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title: What's New in Eth2 - 25 July 2020
tags: [newineth2]

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tags: newineth2
description: The latest update on Ethereum 2.0 development
image: https://benjaminion.xyz/f/favicon-96x96.png
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# What's New in Eth2 - 25 July 2020

![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 47 at [eth2.news](https://eth2.news/)

## Top picks

Difficult choice this time. So much good stuff around right now. But I enjoyed both of these:

  1. Quick read: [eth2 quick update no. 13](https://blog.ethereum.org/2020/07/23/eth2-quick-update-no-13/) from Danny Ryan on the Ethereum Foundation blog.
  2. Long read: The Ethereum 2.0 [Economic Review](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pwt-EdnjhDLc_Mi2ydHus0_Cm14rs1Aq/view?usp=sharing) by Tanner Hoban and Tom Borgers. [Tl;dr](https://medium.com/@thomasborgers/ethereum-2-0-economic-review-1fc4a9b8c2d9).

## Phase 0: The beacon chain

### Specification

v0.12.2 [is out](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/releases/tag/v0.12.2). This promises to be 100% backward compatible and non-breaking with respect to v0.12.1. Mostly clarifications and networking enhancements. v0.12.2 is the version we will be using on the Medalla testnet.


### Audit news

'Tis the season of client security assessments. Here's a brief summary of where we're at.

The Lighthouse team's security review was completed [in early June](https://lighthouse.sigmaprime.io/update-26.html) by Trail of Bits, but I don't think the report is out yet. A second review is being planned for closer to beacon chain launch.

The Prysm security review was performed by Quantstamp and [completed recently](https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/quantstamp-security-audit-results-for-the-prysm-eth2-client-7f949c6c866f). There is a [report](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qwb2upe7nsruanz/Prysm%20-%20Report.pdf?dl=0), which is summarised in a collection of [Github issues](https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm/issues/6327). Likewise, the Prysm team plans to get a second review closer to launch.

The Nimbus assessment [kicked-off recently](https://our.status.im/nimbus-beacon-chain-assessment-kickoff/) and is ongoing. It is a three-month exercise from end-to-end, and is unusual in involving different teams reviewing different aspects of the codebase. These teams are ConsenSys Diligence, NCC Group, and Trail of Bits. Issues are being [tracked on GitHub](https://github.com/status-im/nim-beacon-chain/labels/nbc-audit-2020-0%20%3Apassport_control%3A) as they arise.

As for Teku, we launched our [RFP for a security assessment](https://consensys.net/blog/blockchain-development/teku-ethereum-2-0-client-request-for-proposals/) earlier this week. We would love to hear from interested vendors! Closing date is **August 3rd**, so better get a move on :smiley:

Finally, while we're on audits, Runtime Verification has completed a [formal verification of Gasper](https://runtimeverification.com/blog/formally-verifying-finality-in-gasper-the-core-of-the-beacon-chain/) - the mash-up of LMD GHOST and Casper that we're using for consensus on the beacon chain.

### Tooling

Sigma Prime has released the [Community Fuzzing](https://blog.sigmaprime.io/beacon-fuzz-06.html) tool! This allows people to do fuzz testing of various Eth2 clients in Docker containers on their own machines. It's a brilliant way of bringing more resources to the effort. I've been running it [against Teku](https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz/status/1283717334985826304). Join the Sigma Prime [Discord server](https://discord.com/invite/AkPb4vx) to chat about it all.

[Eth2Stats](https://eth2stats.io/) is an amazing resource, but needs work to maintain. To that end, Alex Tudorache of ConsenSys Codefi Staking has just [open-sourced](https://github.com/ConsenSys/eth2stats-server) the server and dashboard components so that people can run their own, or, even better, contribute to the dev effort. I'd love to see this flourish.

More good stuff from ConsenSys: Infura has created [eth2-comply](https://github.com/INFURA/eth2-comply), a "no-code platform for Ethereum 2.0 API conformance testing". This can be used by client teams and others to check how faithfully they have implemented the emerging [beacon chain API](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-APIs) standard.

## Testnets

### Medalla

:boom: :sparkles: :fire:
The :tada: **BIG NEWS** :tada: is that the "official" multiclient beacon chain testnet is about to start!
:fire: :sparkles: :boom:

The name is Medalla. The pronunciation is below, with [audio here](https://twitter.com/nanexcool/status/1286107070677344263). The original inspiration for the name was the Medalla Milagrosa subway station in Buenos Aires. But this has now been shortened to _Medalla_ meaning ["medal"](https://github.com/goerli/medalla#why-do-you-call-it-medalla).

