--- tags: newineth2 description: The latest update on Ethereum 2.0 development image: https://benjaminion.xyz/f/favicon-96x96.png GA: UA-129359374-2 --- <style> a {text-decoration: underline;} a {color: #0000ee;} a:visited {color: #551a8b;} </style> # What's New in Eth2 - 22 November 2019 ![My avatar](https://benjaminion.xyz/f/ms-icon-144x144.png =32x32) Ben Edgington ([PegaSys](https://pegasys.tech/), [ConsenSys](https://consensys.net/) — but views expressed are all my own) Edition 30. [Archive](https://eth2.news/). ## Top picks - [Eth2 quick update no.4](https://blog.ethereum.org/2019/11/21/eth2-quick-update-no-4/), your _official_ source of information (unlike this travesty :joy:) - Will Villanueva's [Into the Ether podcast](https://ethhub.substack.com/p/will-villanueva-ethereum-20-phase) is a superb overview of the state of play with Eth2 Phase&nbsp;2. Will and Eric walk through it all very nicely. ([download/play](https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/175452.mp3)) - In case you haven't reached peak Danny Ryan yet, his [Chain Reaction podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ethereums-danny-ryan-the-definitive-eth-2-0-update/id1438148082?i=1000456505887) with Tom Shaughnessy is really good, especially their discussion of the recent Phase&nbsp;1 sharding changes. ([Download](https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/hbp6nb/Danny_Ryan_v3.mp3)) ## Phase 0: The Beacon Chain implementation ### Spec updates [v0.9.2](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/releases/tag/v0.9.2) of the Phase&nbsp;0 spec is out. The only significant change to the main spec is to reduce the number of validator deposits needed to start the chain from 65,536 to 16,384. This corresponds to reducing the amount of staked Ether from around 2 million to half a million. Danny [explains the thinking](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/1467) behind this. Away from the core spec, there are further updates to [harden the fork choice rule](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/1477) and [instructions](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/1476) for validators about joining attestation subnets. It seems that we are nearing the re-freeze of the Phase&nbsp;0 spec, which bodes well for testnets. However, before any re-freeze, Protolambda wants to look at [removing the `signing_root`](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/issues/1487) construct and instead provide signed block containers. Comments on this week's call seemed favourable to this; the plan is to decide go/no-go on the next call. ### Testnets Speaking of testnets, the Prysmatic team [relaunched](https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/ethereum-2-0-testnet-update-1-ad24dec45590) their [testnet](https://prylabs.net/) recently. I gave it a whirl :smiley: [Signing up](https://prylabs.net/participate) is wonderfully smooth (unless you misconfigure your docker volume and lose your validator keys without noticing, D'Oh!). Give it a try, it's fun! I made 0.5 Goerli BeaconEth in five days :moneybag: Also check out the [beacon chain explorer](https://beaconcha.in/) running across Prysm's testnet. It's been put together by the [people](https://twitter.com/etherchain_org/status/1197480153594695680) behind [Etherchain](https://www.etherchain.org/). Status [has a testnet](https://github.com/eth2-clients/eth2-testnets/tree/master/nimbus) too which people are welcome to join. It is reset weekly on Tuesdays, with the updated codebase for the next week being available on Mondays. The Lighthouse team are planning to open up their testnet imminently. Watch this space :eyes: ### Testing updates Sigma Prime has been awarded a grant from the Ethereum Foundation to pick up work on [differential fuzzing](https://blog.sigmaprime.io/beacon-fuzz.html). They are going to be working with all the client teams to get their code integrated. Differential fuzzing is the process of running tests against different implementations of the specification and seeing if you can make them disagree: it's a kind of lab version of what could happen on a real network, except that we can run against a reference implementation in the lab. ## Phase 1: Sharding implementation Work continues on translating the [new sharding proposal](https://notes.ethereum.org/KbEyHiaSRQW_KS7dDK0OFw) into [specification form](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/1483). It seems to be converging on completeness: take a look; give some feedback. ## Phase 2: Execution Environments This week's star is Phase&nbsp;2. Will Villanueva of the ConsenSys Quilt team has published a huge write-up of [Ethereum&nbsp;2.0 Phase&nbsp;2 Progress](https://medium.com/@william.j.villanueva/ethereum-2-0-phase-2-progress-7673b57eabff). It's worth looking at this in conjunction with Will's [podcast](https://ethhub.substack.com/p/will-villanueva-ethereum-20-phase) mentioned at the top. Alongside this is an almost equally huge write-up from John Adler on [Relay Networks and Fee Markets in Eth 2.0](https://medium.com/@adlerjohn/relay-networks-and-fee-markets-in-eth-2-0-878e576f980b). John does some terrific explaining work. There is now a [Telegram channel](https://t.me/eth2quilt) for discussion around Phase&nbsp;2 topics, and see below for info on upcoming community calls. While we're on Eth2 Phase&nbsp;2, Hans Enlin was a winner at the EthWaterloo hackathon with [A graphic narrative of ETH&nbsp;2.0 Phase&nbsp;I transition into Phase&nbsp;II](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uT6t0Aa-iJz8244WY5KcCiZnH_W_fMMZ). ## Implementers' call Call #28 took place on the 21st of November. * [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/issues/101) * [Video](https://youtu.be/DzLrxuN55VA?t=372) * My [quick notes](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/BkllOMNnS) and