What is the latest progress of Ethereum 2.0? The Altair upgrade is in countdown, and the merge may be postponed to June 2022
The difficulty bomb on the Ethereum 1.0 network has been postponed to June 2022, when the merge is expected to occur.Author: Ben Edgington, Ethereum 2.0 Developer
Compiled by: Overnight Porridge, 8btc
Reminder: The Beacon Chain Altair upgrade will be implemented at 10:56:23 UTC on October 27. Please ensure your node is updated and ready! If you have any questions, please consult the development team of the relevant client.
Beacon Chain
As the warning above states, the Altair upgrade/fork of the Beacon Chain is imminent. If your beacon node has not been upgraded to the latest version, it will no longer be compatible with the network after the upgrade and will also be penalized.
According to ChainSafe's NodeWatch, at the time of writing, only 47.2% of nodes are prepared for the Altair upgrade. If this data is accurate, it would be a disaster. The Altair upgrade will be chaotic, and as we sort through this chaos, the merge will undoubtedly be delayed. Upgrade your nodes, friends! This is actually tied to the rewards you receive, so do it now.
If that doesn't convince you, then I think we need to bring out a more powerful weapon. Yes, updating your client and informing others about it can earn you a POAP commemorative badge.
For advanced users, please note that Web3Signer also needs to be updated to v21.10.0 for the Altair upgrade.
EthStaker is hosting an upgrade watch party, and we sincerely hope this upgrade goes smoothly. I've also heard rumors about a POAP art canvas.
Merge Testnet
The merge workshop went very well, and my friends at ConsenSys and the Ethereum Foundation did a great job covering the event.
The Pithos testnet showcased at this workshop, runs well with various combinations of Ethereum 1.0 (execution) and Ethereum 2.0 (consensus) clients. (Note: Pithos is a type of Greek pottery.)
There are currently several Pithos monitoring tools: a blockchain explorer and a consensus monitor. If you wish, you can also try the Pithos testnet, but it is not user-friendly and comes with no guarantees. Nevertheless, according to CoinCashew's guide, you can get this testnet up and running in under 10 minutes. Here is a running video, and if you are familiar with Ansible, here are the instructions and scripts.
The good news is that Prysm has caught up with the merge workshop, and there are instructions on joining Pithos.
Developers plan to establish a larger and more stable merge testnet in the coming weeks.
Vitalik's merge specification (with annotations) is great reading material that can help everyone better understand what we are doing here. Also see Alex and Proto's talk at the LisCon conference.
Timing of the Merge
After extensive discussions during last week's Ethereum core developer call, the difficulty bomb on the Ethereum 1.0 network has been postponed to June 2022, when the merge is expected to occur.
Please note that this is not a commitment! No Ethereum 2.0 client developers can make a definitive statement; at best, it is just a target plan. We will not initiate the merge until we are fully confident that it is ready.
About Staking
Client diversity remains a major topic of discussion, and I was pleased to host a panel discussion last week at the EthGlobal summit with Evan Van Ness, Carl Beek, Superphiz, and DappLion.
As Evan said, most panel discussions are quite dull. However, the outcome of this discussion was good, and surprisingly, we all agreed on this topic 99% of the time. Nevertheless, the diverse discussions were quite enlightening. I didn't do much, just asked a few naive questions like "Will Prysm be too big to fail?" and "Is client diversity a mistake?" and then stepped back to a safe distance.
Meanwhile, Michael Sproul updated his client diversity statistics based on increasingly complex block fingerprint analysis, which is a great post with some interesting findings.
Stereum
Stereum has been busy with their beacon node launcher. Version 1.8 has been released, and their security audit has also been published. They have also initiated a maintenance challenge (registration will end on October 31), and participating in this challenge can earn you NFTs and POAPs, but for various reasons, I may not participate myself.
Carefully Curated Talks
First, I owe an apology to the Prysm team for missing their PEEPanEIP meeting a few weeks ago regarding the Altair upgrade and roadmap. Sorry, guys! There is still time to correct this before Altair goes live! Pooja just did a great summary of all past meetings related to Altair.
This week at the LisCon conference, a series of Ethereum 2.0-related talks took place, and the agenda is here, while the videos can be found here. I picked out a few from the ongoing talks:
- Questions about Prysm - Exploring the scope of client diversity (Carl Beekhuizen)
- Reorg games in PoS Ethereum (Caspar Schwarz-Schilling)
- Development regarding the merge (Alex Stokes & Proto)
- DappLion's light client talk is definitely worth a watch, but I haven't found the talk video anywhere yet.
At LisCon, there was also an informal meeting organized by Blox Staking/ssv.network: [SSV], the future of Ethereum Staking. The discussions covered a wide range of topics, including the Beacon Chain, staking, and client diversity.
Speaking of SSV (Shared Validator), the Obol network unveiled its project this week, and I am pleased to be an advisor for this project.
EthGlobal hosted a merge and scalability summit at the end of the month-long EthOnline event, and the quality of this event was as high as ever:
- Josh Stark, A Year in Ethereum;
- Danny Ryan, Killing Proof of Work;
- Marius van der Wijden, The Merge from the Execution Layer's Perspective;
- Guillaume Ballet, Stateless & Verkle Trees;
- Vitalik, Upgrading Our Rollup Infrastructure;
- AMA with Aya Miyaguchi;
Finally, I recommend two podcast episodes:
Danny Ryan (Bankless) on Layer 0;
Vasiliy Shapovalov (Epicenter) on Lido;
Research
- BitMEX conducted extensive discussions on outsourced staking, concluding that:
"A large amount of outsourced staking is a significant potential issue for the ETH 2.0 network."
This is the main reason Ethereum has never considered implementing a formal Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) protocol. However, it seems that if enough solo stakers do not participate, we may end up in a similar situation.
Researchers provided a lengthy and detailed analysis of EIP 1559 and the equilibrium supply of ETH in the post-merge era (with some nice visuals). The report states that Ethereum's supply may eventually stabilize between 27.3 million and 49.5 million ETH, and there may even be permanent deflation. Would someone say ultra sound?
Vitalik's research on the separation of block builders/proposers continues to evolve. The latest is 2 slot proposer/builder separation. From my quick reading, the Beacon Chain slot will decrease from 12 seconds to 8 seconds, and an execution block (Eth1 block) will be added every two slots (every 16 seconds).
Regular Calls
On October 21, developers held the 74th implementers' call, and here are the details:
Most of it was straightforward, the only unusual aspect was the discussion of naming the various upgrades involved in the merge.
On October 13, developers held the 9th Stakehouse community call, and I was pleased to participate in a discussion led by Prysm's James He on standardizing validator key management APIs.
Upcoming Events:
- 10:30 UTC on October 27: EthStaker Altair Watch Party
- October 31: Deadline for registration for Stereum Validator Maintenance Challenge
- 14:00 UTC on November 5: First Merge Community Call
Other News
Lido is addressing recently discovered issues surrounding front-running deposits. I've heard that Rocket Pool is testing their patch on the Prater testnet, and Sigma Prime is auditing it before a new mainnet release date is confirmed.
The Chainsafe team updated Lodestar v1.
