kiln reboot 
Groups recognized an vital concern a couple of weeks in the past. This was a mismatch within the engine API (how the PoS consensus-layer drives the execution-layer) semantics associated to how execution-layer purchasers really operate in observe. The tl;dr is that, in some contexts, the consensus-layer was by accident inducing surprising load on the execution-layer.
Engineers then realized that if the engine API semantics had been barely extra versatile, the 2 layers may work extra harmoniously. This led to a delicate, but vital, modification of the engine API and a associated breaking spec launch.
In the present day, the Kiln spec was launched, and engineers are busy knocking out the modifications. On the finish of this dash, groups purpose to deliver production-ready implementations to a brand new testnet for public consumption. Maintain your eyes peeled for the way to take part.
From there, groups will transition public testnets to proof-of-stake earlier than making mainnet preparations.
Consumer range metrics
Michael Sproul launched a brand new wave of client diversity metrics utilizing his novel fingerprinting mechanism. Sadly, the shopper distribution of validating nodes has not budged previously 6 months.
The range of consensus-layer shopper implementations allows Ethereum and its customers to have a singular and strong resilience to software program failures and assaults. Customers obtain some resiliance by utilizing a minority shopper whatever the community make-up, however the community itself positive aspects resiliance at a couple of key validator distribution thresholds.
If a single shopper:
- Doesn’t exceed 66.6%, a fault/bug in a single shopper can’t be finalized
- Doesn’t exceed 50%, a fault/bug in a single shopper’s forkchoice can’t dominate the top of the chain
- Doesn’t exceed 33.3%, a fault/bug in a single shopper can’t disrupt finality
From the seems to be of the fingerprinting mechanism, Prysm nonetheless sits above the 66.6% mark.
I wish to give an enormous shoutout to the groups, people, and communities taking shopper range severely (exhibit A, exhibit B). Working a minority shopper shouldn’t be solely wholesome for the community however can also be safer for the person consumer’s funds.
Be egocentric (rational)! Run a minority shopper 
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