We are merely days away from unveiling ‘Frontier’, the inaugural milestone in the rollout of the Ethereum initiative. Following Frontier, we will introduce ‘Homestead’, ‘Metropolis’, and ‘Serenity’ over the upcoming year, each contributing new attributes and enhancing the user experience and security of the platform.
What is Frontier?
Frontier represents a functional, albeit minimal, execution of the Ethereum project. It is designed for tech-savvy individuals, particularly developers. During the Frontier launch, we anticipate early adopters and app developers to build communities and commence establishing a vibrant ecosystem. Much like their predecessors during the American Frontier, these pioneers will encounter extensive opportunities, but they will also confront numerous risks. If compiling from source and command-line interfaces aren’t your preference, we highly recommend waiting for a more user-friendly version of the Ethereum software before engaging.
When is Frontier going live?
Frontier is now fully developed, and its codebase has been stabilized for the past two weeks. As a collective, we are presently finalizing the last steps for the launch, which are not solely technical in nature. There will not be a countdown—Ethereum does not undergo a centralized ‘launch’; it instead surfaces through consensus. Users will need to voluntarily download and execute a particular version of the software and subsequently generate and load the Genesis block to connect to the official project’s network. More information regarding this procedure will be shared shortly.
What can we expect in Frontier?
Initial ‘Thawing’: Gas limits during the first few days
The initial software release of Frontier will impose a hardcoded Gas limit per block of 5,000 Gas. Unlike the standard Gas per block setting, this unique limit will not escalate proportionally alongside network utilization—effectively obstructing transactions during the initial days. This ‘thawing’ phase will allow miners to initiate their operations and early adopters to configure their clients without feeling rushed. After several days (likely 3-4, subject to change), we will issue a minor software update that all clients must adopt. This update will increase the Gas limit per block to 3 million, an initial figure from which it will either heighten or lessen in accordance with the default miner configurations.
Bugs, Issues and Complications
We are pleased with the success of the ‘Olympic’ testing phase of the Ethereum Testnet. Nonetheless, the development of the Frontier software is far from complete. Anticipate weekly updates that will provide access to improved, more stable clients. Many of the anticipated Frontier pitfalls (which included a chain reset at Homestead, restricting mining rewards to 10%, and centralized checkpointing) were considered unnecessary. However, significant differences persist between Frontier and Homestead. In Frontier, we will encounter challenges, we will issue updates, and bugs will arise—users take risks when utilizing the software. Major (BIG) warning notifications will be presented before developers can even install it. In Frontier, documentation is limited, and the tools available demand advanced technical proficiency.
The Canary Contracts
The Canary contracts are basic switches that hold a value of either 0 or 1. Each contract is managed by different members of the Eth/Dev team and will be updated to ‘1’ if the internal Frontier Disaster Recovery Team identifies a consensus problem, such as a fork.
Within each Frontier client, a verification occurs after every block against four contracts. If two out of these four contracts change their value from 0 to 1, mining halts, and a notification prompting the user to update their client is shown. This mechanism is to deter “fire and forget” miners from hindering a chain upgrade.
This method is centralized and will only function during the Frontier phase. It aids in mitigating the risk of an extended outage (24h+) period.
Stats, Status and Badblock websites
You are likely already acquainted with our network statistics monitor, https://stats.ethdev.com/. This site offers a quick snapshot of the network’s health, block resolution times, and Gas statistics. If you wish to delve deeper, I’ve created a short video elucidating the various KPIs. Bear in mind that participation on the stats page is optional, and nodes must register themselves before they become visible on the dashboard.
Moreover, in addition to the stats page, we will launch a status page at https://status.ethdev.com/ (no link since the site isn’t live yet) that will provide a succinct overview of any issues potentially impacting Frontier. Utilize it as your initial reference if you suspect something might be amiss.
Lastly, if any of the clients encounter an invalid block, they will reject processing it and direct it to the bad block website (also known as ‘Sentinel’). This could indicate a bug or something more serious, like a fork. Regardless, this process will inform our developers of potential concerns within the network. The website itself is public and accessible at https://badblocks.ethdev.com (currently functioning on the testnet).
A Clean Testnet
Over the last few months, the Ethereum test network has been stressed to its limits to evaluate scalability and block propagation rates. During this assessment, we encouraged users to overwhelm the network with transactions, contract creation code, and contract calls, at times exceeding 25 transactions per second. This has resulted in the test network chain expanding to a rather cumbersome size, complicating it for new users to catch up. Consequently, shortly following the Frontier release, there will be an introduction of a new test network governed by the same rules as Frontier.
Olympic rewards distribution
Throughout the Olympic phase, numerous accolades were awarded for different accomplishments, including mining expertise. Many of you took part and received rewards – a notable mention goes to PhiStr90, Dino, and Samuel Lavery for their contributions during the stress examinations. It is important to note that rewards will not be included in the Frontier Genesis block; instead, they will be distributed by a Foundation bot in the weeks following the launch.
How do I initiate my journey with Frontier?
The Instruments
Frontier and all necessary components will be accessible as a single-line installer on our site at https://www.ethereum.org/. A solitary line installer will be provided for OSX, Linux, and Windows. Naturally, more experienced users can still opt to install everything from the source, or utilize a binary build from our automated build bots.
After Frontier has been setup on their devices, users will need to create the Genesis block themselves and then load it into their Frontier clients. A script along with instructions on how to accomplish this will be offered as part of the new Ethereum website, along with our various wikis.
We frequently receive inquiries on how current users can transition from the testing network to the live network: this will be executed through a switch at the geth console (–networkId). By default, the new version will aim to connect to the live network; to revert back to the testing network, you will simply indicate a network id of ‘0’.
The Documentation
To commence with Ethereum, the prime resource is our official gitbook. Upon reviewing the gitbook, you may delve into the official Solidity tutorial. For comprehensive information, please refer to the main wiki, go client wiki and c++ client wiki. Lastly, if you wish to learn more about mining, a mining FAQ and guide are consistently updated on our forums.
Getting Assistance
Ethereum is an open-source software initiative, thus, all support is offered via community channels. If you encounter any issues, the first point of contact should be our forums, followed by our Ethereum chat channels. Conversely, if you are facing problems specific to your Ether Sale wallet, such as difficulty in accessing your pre-sale purchase, the helpdesk email will continue to function throughout Frontier (and likely beyond).
And certainly, you can also seek assistance locally at one of our 115 meetups globally – if your city isn’t mentioned, we encourage you to organize one.