Testnets, testnets, testnets!
tl;dr
Medalla testnet
Following the wonderful stability of Altona and based mostly on conversations with eth2 shopper groups, Medalla – the following multi-client testnet – may have a MIN_GENESIS_TIME of 1596546000 (or for these of you that do not suppose in unix time — August 4th, 2020, 1pm UTC)!
It is a main step up from Altona within the sense that Medalla is a testnet constructed for and maintained by the group. The multi-client testnets previous to Medalla had been thought of “devnets”, run primarily by shopper groups and members of the EF (see the Altona part of my final publish for a extra full rationalization), however with the launch of this community, the steadiness and well being of the chain can be virtually solely in the neighborhood’s fingers (your fingers ✋🤞🤟!).
Observe that MIN_GENESIS_TIME is the earliest the chain can begin, however the chain will not begin till the minimal validator depend has additionally been reached. With the intention to keep trustworthy to the mainnet spec, Medalla will begin with no fewer than 16,384 validators (524,288 ETH). Within the occasion that minimal deposits (16,384 of them) aren’t met by 1pm UTC on August 2nd (48 hours previous to min genesis), the chain will begin later than MIN_GENESIS_TIME. That is okay.
In sum, genesis will occur 48 hours after each circumstances are met. We’ll all be on our toes, watching deposits, and when the genesis time is thought, we are going to make a bunch of noise about it 🎉
We’ll even be releasing a model of the validator “Launchpad” for Medalla — an academic interface for validators to make deposits. Extra particulars on this are imminent
We’ll don’t have any fewer than 4 purchasers totally operating at genesis — lighthouse, nimbus, prysm, and teku. As traditional, we strongly encourage shopper range so as to add power and resilience to the community (see dialogue of eth2’s many purchasers). Please do not hesitate to take a look at shopper docs, mess with compilation and configuration, and drop by their discord servers to ask questions 🙂
Along with the 4 purchasers listed above, I totally count on lodestar to be on internet in some capability firstly, and we’d even have one other shock shopper be part of the combination.
One other thrilling announcement: Medalla may have particular POAPs for many who take part within the launch! Keep tuned for extra particulars 🏅
Attacknets beta-0 launch
Calling all whitehat 1337 h4x0rz👩🍳!
Three attacknets had been launched this week (lighthouse-attack-0, prysm-attack-0, and teku-attack-0), every with a $5k bounty to deliver it down (that’s, disrupt finality for a minimum of 16 steady epochs).
These preliminary attacknets are purposefully easy (1 shopper every) and small (4 nodes every) in order that they ought to be fairly simple to take down. Try the README for extra particulars and notes on getting began, and be part of the Eth R&D #attacknets channel for dicussion and suggestions.
Following the beta-0 attacknets, we’ll scale up the dimensions and complexity of attacknets in addition to add extra advanced challenges with bigger bounties.
Oh! and an honorable mention 🏆 goes out to Jonny (TXRX) for managing to take down lighthouse-attack-0‘s discovery. Though this didn’t crash the finality of the testnet, he found a vital bug! Thanks Age (Sigma Prime) for the quick repair.
eth1+eth2 merger progress update
I need to give a quick update on the eth1+eth2 merger progress and to present a big shout-out to Mikhail (TXRX) and Guillaume (geth) for his or her glorious work.
The present imaginative and prescient of the way forward for Ethereum is for the present chain to be built-in into the brand new eth2 consensus as a shard. That is the wedding of eth2 purchasers (consensus) with eth1 purchasers (extremely optimized consumer layer) right into a single system. The excessive degree on the shopper relationship could be discovered here; a extra detailed scope of the merger mentioned by Mikhail is here; and a dialogue of the structure of a geth based mostly eth1-engine (referred to as Catalyst) by Guillaume is here.
Because the above posts had been written, Mikhail and Guillaume have been busy turning these ideas into actuality. Guillaume’s Catalyst — a model of geth which defers its consensus to RPC calls (i.e. an eth2 shopper) — is constructed and able to go; and Mikhail’s Part 1 implementation is operating totally sharded eth2 simulations with choose shards deferring block manufacturing and validity calls to an area, stubbed eth1-engine.
The following step is to plug these two items collectively for an end-to-end eth1+eth2 simulation!
Once more, nice work Mikhail and Guillaume. I am extremely enthusiastic about this and the truth that it is taking place in parallel to the upcoming launch of the beacon chain 🚀
