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# What's New in Eth2 - 6&nbsp;May&nbsp;2022

 Ben Edgington (Eth2 at [ConsenSys](https://consensys.net/) — all views expressed are my own)

Edition 92 at [eth2.news](https://eth2.news/)

## We're back!

My apologies for the long gap since the last edition. Devconnect and post-Devconnect Covid conspired to keep me away from the keyboard.

There's a huge amount to pack in, and I'm not going to get to all of it. Forgive me if I miss your thing.

## Pick of the week

The one thing you should definitely read this week. Tim Beiko has pretty much made this spot his own of late. This time he brings [AllCoreDevs Update 011](https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/acd/https%3A%2F%2Ftim.mirror.xyz%2FPWFVaHY3Mrx7srarMmuBWya0J5kioR1l2xaH3p5APDk%3Fdisplay%3Diframe) - a comprehensive look at what remains ahead of us on the path to the Merge.

## Wen Merge?

The only question anyone is really interested in right now. The official answer is "when it's ready", which is true but unhelpful. So let's unpack that a little.

There are two somewhat independent moving parts involved, which makes forecasting less straight-forward than it might be. The first is simple, Merge-readiness of the clients. The second is the Ethereum difficulty bomb.

### A digression - Ethereum's difficulty bomb

The difficulty bomb (sometimes known as the ice age) is a mechanism that's existed in Ethereum since its earliest days. Its function is to begin exponentially increasing the difficulty of mining blocks on the proof of work chain after a certain block height. This in turn increases the time between blocks. There is a [Dune dashboard](https://dune.com/yulesa/Blocks-per-Week) that shows how the block production rate rapidly drops off as the bomb takes effect, and then recovers once we hard fork to reset it.

The idea of the bomb is two-fold. First to provide a forcing function for developers. Defusing or delaying the bomb requires a hard fork, and the thinking is that if we're going to be hard-forking to do this then we will use the opportunity to also do protocol upgrades. In particular the bomb was intended in the early days to encourage a swift move to proof of stake. In my view it has pretty much failed in this respect, the evidence being that (a) we are still not on proof of stake, having postponed the bomb at least five times, and (b) the [Arrow Glacier](https://ethereum.org/en/history/#arrow-glacier) and [Muir Glacier](https://ethereum.org/en/history/#muir-glacier) forks _only_ delayed the bomb and did nothing else. Its main effect has simply been to complicate planning.

The second, more realistic, purpose is to discourage miners from continuing a proof of work fork once proof of stake is active. The miners would need to defuse the bomb themselves, which is not hard &ndash; it's just one line of code &ndash; but effectively forces them to maintain their own forks of the Eth1 client(s) post-Merge.

Anyway, the point is that the current iteration of the difficulty bomb is due to become noticeable soon.

### Plans A and B

The happy path (Plan A, if you like) would be to do the Merge before the bomb becomes too much of a problem. The fall-back option (Plan B) is to have another bomb-delay-only hard fork to gain us a few more months to become Merge-ready.

So, it's something of a race. Plan A is optimal but depends on everything being completely Merge-ready before the bomb cripples Ethereum. But we don't know exactly when that will be, since the timing is affected by overall hash rate, and we don't yet know exactly the Merge-readiness status of the clients.

The bottom line is that we expect to have a clearer view on both these things by the end of May. At that time (or in the few weeks after that) we will have to decide whether to go for it, or to fall back to Plan B with a hard fork to delay the bomb. We can't leave decision making _too_ much longer as it will take a few weeks to organise a bomb-delay hard fork if required.

So far, testing the merge seems to be going ok (see below). And [latest analyses](https://ethresear.ch/t/blocks-per-week-as-an-indicator-of-the-difficulty-bomb/12120/17?u=benjaminion) suggest that we have until mid/late August until the bomb becomes a serious issue for Ethereum, with average block times rising to perhaps 20 seconds.

Were I a [betting man](https://polymarket.com/market-group/ethereum-merge-pos) I might be putting a few USDC on merging in August, without having pushed back the bomb. But that is definitely not financial advice, and don't come crying to me if you lose your shirt.

Tim Beiko has given his own view of [Merge timelines](https://github.com/timbeiko/eth-roadmap-faq#merge-timelines) (which is not materially different from the above, I think).

You can [join the EF mailing list](https://twitter.com/trent_vanepps/status/1520015475056521218) for updates as they happen.