the [full notes](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/blob/aa008c05b543c47f0b353dfcbaaf1c50c9b2b565/eth2.0-implementers-calls/call_028.md). Some BLS news from the call. Standardisation of the new hash-to-curve algorithm took a step forward this week. [Version&nbsp;5](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-cfrg-hash-to-curve-05) of the spec was presented at an IETF meeting in Singapore, and there were no red flags. There's a long road yet to it becoming an full IETF standard, but it is very likely that it is now stable enough to adopt for blockchain use. [Slides](https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/106/materials/slides-106-cfrg-update-on-draft-irtf-cfrg-hash-to-curve) and [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=dMFgaeRdsfU&feature=youtu.be&t=1009) (7.5 minutes) from the meeting. ### Other calls Community calls seem to be an effective way to keep things moving, but we've reached a point where it's not feasible to cover everything in a single call. No fewer than four other regular calls have accordingly sprung up recently: - There is a new [Eth1.x research call](https://ethresear.ch/t/scheduling-our-first-call/6443?u=benjaminion) ([notes](https://hackmd.io/No1wwU7yT1adgjsPKJANoA) from the first call). The main purpose is to work on preparing Eth1 for [transition](https://notes.ethereum.org/cISMnGRMR6-EWka8QLLlYw) into an Eth2 execution environment. - A new [Phase&nbsp;2 community call](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/issues/103) begins on Tuesday 2019/12/03 at 15:00 UTC, hosted by Will V. - The [next meeting](https://github.com/ChainSafe/lodestar/issues/555) of the Light-Client Task Force will be on Wednesday 2019/12/04 at 15:00&nbsp;UTC. - We are starting a regular Networking call to coordinate on all the network-related things that we need to agree on going forward. Keep an eye on the [eth2-pm]() repo for news of this. ## Research Jim McDonald has been doing some thinking about the structure and numbers around validator rewards. He [makes some proposals](https://ethresear.ch/t/alteration-to-0-9-validator-rewards-calculation/6467?u=benjaminion). Dean Eigenmann suggests [caching frequently used contracts](https://ethresear.ch/t/yank-to-beaconchain/6478?u=benjaminion) on the beacon chain to make them more available. Incidentally, it's not entirely clear to me how a stateless paradigm deals with contract code. In principle, if I want to run a contract in this model, I need to provide the contract's entire bytecode along with my transaction data witnesses. (Not talking EEs here, but regular contract code that an EE would execute.) This is likely impractical, in which case contract code needs to be cached on execution nodes. So Dean's proposal looks like an extension to this: popular contracts get migrated from L2 cache (execution nodes) to L1 cache (beacon nodes). ## In other news - The Ethereum Foundation is [looking for a technical writer](https://twitter.com/dannyryan/status/1197968986979237889) for Eth2. 🎉 Yay!! 🎉 - A whole bunch of video from [DevCon V breakout sessions](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNOfzGXD_C9YMYmnefmPH0g/videos) has been released. Lots of Eth2 stuff there, including: - [Ethereum 2.0 Phase&nbsp;1 & 2 Developer Experience](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0phnWn5ecyw), Hsiao-Wei Wang, Jacek Sieka, Barry WhiteHat, Karl Floersch and Will Villanueva. - [Economics of Ethereum&nbsp;2.0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LlNUC68e8I), Collin Myers. - [libp2p Ecosystem: What’s Up and What’s Next](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZL7XBxTI_s), Raúl Kripalani. - [Ewasm 2.0: State Execution in Eth 2.0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H1TCbW0LJQ) - [The Road to Eth&nbsp;2, Phase&nbsp;2 & Phase&nbsp;2 Testnet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yMh0Nxyqks), Will Villanueva & Matt Garnett. - [Why Dapp Users Will Hate Cross-Shard Communication and What You Can Do About It](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmPPRkow_c), James Prestwich. - Adding to my _Must Watch_ list: [Matt Garnett explains SSZ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BUyokWe7y_qZcBT8vxhD4nzJiZwX8IgY/view) (37 minutes)^[Will V also appears - never mind peak Danny, maybe we're experiencing peak Will now (just kidding, dude :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:)] - A [discussion of data-availability](https://medium.com/swlh/data-availability-on-ethereum-2-0-light-node-en-aec1ce6ac17c) on Eth2 with light clients. - Latest development update from [Prysmatic Labs](https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/ethereum-2-0-development-update-39-prysmatic-labs-257d538d7f63) - There's a new [BLS12-381 pairing library in Go](https://github.com/kilic/bls12-381). I gather that Prysmatic Labs plans to use this. - For the French speakers out there, Ethereum France did a [wonderful interview](https://www.ethereum-france.com/les-francais-qui-font-ethereum-2-mamy-ratsimbazafy-de-status/) with Mamy from the Status Eth2 client team. I knew I'd studied French for a reason: thirty-five years later it finally came in handy :fr: 🥐🧀:wine_glass: * * * [![[Twitter]](https://benjaminion.xyz/newineth2/img/twitter.svg =40x40)](https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz)[![[Peepeth]](https://benjaminion.xyz/newineth2/img/peepeth.svg =40x40)](https://peepeth.com/benjaminion_xyz) Follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz) and/or [Peepeth](https://peepeth.com/benjaminion_xyz) to hear when the next edition is out 🙌. [![[RSS]](https://benjaminion.xyz/newineth2/img/rss.svg =32x32)](https://benjaminion.xyz/newineth2/rss_feed.xml) We also have an [RSS feed](https://benjaminion.xyz/newineth2/rss_feed.xml).