What's New in Eth2 - 25 March 2022

--- tags: newineth2 description: The latest update on Ethereum 2.0 development image: https://benjaminion.xyz/f/favicon-96x96.png --- <style> a {text-decoration: underline;} a {color: #0000ee;} a:visited {color: #551a8b;} .ui-infobar {visibility: hidden; padding-top: 0;} .community-button {visibility: hidden;} .markdown-body {padding-top: 0;} </style> # What's New in Eth2 - 25 March 2022 ![My avatar](https://benjaminion.xyz/f/ms-icon-144x144.png =32x32) Ben Edgington (Eth2 at [ConsenSys](https://consensys.net/) — all views expressed are my own) Edition 90 at [eth2.news](https://eth2.news/) ## Top picks :point_right: [Stuff /r/ethereum should know: Proof of Stake edition](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/tijcq1/stuff_rethereum_should_know_proof_of_stake_edition/) :point_left: ## The Beacon Chain We had a minor incident last week -- a beacon chain participation drop of up to 8% for an hour or so. It quickly became apparent from the blow up in our Discord, and from looking at who was missing block proposals, that the fault was Teku's. <div style="text-align:center"> <img width="538" height="272" alt="A graph of network participation." src="https://benjaminion.xyz/images/220324_teku_participation.png"/> _Network participation dropped by up to 8% for an hour or so._ </div> You can get the full picture in our [post-incident review](https://github.com/ConsenSys/teku/wiki/Post-Incident-Review---Deposit-Processing-Performance). The summary is that there had been a [huge spike](https://twitter.com/terencechain/status/1506689244701495297) in deposits into the deposit contract in the hours preceding this. The mechanism for agreeing on the state of the Eth1 chain means that deposits get processed onto the beacon chain in batches every 7 hours or so. A huge batch of 4000 deposits came through which exposed some poor deposit handling performance in Teku, and had some nasty cascading effects. Thankfully the issue was temporary and the participation returned to normal once the batch of deposits had been dealt with. Also, there was no practical way to use this to repeatedly DoS Teku: making 4000 deposits is expensive! As explained in the review, we've fixed the initial performance issue and gone deep into the underlying structures to make Teku more resilient in future. The fixed version is [22.3.2](https://github.com/ConsenSys/teku/releases/tag/22.3.2); please update if you have not done so already. Since Teku is a minority client (manages less that 33% of the stake), the broader effects of this outage were minimal. Not all Tekus were out of action -- plucky Metal Albert managed to participate throughout, though he did get a little inaccurate -- but it seems that a good fraction were missing. Nevertheless, the beacon chain chugged along regardless. Had the majority client been affected the consequence would have been a substantial period of non-finalisation. This is bad for everyone, but particularly for those running that majority client as they would have suffered extra penalties via the [inactivity leak](https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/incentives/inactivity). To bang on the client diversity drum a little more, [Dankrad](https://twitter.com/dankrad/status/1506958509195374598) recently published a thorough article [exploring the issues](https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2022/03/24/run-the-majority-client-at-your-own-peril.html). To cut to the chase, "if you are currently running Prysm, there is a very real risk that you could lose all your funds and you should consider switching clients." Some more on client diversity: - [Freddy](https://twitter.com/_crypto_crack/status/1504459918539120643) has created a [financial model](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12R8wkuv62hZyajrhhlkNrskkwH2-zjYZjXKkHJuxGQc/edit#gid=1446351392) that allows stakers to quantify the risks associated with running the majority client. - [rated.network](https://twitter.com/ratedw3b/status/1504455865239158785) have updated their [front end](https://www.rated.network/) to show client distributions per operator. - [The Vans](https://twitter.com/EthereumAustin/status/1504858224704561155) got together at ETH Austin last week to discuss client diversity. I tried in vain to find a recording of this - please lmk if you have one. - [Dappnode](https://twitter.com/DAppNode/status/1504809228271296512) is doing its bit! Now supporting three clients on the Prater testnet, with Nimbus to be added soon. This has been long anticipated. Get testing and we could soon see this on mainnet. In other beacon chain news, we are about to hit a big technical milestone. As [everybody knows](https://eth2book.info/altair/part3/config/configuration#min_per_epoch_churn_limit) activations and exits of validators have been limited to four per epoch, 900 per day. Once we reach 327,680 active validators, this limit rises to five per epoch, 1,125 per day. It might not sound like a big deal, but it's actually a major step change in the operation of the beacon chain. We should hit that milestone some time in the next week. ## The Merge ### Kiln testnet The much anticipated Kiln public Merge testnet was [announced](https://blog.ethereum.org/2022/03/14/kiln-merge-testnet/) on the 14th of March (now in multiple languages). Here's the [landing page](https://kiln.themerge.dev/). The Kiln Merge event took place soon after 3pm GMT on the 15th of March, and it was a success, albeit a slightly qualified one. The Merge went through successfully, the unified chain kept