tl;dr
Upgrade for London, indeed you!
The eagerly awaited upgrade to the Ethereum mainnet — London — has a fork block planned, and mainnet client releases are available. As previously noted, to facilitate validator deposits, the beacon chain validators achieve consensus on the status of the proof-of-work chain and handle deposits in a sequential manner from that point onward.
To preserve this connection, all mainnet validators need to enhance their proof-of-work nodes (often referred to as the “eth1 endpoint”).
For additional information, please refer to the London announcement.
🚨🚨🚨 Caution 🚨🚨🚨
Due to a matter identified last week on the Ropsten testnet (see retrospective), Go-Ethereum (geth), Nethermind, and Erigon have released new, imperative updates as of late last week. Should you have upgraded your proof-of-work node prior to these releases, you must upgrade once more to remain in agreement following London.
The London fork is anticipated between August 3-5, 2021. There is no time like the present — upgrade now!
The Merge — checklist and draft EIP
Mikhail, Tim, and I have compiled a public-facing “Merge Mainnet Readiness Checklist”. This outlines the various tasks needed to transition us from this point to the Merge, facilitating both client team synchronization and enhancing visibility of progress for the community. Please note that this list is rather high level, and it intends to serve as a resource. Much of the detailed organization and communication around each item occurs on calls, discord conversations, independent repositories, etc.
Furthermore, if you wish to delve deeper technically, Mikhail, Vitalik, and I recently issued a Merge specification from the execution-layer perspective in the format of a draft EIP. While this does not include any significant surprises, it represents a crucial step towards the next phase of Merge development!
Altair progress
Altair, the inaugural major upgrade of the Beacon Chain, is showing remarkable advancement following the launch of two minor devnets mostly composed of nodes and validators managed by client teams. With these initial devnets, we have progressed from alpha to beta releases as the feature set has been validated by all teams, with all anticipated enhancements now included in the spec — v1.1.0-beta.2 Mach’acuay.
This week, we anticipate the launch of another devnet followed by deliberations to select a date for forking Pyrmont, a long-established beacon chain testnet. This development will involve many more node operators at a much larger scale, paving the way for a final round of testing and the selection of a mainnet target launch date.
For further context regarding the what, why, and how of Altair, explore this impressive set of Altair PEEPanEIPs created by the Ethereum Cat Herders:
- #34: Altair – Accounting reform with Alex Stokes
- #35: Altair Beacon chain upgrade with Vitalik and Danny
- #38: Altair in Teku with Adrian Sutton
Finally, preparing the Beacon Chain codebases for their first upgrade has been an enjoyable yet challenging endeavor. A massive shoutout goes to all the fantastic work done by client teams to bring us closer to this significant milestone 🚀
