---
tags: eth2devs
description: Notes from the regular Eth2 implementers call
image: https://benjaminion.xyz/f/favicon-96x96.png
---

# Eth2 Implementers’ Call #63 - 2021-05-06
[Quick contemporaneous notes by Ben Edgington]

Agenda: https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/issues/217
Livestream: https://youtu.be/qhcMxBh0GEc

## Client updates

**Lodestar**
Still working on Altair. Added new gossip and req/resp methods. Working on light client implementation: sync objects and state proofs done. Adding more metrics, which has been helpful, and updating Grafana dashboard.

For Altair, need to work on validator interactions.

**Lighthouse**
Altair consensus changes awaiting review. Adding caching to sync commitees. Network protocol changes under review.

Rayonism: passing merge test vectors. v1.4.0 release coming in a couple of weeks: Windows beta support, memory improvements, outbound Eth1 calls reduced...

Planning to share some global validator performance stats to help the community.

**Nimbus**
Released v1.2.2: more efficient queuing which reduces power consumption; more stable API; fixed libp2p timing issues.

Not much progress on Altair in April; worked on Rayonism as the priority. Will move to Altair now.

Social media and docs: improved Nimbus guide following feedback, blog post "Eth2 is Green" was well-received.

**Prysm**
Merged optimised slasher implementation, to be in a release in a week and a half. Working on sync committee optimisation. Participated in Steklo network - consensus issue, looking into it with help of new test vectors. Working on implementing sharding spec.

**Teku**
Pretty much done with latest Altair spec. Can transition across fork boundaries. Implemented _get_metadata_ RPC. Migrating Jim McDonald's REST API proposal to formal spec and implementing.

## Incident discussion

Nothing further. See Prym's incident report.

## Altair

### Engineering progress

See above.

### Spec and Testing

Pre-release of next spec update due out tomorrow. Primarily clean-ups and testing.

There is an issue around skipping one epoch's worth of rewards in the current transition spec. A [workaround has been proposed](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/2373), which is to use an array of flags to carry through the transition. This does complicate things a little at the fork boundary, but we can have a lot of tests.

[Vitalik] Intuitively, it doesn't seem worth the effort to fix this. [PaulH] Missing this epoch breaks an invariant around being rewarded for getting attestations included in blocks. [Danny] Also potential to confuse 3rd-party tooling such as block explorers. Main issue is the psychology of users with respect to rewards. [Dankrad] There are much more serious issues that we should be worrying about.

**Action: client teams, please review and comment on the PR asap: https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/2373**

### Planning

Discuss upgrade timing again in two weeks. Should specify a spec freeze target date.

Further discussion after a little pushback on this:

[Danny] Hypothetical: spec freeze by 14th May; devnet last week May/1st week June. [Vitalik] Spec freeze on 21st is probably more realsitic.

[Danny] Proposal: first half June for short-lived testnets. End of June for forking current testnets. End July/early August for beacon chain upgrade.

[Mehdi] Fuzzing should be running by June, which should give some good coverage in time.

## Research Updates

**Vitalik**
Working on an annotated spec for Altair.

## Spec discussion

Spec release for testing: lots of new features in dev branch, for both Altair and The Merge. No full release yet, but pre-releases are out. By start of next week there should be an official release.

Proto is working on a proposal for a new way to handle configuration within clients: constants, configuration, and pre-sets. This will help with building testnets.

[Jacek] Do we need to maintain the minimal configs any more? [Danny] They are extensively used in the PySpec testing. [Proto] Maintaining a single `minimal` pre-set is useful. Clients can optionally define other pre-sets.

## Open discussion

[Leo] A group has been set up to work on standardisation of client metrics. Making progress with a subset of metrics that are already implemented in clients. Also, working with the EthStaker community on an effort to track client diversity over time. There are Discord groups for each of these.

* * *

# Chat highlights

From Mehdi Zerouali to Everyone: 03:24 PM
The PR in question FYI https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/2373