Update

These last two weeks I worked on:

• integrating checkpoint sync's state retrieval with block requesting, to request blocks in ascending order #244
• documenting its usage #247
• adding spec constants to the repo (loading them from YAMLs) #268
• starting a refactor of the libp2p library, migrating from NIFs to Ports #269
• some general maintenance #245 #251 and bug fixing #250
• answering questions and reviewing PRs (we had considerable activity from external contributors 🥳)

With checkpoint sync, and a rudimentary block downloading, we can start focusing on block validation and fork-choice.

Migrating to Ports solves the problems we were having when using blocking IO on NIFs. Basically, the libp2p component will be executed as a different process that we talk to through IPC.

Next steps

Our next focus is block validation and fork choice. A lot of this work can be parallelized, and so will be used to onboard new contributors.

The next week I'll be finishing the migration to libp2p, so that it's ready for the eventual integration of the fork-choice with the downloading component of blocks and attestations.