tl;dr
- Merge progress — minor spec updates, engineering full steam forward 🚂
- No progress in consumer variety. Be egocentric, run a minority consumer!
Merge replace
Initially — incredible work to the entire 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 a variety of 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 essential problem 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 follow. The tl;dr is that, in some contexts, the consensus-layer was by chance inducing sudden 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 refined, but crucial, modification of the engine API and a associated breaking spec launch.
Right now, the Kiln spec🔥🧱 was launched, and engineers are busy knocking out the adjustments. On the finish of this dash, groups goal to convey production-ready implementations to a brand new testnet for public consumption. Hold your eyes peeled for methods to take part.
From there, groups will transition public testnets to proof-of-stake earlier than making mainnet preparations.
Consumer variety metrics
Michael Sproul launched a brand new wave of consumer variety metrics utilizing his novel fingerprinting mechanism. Sadly, the consumer distribution of validating nodes has not budged up to now 6 months.
The variety of consensus-layer consumer implementations allows Ethereum and its customers to have a novel and sturdy resilience to software program failures and assaults. Customers obtain some resiliance through the use of a minority consumer whatever the community make-up, however the community itself positive aspects resiliance at a couple of key validator distribution thresholds.
If a single consumer:
- Doesn’t exceed 66.6%, a fault/bug in a single consumer can’t be finalized
- Doesn’t exceed 50%, a fault/bug in a single consumer’s forkchoice can’t dominate the top of the chain
- Doesn’t exceed 33.3%, a fault/bug in a single consumer 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 consumer variety significantly (exhibit A, exhibit B). Operating a minority consumer 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 consumer 🚀
