Even though the internet has been somewhat quieter than normal, we’ve been extremely busy working on eth2! Between Devcon5 and focusing on our tasks, it appears we’ve left the community unaware of a few matters. Here’s a brief update to bridge the gaps.
Deposit Contract
Although the deposit contract has been crafted, evaluated, and formally audited, we are striving to ensure the BLS standardization stabilizes before launch. One of eth2’s objectives is to enable seamless interoperability with various blockchains and systems, and as such, we aim to prevent our BLS signatures from becoming obsolete like keccak (oops!).
The BLS Standard (BLS Signature, Hash to Curve) has recently achieved a point of stability with the involvement of several blockchain teams (Eth2, Chia, Filecoin, Algorand, etc.). There is an IETF gathering in November where we anticipate the draft will be more solidified. However, official standards can take considerable time, so those engaged intend to exhibit public endorsement for the draft and form a “blockchain agreement” to implement the standard as proposed, irrespective of its final outcome in IETF. This way, if it ends up like keccak signatures, we won’t face it alone. 🙂
Luckily, the deposit contract does not need to be deployed until we approach the Phase 0 launch, so this emphasis on standardization is not expected to impact the Phase 0 launch timeline.
Eth2 Testnets
If you follow ethresearch, the specifications repository, or any of the numerous workshops at Devcon, we have modified the sharding proposal in a manner that significantly enhances both developer and user experience — cross-shard communication across all shards at each slot. To enable this enhanced design, we need to make slight modifications to the Phase 0 specification. To accomplish this with minimal disruption to Phase 0 development and testnets, we are taking the route of simplification — completely eliminating crosslinks from Phase 0 (they were essentially placeholders). This alteration is already implemented and undergoing final evaluation here and is anticipated to be available for development within the week.
We foresee the launch of multi-client public testnets shortly after this simplification is finalized, as this update will support the progress of Phase 0 toward mainnet, and ultimately facilitate the shipping of Phases 1 and 2.
Eth2 testnets are on the horizon! Individual clients are currently working on establishing some networks for both private and public use. Many clients are just setting up their eth1-to-eth2 infrastructure, making these single-client testnets beneficial for initial testing of that component. On these networks, there will be limited cross-client testing, but they will remain relatively stable due to having a majority single-client.
Once clients adequately assess larger single-client networks and find time to incorporate the Phase 0 alterations, we will proceed at full speed on public multi-client networks. We share your excitement and will soon publish additional information regarding participation (staking your eth) in both testnets and mainnet. Casper is indeed on the way.