## Testing the Merge

See [Tim's ACD update](https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/acd/https%3A%2F%2Ftim.mirror.xyz%2FPWFVaHY3Mrx7srarMmuBWya0J5kioR1l2xaH3p5APDk%3Fdisplay%3Diframe) for a really good overview of `#TestingTheMerge`. Notes from the weekly Merge testing calls can be found [here](https://notes.ethereum.org/@timbeiko/merge-testing-calls).

Before we get to what the devs are doing to test the Merge, I want to highlight that it's really, really, really important that, if you run _any_ infrastructure on Ethereum, you also get involved with testing the Merge. It is the only real way to be confident that your sh\*t won't break when we do this thing. To that end, my colleague Sajida has put together a [Merge Testing Leaderboard](https://testingthemerge.notion.site/testingthemerge/Testing-the-Merge-d0af826782a34d5ca6ce31aa5e631645) to track who's doing what. Don't be left out.

### Mainnet Shadow Forks

Since I last wrote, we have done three Mainnet shadow forks, including one [in person](https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz/status/1517770411035045892) in Amsterdam.

Mainnet shadow forks are an excellent test of the Merge mechanics and client readiness. They are more or less equivalent to doing the real thing (although for now the Ethereum Foundation and dev teams control all the validators, which makes it slightly easier). Shadow forks are so cool that Song a Day man [wrote a song](https://twitter.com/songadaymann/status/1517920950666289155) about them.

I won't go into all the details, but by and large these have been a great success so far.

- Mainnet shadow fork #1 was on the 11th of April
- [Summary from Pari](https://twitter.com/parithosh_j/status/1513494565529001984)
- Marius declared it a [huge success](https://twitter.com/vdWijden/status/1513540976438091779)
- It uncovered a configuration issue in Geth to do with [gas limits](https://twitter.com/vdWijden/status/1513588274740314125), but nothing too serious.
- Various clients had various niggles that were found and fixed.
- MSF #2 was on the 23rd of April during Devconnect
- [Pari's summary](https://twitter.com/parithosh_j/status/1517816760082251776?s=20&t=VHXcnQfd1d2_-jJfq2eosQ): "This was the first shadow fork where every client combination survived the transition and managed to stay in sync afterwards. We're making real progress here!"
- MSF #3 was on the 5th of May and, to an excellent approximation, passed without incident.
- More info is in the [devs call notes](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/Hy_VXLb8q#Testing).
- This one included some new tests around [syncing through the Merge](https://notes.ethereum.org/@parithosh/HyiESUWIc) which found some issues. No show-stoppers, and definitely fixable.

In addition, there have been [four](https://twitter.com/GiulioRebuffo/status/1516360766299029506) shadow forks of the Goerli network.

Bottom line is that things are sufficiently encouraging that we are planning towards Merging three of the existing Ethereum testnets during June: Ropsten, Sepolia, and Goerli.

## The Beacon Chain

Another huge milestone! Over 10% of all Ether is now staked in the Eth2 deposit contract. [hildobby.eth](https://twitter.com/hildobby_/status/1515945891932348418) has assembled a nice [deposits dashboard](https://dune.com/hildobby/ETH2-Deposits) showing the status and history of staking deposits. The number of active validators is now almost [370,000](https://beaconcha.in/), and is growing faster than it ever has.

Also, great news on client diversity 🎉 On [some measures](https://clientdiversity.org/) (click "Sigma Prime's Blockprint") Prysm now has less than 50% of the stake, which is a much healthier state of affairs for the beacon chain overall. This is an extraordinary turnaround in the handful of months since Prysm had [over 68%](https://twitter.com/sproulM_/status/1481109509544513539) of the stake, that being a very precarious situation. It seems that perhaps [yelling at people](https://twitter.com/christine_dkim/status/1496501126363066370) does work after all! But seriously, **huge congratulations** to all of the individuals, institutions and services that went out of their way, putting in the time and effort to make the change. And a special shout out to Somer Esat whose [guides](https://someresat.medium.com/ethereum-staker-migration-guides-introduction-45505079b1f0) have helped many. Ethereum is stronger and safer because of you all.

Of course, the battle is not over. The next front is execution client diversity, which if anything is even worse than consensus client diversity used to be. And there are a few other fronts to be mindful of as well: [Project Sunshine](https://ethsunshine.com/) aims to shine a light on all aspects of Ethereum's decentralisation.

## Staking

The [ethereum.org staking pages](https://ethereum.org/en/staking/) have been completely revamped, and are beautiful.