<p style="text-align:center">
<img width="440" height="116" alt="Medalla is pronounced meh-dah-shah" src="https://benjaminion.xyz/images/medalla_200725.png">
</p>

As [Danny explains](https://blog.ethereum.org/2020/07/23/eth2-quick-update-no-13/), Medalla will be a properly open beacon chain network with a wide participation encouraged. It will be as close as possible to mainnet spec (with the obvious, and rather significant difference that participation is free: only testnet Eth is at stake.) There's an [FAQ](https://github.com/goerli/medalla#ethereum-20-multi-client-testnets) that explains Medalla and some of the testnet history.

To encourage broad participation, and to test-run some of the other components that will form part of the real beacon chain environment, the [Deposit Launchpad](https://medium.com/deep-work-studio/eth2-deposit-launchpad-an-interface-for-the-first-world-computer-3e089138b264) will be available. This will help to get people up and running and minimise mistakes in making deposits. [Source code](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-deposit) is available for the interested. I believe the Launchpad portal will be deployed on Monday 27th July.

Just as for Mainnet, a total of at least 16384 deposits is required before the beacon chain will start. Assuming sufficient correct deposits have been made by 1300 UTC on August 2nd, then the chain will start at 1300 UTC on August 4th. Get your deposits in by the 2nd if you want to be among the Genesis cohort of validators!

The wonderful people at [POAP](https://www.poap.xyz/) (Proof of Attendance Protocol), [beaconcha.in](https://beaconcha.in/), and [r/ethstaker](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/) have teamed up to offer unique POAP NFT medals to early participants in Medalla. See the [instructions](https://beaconcha.in/poap). There will be [five medals available](https://twitter.com/etherchain_org/status/1286673742999859200), one for each client that is likely to run on the Medalla network. The idea is to encourage participants to try out a variety of clients and collect the whole set.

### Altona and Onyx

Not much to report about Altona (the existing multiclient testnet/devnet) and Onyx (the large Prysm testnet). By and large they have just kept on chugging. As Medalla comes online, both of these will be wound down.

### Attack nets

The other big development in the last week has been the deployment of public [Attack Nets](https://github.com/ethresearch/public-attacknets) for Prysm, Lighthouse, and Teku. These are being run by the Ethereum Foundation, independently of the client teams. Initially, they are small and simple, but over time the plan is to ramp up the complexity and focus on specific failure modes.

So far, Jonny Rhea has claimed the first two bounties. The first, an "honorable mention" worth $1k for [crashing the discovery service](https://github.com/ethereum/public-attacknets/issues/4) on the Lighthouse attack net. The second, a [DoS attack](https://twitter.com/JonnyRhea/status/1286810750896541698) on the Teku network leading to loss of finality, not yet awarded but should qualify for the full $5k on offer in this phase.

Rewards and challenge will be ramping up over time, so get hacking! There is an `#attacknets` channel on the Ethereum Foundation Discord for Q&A ([invite link](https://discord.gg/zyZXUN7)).

## The Great Explainers

Theme of this week seems to be staking on phones:
  - Status concludes a series on installing the [Nimbus client on Android](https://our.status.im/nimbus-on-android-validatoring/).
  - Phonethic is creating a guide to running a [Prysm validator on an Android phone](https://phonethic.protoman.net/docs/).

The team at Status [makes the case](https://our.status.im/case-for-running-your-own-validator/) for people to run their own validators, and I agree! And yet a third Eth2 article from Status: [What is Proof of Stake?](https://our.status.im/ethereum-2-0-what-is-proof-of-stake/).

Other client installation guides:
  - Steve Berryman of Attestant continues his [series](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/hst308/ethereum_2_eth2_lighthouse_validator_installation/) of guides on client installations with [Lighthouse](https://medium.com/@steve.berryman/ethereum-2-eth2-lighthouse-validator-installation-and-running-guide-53eba6992841).
  - The Ethernaut does a deep dive on [running Prysm](https://theethernaut.substack.com/p/running-an-eth-2-validator) in a variety of configurations, including with Dappnode.

A nice, energetic, 10 minute video explainer of Eth2 from Dapp University: [Ethereum 2.0 is coming!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZ6IRDu75I) Gregory wants to turn you into a blockchain master.

