All attention on Medalla testnet — genesis in under 24 hours 👀
tl;dr
Medalla testnet debuts tomorrow 🏅
The minimum validator contributions (over 16k) needed to initiate the Medalla testnet were achieved on Friday, meaning the genesis of this testnet is anticipated to occur at 1596546008 Unix time, or 8 seconds post August 4th at 1pm UTC. If you’re interested in how that time is determined, refer to Ben Edgington’s brief genesis overview.
The launch of Medalla marks a significant achievement in the progression of eth2 — if Medalla demonstrates stability, the mainnet launch will follow — and symbolizes years of dedication from numerous engineers, researchers, and community participants. We hope you’re as thrilled as we are :).
Keep in mind, the majority of validators on the Medalla testnet are operated by you, the community. We depend on you to approach this as a practice run for the mainnet launch — ensure your nodes are functioning well ahead of time, monitor your validator’s performance, and remain vigilant for any essential updates to your client’s software (in other words, treat your testnet validators as though they’re safeguarding actual ETH).
Client diversity 👯♀️
The community will be operating five distinct clients at genesis!
A massive shoutout goes to each of these teams. If you are utilizing any of the mentioned clients, please extend your thanks to the client team and think about contributing some ETH or DAI to their tip jars. They have certainly earned it.
Do not forget! Medalla offers unique POAP NFTs for utilizing each client type during launch. Get the information here 🏅
Along with the incredible efforts of the eth2 client teams, I want to spotlight ethstaker — an emerging user-oriented resource for the developing validator community. This community-driven initiative aims to create a space for the hobbyist staking community through a subreddit and discord server.
I’ve spent some time in the discord this past week, and it’s an excellent platform to exchange knowledge, pose (and respond to!) technical queries, and generally collaborate around the innovative and exciting eth2 staking technology. If you are staking on Medalla or are keen to get involved, definitely give it a look.
I anticipate that ethstaker, along with client-specific discords, will be essential for validators aiming to stay informed on all validator-related topics.
mc-attack-0 attacknet launch
mc-attack-0, a new multi-client attacknet, debuted today!
This new attacknet falls under the beta-1 classification with revised rules and enhanced bounties — up to $15k for critical problems.
Since the rollout of the initial beta-0 attacknets, we have rewarded for the following assaults:
- $5000 awarded to Jonny Rhea for conducting a simple DoS attack on teku-attack-0, revealing some absent basic DoS protections in JVM-libp2p
- 🏆💪🐿 awarded to Martin Swende for discovering a critical flaw in Prysm’s SSZ decoding, which enabled a remote attacker to crash nodes on prysm-attack-0 (no monetary award due to Martin’s security role at the EF)
- $5000 awarded to AlexSSD7 for executing an L4 DDoS on prysm-attack-0, disrupting finality on the 4-node network and illustrating a clock-skew that hindered nodes from recovering post-attack
- $1000 awarded (honorable mention) to Jonny Rhea for disabling the discovery mechanism in lighthouse-attack-0
As always, connect with us in the Eth R&D discord #attacknet channel for conversations and advice to get started 🚀