Lido has recently come under some scrutiny, quite rightly as the vehicle through which [over 30%](https://ethsta.com) of the stake has been placed. This seems to have prompted a flurry of transparency. [The Next Chapter for Lido](https://blog.lido.fi/the-next-chapter-for-lido/) is the updated decentralisation roadmap I [requested](https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz/status/1498587637396946945) back at the start of March. Further to that, they have also published a [Lido on Ethereum Scorecard](https://scorecard.lido.fi/) with an assessment of progress. In addition, they've shared Lido's [Operator Set Strategy](https://hackmd.io/K6udDz1nSZOoX8t-vE98qg). Superphiz has [some thoughts](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethfinance/comments/uipt94/daily_general_discussion_may_5_2022/i7eyzbc/) on all this.

Also from Lido, [Modelling The Entry Queue Post-Merge](https://blog.lido.fi/modelling-the-entry-queue-post-merge-an-analysis-of-impacts-on-lidos-socialized-model/), which is an analysis of how the Merge might affect Lido's socialised rewards model in a situation with very long activation queues for validators.

As for Rocket Pool, Bits Be Trippin' did a Rocket Pool overview in an [interview with Darren Langley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssaMoG0uq8). Rocket Pool has [announced](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/uelf6h/rocket_pool_now_supports_besu_and_nethermind_in/) support for both Besu and Nethermind as Eth1 clients in their latest beta. Yay client diversity!

## The Great Explainers

What are these shadow fork that devs keep doing? Yash Kamal Chaturvedi [explains](https://etherworld.co/2022/04/20/ethereum-mainnet-shadow-forking-an-overview/) everything.

ConsenSys has put together a nice [Merge Knowledgebase](https://consensys.net/knowledge-base/the-merge/). A couple of recent ConsenSys blog posts are worth your time:

1. [The Four Pillars of the Merge](https://consensys.net/blog/ethereum-2-0/the-four-pillars-of-the-merge-to-proof-of-stake-how-ethereum-will-evolve/).
2. [What We Learned about Proof of Stake at Devconnect](https://consensys.net/blog/news/what-we-learned-about-proof-of-stake-at-devconnect/). This one links to a video [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrJWE9beMSg&list=PLcLEZJlCz-cpITsAqUzXHRLRZ8ZNGxU2E) of excerpts from an interview with Tim Beiko, Matt Nelson, and Chris Anatalio. Look out on Monday for the follow-up interview with Justin Drake and yours truly. A lot of work went into these; enjoy!

Here's one for API nerds: Adrian Sutton of team Teku has written up work the team is doing around [JSON Type Definitions](https://www.symphonious.net/2022/05/06/json-type-definitions/). A very large proportion of the workload of client development is behind-the-scenes heavy lifting like this. All good stuff.

Adrian's previous article, [Stealing Inclusion Fees from Public Beacon Nodes](https://www.symphonious.net/2022/04/09/exploring-eth2-stealing-inclusion-fees-from-public-beacon-nodes/), narrowly missed the last edition. It's a cautionary tale for those running validators who might wish to rely on a third-party service for their execution client post-Merge. Time to get your own execution client up and running.

Here's Alex Stokes with his PEEPanEIP session [on Withdrawals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcL9RJBljUs). Alex is such a great explainer.

bartek.eth has a very nice thread on [KZG commitments](https://twitter.com/bkiepuszewski/status/1518163771788824576). I did a short talk at Devconnect on [KZG commitments for devs](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uh8WgKq1z4Jar08xWrQd0EEaApQXyGP1t-cb1z9g-qI/edit#slide=id.p) (slides only, haven't found the video yet). It looks very much as if polynomials will be the datastructure of choice in future for all sorts of reasons, so it's a good time to be getting on top of all this stuff.

Hot off the press today is Joanne Fuller's article on formal verification of the Ethereum 2 protocol, [Fixing the Array-Out-of-Bound Runtime Error](https://consensys.net/blog/news/formal-verification-of-ethereum-2-0-part-1-fixing-the-array-out-of-bound-runtime-error/). I sometimes feel that the formal verification work my colleagues have done on the protocol is under-appreciated. As Joanne explains, FV is an incredibly powerful tool, and having had the protocol verified like this is hugely comforting.

I finally finished my chapter on [randomness](https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/building_blocks/randomness) in the Eth2 protocol. It turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected, but ended up taking much longer than I'd planned. Probability is hard! Not sure what I'll knock down next. Maybe committees. There's just a few more [low-level topics](https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/building_blocks) I want to finish before I start moving up the stack.

## Devconnect talks

Covid has (temporarily) robbed me of my stamina, so I'm not able to give the comprehensive round-up of all the talks at Devconnect that I was hoping to do. But here's a tiny selection of my favourite talks from the Ethstaker event.