[Part 1](https://medium.com/@alonmuroch_65570/bls-signatures-part-1-overview-47d9eebf1c75) and [part 2](https://medium.com/@alonmuroch_65570/bls-signatures-part-2-key-concepts-of-pairings-27a8a9533d0c) of a guide to BLS signatures, as used in Eth2, by Alon Muroch. If you like this kind of thing, you might enjoy my own [homage to curve BLS12-381](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/bls12-381).

Somer Esat shares his [Confessions of an Ethereum Staker](https://medium.com/@SomerEsat/confessions-of-an-etheruem-staker-e5a23f46efa2). I think Somer captures well the thoughts and anxieties of many of us at this moment in the life of Eth2.

## Media

I'm not going to revisit the Great Launch Date Incident that came out of the Reddit AMA by the EF research team. Anthony Sassano does an excellent job of it in [the Daily Gwei](https://thedailygwei.substack.com/p/eth2-phase-0-will-launch-in-2020) and I have nothing to add. Except that, if you are a POAP holder, you can [cast a vote](https://poap.vote/11/cast) (no gas required!) for your preferred Eth2 development velocity.

Speaking of the Reddit AMA, Anthony collated a [nice summary](https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1281937994333556737) in tweet form.

Afri's celebrity grows: here's an [interview](https://medium.com/paradigm-fund/interview-with-afri-schoedon-the-pioneer-of-eth2-multi-client-testnets-4d2fdfed8255) he did with Paradigm, with his Eth2 testnet coordinator hat on. I love Afri's directness: "I’m a layer-1 person, I don’t really follow 'DeFi.'" - that pretty much sums it up for me as well.

Preston Van Loon (Prysmatic Labs co-founder) appeared on the [POV Crypto Podcast](https://twitter.com/POVCryptoPod/status/1284181983711510528). This was a great listen. Groovy intro music too.

It's nice to see Coindesk increasingly acknowledging the existence of Ethereum. Christine Kim has written a decent overview of Eth2, [Ethereum 2.0, How it works and Why it matters](https://www.coindesk.com/research/reports/ethereum-2-0-how-it-works-and-why-it-matters) (a 23 page report, registration required). Sadly, Coindesk still can't help itself, and the report includes demonstrable nonsense like, "after delaying release multiple times this year". Sigh.

## Research

The Eth 2.0 [Economic Review](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pwt-EdnjhDLc_Mi2ydHus0_Cm14rs1Aq/view?usp=sharing) was one of my favourite reads this week. It is a very substantial piece of work, dealing with a large and complex area. But it is an absolutely important analysis. I was very happy to read some of the conclusions, in particular, "We generally find the network economics highly favorable for more decentralized network participation, meeting Eth2’s design objectives." Lots of interesting snippets buried in the stakeholder interviews in Appendix B (page 90).

The two key recommendations are (1) to double the network issuance rate (validator rewards) to encourage enough participation to match Eth1 security levels, and (2) to have more dynamic methods of changing validator rewards in response to shocks. Currently, the latter would require a hard fork of the beacon chain. Vitalik is [unconvinced](https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1283926011718008832) by the analysis behind the first recommendation.

Much Eth2 reasearch first sees the light of day on Ethresear.ch, which got [a lot of love](https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1285231462892134401) this week. Hsiao-Wei did some [analysis](https://twitter.com/icebearhww/status/1285263900800212992) of its activity over the years.

The latest Ethresear.ch round-up:
  - A proposal for an [Improved Mechanism for ETH 2.0 Staking](https://ethresear.ch/t/improved-mechanism-for-eth-2-0-staking/7695?u=benjaminion), intended to protect the protocol from very large fluctuations in Eth prices. [EIP here](https://github.com/DAism2019/EIPs/blob/a6aa0e08105eba15f314eb03a9a58a2b376cf5ad/EIPS/eip-2794.md). I haven't really thought much about this yet, but it could be a legitimate concern.
  - Afri updated his [client benchmarks](https://ethresear.ch/t/ethereum-2-0-client-metrics-07-2020/7699?u=benjaminion). Big changes from last time: this is still a fast moving target. We've got a 3-4x improvement in sync time almost ready to merge into Teku, and ignore the Java craziness of Teku's memory consumption: if you have a lot of memory (like Afri's 32GB), it will use a lot of memory; if you don't, it won't. It's a very reasonable optimisation strategy.
  - [An Efficient CBC-Like Finality Gadget for 99% Fault Tolerance](https://ethresear.ch/t/an-efficient-cbc-like-finality-gadget-for-99-fault-tolerance/7723?u=benjaminion). Although we have a consensus mechanism for the beacon chain, we know that it can be improved in future.

