Greetings to this week’s eth2 brief update! A few fresh eth2 testnets have become operational and last week I had them all functioning on my laptop. There remains a substantial amount of tasks ahead, but things are progressing nicely :).
summary;
Thorough Phase 0 audit to be carried out by Least Authority
We are thrilled to proclaim an imminent eth2 specification audit to be performed by Least Authority. This will be an extensive security examination of the eth2 core Phase 0 specifications, concentrating on vital concerns like Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, resource misuse threats that might result in unintended forks/adversarial chains, network-oriented attacks, assaults that affect assets, and much more.
Least Authority stands as a top authority in mechanism & incentive architecture, decentralized/distributed systems design, and blockchain system analysis. The Ethereum Foundation has previously collaborated with Least Authority on projects in the past including an audit of discv5 and an analysis of gas economics and proof of work, and we look forward to this chance to collaborate with them again. A comprehensive security review is essential for a successful launch of Phase 0, and we eagerly anticipate the initial report to be published in early February.
Lighthouse initiates testnet with mainnet setup
Last week, Sigma Prime launched their highly anticipated public Lighthouse testnet. This testnet remarkably implemented the mainnet spec configuration, and at its peak was effortlessly managing 16815 active validators!
As mentioned by Sigma Prime at the network launch, “we’re going to begin attempting to crash this testnet and I anticipate we’ll succeed”, and indeed they did. After overcoming non-finality for 100+ epochs due to two of their validator-heavy nodes going offline, the Sigma Prime crew opted to take the network down to resolve some bugs, implement new optimizations, and restart fresh shortly. Check the postmortem here. As deliberated in today’s eth2 call, the team aims to relaunch the testnet tomorrow, opening it for public utilization after initial stability assessment.
Remember to be an engaged participant in these early testnets if you feel capable: If something isn’t clear in the documentation, tell them. If you experience trouble compiling, raise an issue. If you spot a typo in the readme, correct it! This applies to all clients and open-source software in general. The more you proactively contribute in this process, the better it will be for everyone.
P.S. Sigma Prime is seeking a full-time skilled Rust developer to work on Lighthouse. Take a look!
Nimbus incorporates native nim-libp2p
Earlier this year, the Ethereum Foundation, Protocol Labs, and Status jointly funded a grant for Nimbus to establish a native Nim language version of libp2p. This version was meant to be integrated into the nimbus eth2 client and also serve as a p2p networking option for resource-limited devices.
We are delighted to announce that Nimbus has recently integrated this native version into their codebase and plans to restart their testnet with it this week. This marks a significant achievement both for Nimbus and the p2p community as a whole due to Nim’s proficiency in compiling concise and efficient code for most computing architectures. The Nimbus crew continues to excel — they are genuinely a powerhouse of engineering! P2P everything!
beaconcha.in adds support for Lighthouse
Bitfly’s open source eth2 block explorer, beaconcha.in, has just added support for Lighthouse! You can examine it here, but currently, activity is halted until Lighthouse restarts their network.
We are extremely enthusiastic about seeing multiple client implementations being adopted, which will help create common interfaces for external software to query and comprehend the internal workings of eth2. This and other tools will be instrumental in monitoring, understanding, and interacting with forthcoming testnets and ultimately the mainnet!
Eth2 specification release timeline
We launched eth2 spec version v0.9.3 — rm signing_root and possess v0.9.4 that includes a testing fix and network update in the pipeline. These serve as the final updates in the v0.9.x series of minor revisions following the unfreezing of Phase 0 in October. These recent specification releases have primarily concentrated on ensuring the Phase 0 Beacon Chain is adaptable enough to accommodate the new Phase 1 sharding framework, while also featuring clean-ups, bug rectifications, enhanced testing, and networking updates in the changelog. A significant portion of these modifications have been guided by ongoing client progress on testnets and overall preparations for mainnet.
The upcoming scheduled release is set for early January. This v0.10.0 release will be dedicated to the incorporation of the new BLS standards into the core eth2 specifications. The v0.10.x release series with production-grade BLS aims to target the final testnets and subsequently the mainnet release. There’s still work pending, but there’s an all-encompassing dedicated effort currently addressing it. Thank (or fund/tip/etc!) the client teams. These engineers are crafting something truly remarkable for all of us :rocket:.