- Adrian Sutton on Teku's [checkpoint sync](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIXGjXDh27c&t=12828s) and weak subjectivity.
- Jim McDonald on [selecting the best consensus client](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJwS7VF40wk&t=16395s).
- Oisin and Collin from Obol on [trust minimised staking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIXGjXDh27c&t=8987s) via distributed validator technology.

Most of the talks from many of the events seem to be available at [streameth.tv](https://streameth.tv/). [MEV day](https://streameth.tv/event/mev-day) is particularly recommended. I'm not sure what happened to the video from the talks at the protocol dev days - hopefully it will turn up somewhere.

Take a moment to hunt down some of the other talks, there was so much great content. (Most of which I missed; there were also many great side conversations going on!)

## Media and stuff

Tim Beiko was on Laura Shin's [Unchained podcast](https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-ethereums-merge-was-delayed-and-why-it-wont-reduce-gas-fees-much/).

While you were checking out the ConsenSys [Merge knowledgebase](https://consensys.net/knowledge-base/the-merge/) I hope you noticed the "Devs Behind the Merge" series. Merge lead Mikhail Kalinin recently [told his story](https://consensys.net/blog/news/devs-behind-the-merge-mikhail-kalinin-lead-researcher-at-consensys-rd/). Mikhail is a genuine Ethereum OG. And [Sajida Zouarhi](https://consensys.net/blog/news/devs-behind-the-merge-sajida-zouarhi-besu-product-lead/)'s excellent article has just been published. You might also find me in there [somewhere](https://consensys.net/blog/ethereum-2-0/devs-behind-the-merge-ben-edgington-teku-product-lead/).

Coinbase brings [The Merge and the Ethics of Ethereum](https://blog.coinbase.com/the-merge-and-the-ethics-of-ethereum-dec22a43b363). This struck me as a pretty good take on how Ethereum development rolls.

> The Merge has proven to be an extremely complex task with many challenges. Yet, its completion will be achieved not through the dictum of a central authority, but through the organic coordination of like-minded individuals. Fundamentally, a successful Merge will prove the viability of decentralization as a social organizing principle.

Welcome to [the bazaar](https://media.consensys.net/ethereum-2-0s-latest-strides-forward-13f63652e57d)!

## Research

The Condrieu verkle testnet is now [open to the public](https://twitter.com/gballet/status/1514575476135706624). Nethermind is [working on](https://twitter.com/URozmej/status/1514946534114304007) being able to join it. The landing page is [here](https://condrieu.ethdevops.io/).

## Regular Calls

### Consensus Implementers

There was no call on the 21st of April since we were all at Devconnect. Call #86 took place on the 5th of May.

* [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/521)
* [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnjeqZK7jgU)
* Notes [from me](https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/Hy_VXLb8q) and from [Christine Kim](https://twitter.com/christine_dkim/status/1522256793321103360).

In addition to reviewing mainnet shadow fork #3, we discussed promoting the various Ethereum testnets to proof of stake, we had a lengthy side conversation about IPv6 in the chat, we talked about a modification to Libp2p's _gossipsub_ protocol called _episub_ that could reduce network bandwidth overhead, and we talked about moving the Builder API (formerly known as MEV Boost) to a more RESTful interface.

For some background on the post-Merge testnets, see Afri's [EthMagicians post](https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/og-council-post-merge-testnets/9034) from the OG Council in Amsterdam.

### All Core Devs

Most Merge planning discussion now takes place on the All Core Devs calls - these are where Ethereum governance traditionally happens.

Ethereum ACD call #136 took place on the 15th of April.

* [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/508)
* [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXbOeiPN_uE)
* Notes from [Tim Beiko](https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1515067269147111424), and from [Christine Kim](https://twitter.com/christine_dkim/status/1515013002105442312).

And ACD call #137 took place on the 29th of April.

* [Agenda](https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/514)
* [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWWoniO6rZc)
* Notes from [Tim](https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1520106955003424768), and from [Christine](https://twitter.com/christine_dkim/status/1520087529139019779).

## In other news

- Superphiz's useful compilation of [Ethereum dashboards](https://twitter.com/superphiz/status/1512770843285327875).
- EthStaker today kicked off a [CLR.fund 350K QF Round](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/ujp7vn/announcing_the_clrfund_ethstaker_350000_quadratic/) ([video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-hPMgUOWbU)). Notable [dates](https://twitter.com/superphiz/status/1522579315250114560):
- May 16: Last day to submit a project for matching
- May 24: Funds matching round closes

## And finally...

It was wonderful to meet up with so many friends, old and new, at Devconnect. Love you all!

* * *

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