running, transactions were processed, and finalisation began when it was supposed to do so. There were, however, some issues. They were [discussed](https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1504915167372472323) at the last all core devs meeting, but in summary: - Prysm had an endianness disagreement between itself and the execution layer that prevented it from producing valid blocks. Since Kiln was configured with a fairly even split of consensus clients this was not terribly impactful; with a client distribution more similar to today's beacon chain it would have been a significant problem. Prysm's [incident review](https://hackmd.io/@prysmaticlabs/HyZqgTA-c). - Nethermind had some nodes that crashed. - Erigon also had some endianness issues. There were several lessons learned about things we should be monitoring through the Merge event. The multiplication of clients involved makes it harder than usual to figure out exactly what's going on. And (as has now become customary) the block explorer was unavailable throughout. The plan now is for Kiln to remain available as the publicly open testnet, and everyone is encouraged to give it a workout. Seems that Tenderly, Lido, and Uniswap have all already [jumped on](https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1506025076449107970) - if you want to be sure that your thing will work perfectly post-Merge then now is the time to test it out on Kiln. Danny gives some more information and an invitation to test the Merge in [Finalized no. 34](https://blog.ethereum.org/2022/03/23/finalized-no-34/). #### Kiln how-tos - [How to run a node on Kiln](https://notes.ethereum.org/@launchpad/kiln) - [Lodestar Setup for Kiln🔥🧱](https://hackmd.io/@philknows/By5qahdZc) - [EthereumJS](https://twitter.com/EFJavaScript/status/1507313725996425253) with Lodestar Also see the list from the [last edition](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/wnie2_220311#Testing-the-Merge). ### Devnet-6 and Shadow forking With Kiln up and running, the testing only intensifies now. Another short-lived devnet (number 6) will go live next week. More interesting than devnets are shadow forks. This is where we take the state of an existing network and mirror it onto a Merged proof of stake network. This means that transactions from the real network can be replayed onto the shadow network as they occur. The Goerli network was shadow forked today, and there are plans to repeat this every couple of weeks. (Due to transaction ordering issues, the two networks gradually get out of sync, so the shadow needs to be re-initialised every now and again for maximum effectiveness.) If both devnet-6 and the Goerli network shadow fork go well, then the intention is to do a shadow fork of Ethereum mainnet in two weeks. Eventually there will be a nightly shadow fork with different choices for the majority client to amplify any lurking issues. After that, migrating the existing testnets over to PoS will be in view. You'll be able to follow along at [wenmerge.com](https://wenmerge.com/). (Don't take the countdown too seriously. We are not primarily driven by the difficulty bomb, and will not rush just for the sake of that. Nonetheless, it is definitely one of the factors in the decision making mix.) ### Pandas :panda_face: It seems that it's now quite the thing to implement an ASCII-art banner for the Merge event (thanks, [Greg](https://twitter.com/gregthegreek/status/1503772426164920327)!). [Prysm](https://twitter.com/terencechain/status/1506346434370494465) and [Lighthouse](https://twitter.com/EthDreamer/status/1506372002512314376) are on it. If any ASCII-art geniuses out there want to help Teku out, we have an [open issue](https://github.com/ConsenSys/teku/issues/5231) for that. ## Beyond The Merge The two big topics for the first post-Merge network upgrade (tentatively named Shanghai on the execution side and Capella on the consensus side) remain validator balance withdrawals, and so-called blob transactions. As previously noted, there is now a validator withdrawals [meta-spec](https://notes.ethereum.org/@ralexstokes/Skp1mPSb9) that serves as an umbrella for both the execution changes and the consensus changes. Three EIPs are up for discussion on the consensus side: - [PR-2836](https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2836) is the basis for push withdrawals, that is, from the beacon chain to the execution layer. - As far as I can tell this will require those of us who have the old-style BLS withdrawal credentials (`0x00` prefix) to update to `0x01` credentials before we can withdraw. I don't see a mechanism for doing this update yet, though there is an [open issue](https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/issues/2213) for it. - [PR-2854](https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2854) is just an administrative update to reflect that this mechanism will not trigger EVM execution. It simply updates the Eth1 account's balance. - [PR-2862](https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2862) proposes a mechanism for partial withdrawals of balance above 32 Ether. - This will _automatically_ scrape excess balance from validators in a round-robin and transfer it to the associated Eth1 accounts at the rate of 256 validators per epoch, which amounts to about once every 6 days per validator on the current numbers. [Rationale](https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/pull/2862#issuecomment-1079075127) for this frequency. The counterpart on the execution side to these changes is [EIP-4895](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4895). The good news is that there will be no gas cost for withdrawals to your Eth1 account, whether full or partial. As for the blob transactions proposal, [EIP-4844](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4844), it even has its own [website](https://www.eip4844.com/) now. The site includes Vitalik's [Proto-Danksharding FAQ](https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/proto_danksharding_faq). Yes, indeed, proto-danksharding appears to be the new name for this. ## Staking ## The Great Explainers As linked at the top, [Stuff /r/ethereum should know: Proof of Stake edition](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/tijcq1/stuff_rethereum_should_know_proof_of_stake_edition/) is a gold mine. A concise presentation of the facts, and excellent anti-FUD material. Tim Beiko and Pooja Ranjan did a joint presentation on the Merge and beyond to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance for their [Monthly Education Call](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdAlzFPaJpQ). Another [Jacek special](https://twitter.com/jcksie/status/1504392762342395905), this one on how Nimbus has lowered memory consumption by re-working storage of the block-history DAG. We mentioned last time that Guillaume Ballet is working on a test implementation of Verkle trees in Ethereum as a move towards having stateless clients. He's Tweeted out a bite-sized explainer of the implications for Ethereum's [block format](https://twitter.com/gballet/status/1504390290144169992). And I finally finished the first cut of a chapter on [BLS signatures](https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/building_blocks/signatures). Next I'm doing randomness and how the beacon chain's RANDAO works. ## Media and stuff [Don't sleep on the merge [LITE]](https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/dont-sleep-on-the-merge-lite) from Bankless: "Why the Merge will happen in June and what that means for ETH the asset." (It's Bankless. They have boundless optimism. Do me a favour and take any date estimate that you do not hear directly from the lips of Danny Ryan himself with a good pinch of salt. If you need a balancing dose of pessimism, Alexey is [here to help](https://twitter.com/realLedgerwatch/status/1507378186149105681).) Tim Beiko appeared on Matt Leising's [DeCent People Podcast](https://www.decential.io/features/yko0vbue75yxv9l8354u24z6ym9d2i) to talk about "Progress on ETH 2.0". Love the title, haven't listened yet, but I definitely will. Matt Leising write the superb [Out of the Ether](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Ether-Amazing-Ethereum-Destroyed/dp/1119602939) book. And, if you would prefer to get your doses of Tim in writing check out [CryptoStaker's interview](https://cryptostaker.com/tim-beiko-interview/) with him which came out today. ## Research MEV continues to be a significant factor driving possible futures for the architecture of Ethereum. There are [significant concerns](https://ethresear.ch/t/block-builder-centralization/12135?u=benjaminion) about the current direction of travel, and I am always happy to see alternative approaches being proposed. [Shutterized Beacon Chain](https://ethresear.ch/t/shutterized-beacon-chain/12249?u=benjaminion) is such an alternative that describes a mechanism for handling encrypted transactions within Ethereum blocks. ## Regular Calls ### Implementers Call #84 took place on the 24th of March. * [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/501) * [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThoT6-eLTN0&t=317s) * My [quick notes](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/SybzPe5f5). ### All Core Devs Call #134 took place on the 18th of March. * [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/492) * [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbsjw-lzMIw) * [Tweet notes](https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1504913092420931584) from Tim Beiko. Topics: Kiln launch review; JSON RPC flags for "finalized", "safe", and "latest"; beacon chain withdrawals; proto-danksharding (EIP-4844); harmonising the EIP process across both the execution and consensus layers. ## Upcoming events - Monday, 28th of March: [Bankless podcast](https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1504202580842319872) with Justin Drake and Lyn Alden on "PoW vs PoS". Should be a good one. I'd hate to be on the PoW side of this. - Thursday, 21st of April: [EthStaker Hackathon](https://ethstaker.cc/ethstaker-devconnect-2022/) at DevConnect, Amsterdam. USDC 10k is available in prizes. And you might see me hanging around. ## In other news - The most recent [Ethereum Pools update](https://twitter.com/EthereumPools/status/1506329386357772290). They clocked our Teku issue, so they're definitely not asleep at the wheel. - [Stereum Update 4](https://twitter.com/stereumdev/status/1506000129450549269), "An early look into our UI development progress & some stats (and stories) from our Update & Upkeep challenge." * * * [![[Twitter]](https://benjaminion.xyz/newineth2/img/twitter.svg =40x40)](https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz) Follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.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). [Advertising](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/eth2_news/https%3A%2F%2Fhackmd.io%2F%40benjaminion%2Fadvertising) on this newsletter. [Give Feedback](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfkESc4CmNfRGHHjWfNeF3ceLwrXDvynetda4sKfJFJ71Oabw/viewform).