Away from Ethresear.ch, a solid conversation about [the future of the VC/BN architecture](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/issues/1969). In Phase&nbsp;0, validator clients (VCs) are extremely lightweight, and you can hang thousands of them off a single beacon node (BN). In later phases, validators will need to be heavier, and may need to be more tightly coupled with the beacon node. This thread explores what that might look like, and the implications. In my view, up to a point, heavier validators are a little better for decentralisation: 1 stake + 1 CPU = 1 vote. So I'm generally good with this.

## Regular Calls

There was [some discussion](https://youtu.be/RWX9vkY7Oas?t=2985) of Eth2 during this week's Eth1 All Core Devs' call. Eth2 can be viewed as an opportunity to free the protocol from some of the design choices in Eth1 that are now showing their age after five years. The current Eth1 could be ring-fenced to a single shard on Eth2, while the other shards have enhanced versions of the EVM deployed. This has some similarity to the original plan for Phase 2 that's now on the back-burner. Anyway, expect a lot more crossover between Eth1 and Eth2 discussions over the next months.

### Implementers

Call #44 took place on the 23rd of July.

*   [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/issues/169)
*   [Video](https://youtu.be/MMNgoDYKvhQ?t=204)
*   My [quick notes](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/rJmLIzPeD), and from [Mamy](https://gist.github.com/mratsim/914b9042063d99fc22da5a1456ecf733), and [full notes](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/blob/bac3ebe79ef0ecb0bda6cafb41f750f83f97c038/eth2.0-implementers-calls/call_044.md) from Pooja of the Cat Herders.

Among the usual updates, Protolambda wants to sort out some of the inconsistencies in the way that clients handle optional gossipsub fields. There is a [proposal](https://github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p-pubsub/pull/359) and some [client survey](https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/issues/1981) work.

Also, Vitalik is keen that we start looking seriously at Phase&nbsp;1 implementations. It's a bit difficult while everyone is so focused on getting Phase&nbsp;0 launched. Nevertheless, there is some work underway. Mikhail Kalinin of PegaSys TXRX has implemented and tested a Phase&nbsp;1 simulator in Teku by transpiling the Python spec into Kotlin. He's even got it working with an Eth1 engine developed by Guillaume Ballet of the EF. Headlines [here](https://twitter.com/dannyryan/status/1286293643976822786) and more info [here](https://blog.ethereum.org/2020/07/23/eth2-quick-update-no-13/), under "eth1+eth2 merger progress update".

Also, Terence of Prysmatic Labs has been working on getting Phase&nbsp;1 [into Prysm](https://github.com/terencechain/prysm-phase1) and feeding his findings back into the spec.

### Secret shared validators

The first Eth2 Secret Shared Validators Community Call took place on the 16th of July, organised by Mara Schmiedt.
  - [Presentation](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XiHTOENFDbMHzvS2apd1tCNHkzgJ3KutryB8om5Ur6I/edit#slide=id.p)
  - [Recording](https://consensys.zoom.us/rec/play/v5F-d-ms_W03HdyX5gSDVv99W9S6fK6shyEXqfIKyEy0UyYLY1eiZOEWMLY8ml-53JjWei8U80O9uX_E) (access password: `5x#.0wO1`)

There is a `#secret-shared-validators` channel on the Ethereum Foundation Discord ([invite link](https://discord.gg/zyZXUN7)), which also now has a [bridge to Telegram](https://t.me/joinchat/H5nvw0gh2hbBeGhMZZJGSA).

Here are some research notes on how secret shared validators can help [prevent failures](https://notes.ethereum.org/@adiasg/preventing-eth2-validator-failure).

## In other news

  - Client team updates from [Lighthouse](https://lighthouse.sigmaprime.io/update-27.html) and [Prysm](https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/eth-2-0-dev-update-54-so-close-to-official-multi-client-testnet-e4e1873e7c24).
  - Preston will be speaking on [the State of Eth2](https://live.remo.co/e/the-state-of-ethereum-20/register) with the Blockchain Acceleration Foundation and Blockchain at Berkeley on July 30th.
  - [ETH Staking Webinar](https://staking.staked.us/eth-staking-webinar) by Staked on August 4th.

## And finally...

That's all folks! It's 12:30am on Sunday morning here, and I am all in.

* * *

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