Dev Update #1

Hello everyone

It's only been a week since I started in the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship program, but I have the need to sort my thoughts by writing them down.

The past few days have been challenging but also rewarding. I'm still overwhelmed by the support from people willing to help a complete stranger with a funny-looking cat picture.

So, how did I get started?

First Steps

I've dived right into the project ideas proposed by the program's mentors. Brainstormed a bit and decided I might want to create an interactive Ethereum roadmap – Yeah, I know what you are probably thinking.

So, I asked for feedback in the R&D Discord about my idea and if there were other demanded projects. I discarded my idea relatively fast and pivoted to the following project for the EPF:

Data Analysis of Consensus Clients to statistically identify peering issues, aiming to improve communication at the Consensus Layer.

Honestly, it took me some days to be able to phrase the project in one sentence. The definition is still far from perfect – but the Eureka moment, once I grasped my project's concept, was worth the time.

What did I spend my time on this week?

Progress

Potuz, who not only proposed the idea for my project but also suggested doing some research about blockprint. A tool by Sigma Prime that fetches data of Consensus Clients. Blockprint's Public API provides data on produced blocks by clients. So, that is exactly what I'm looking for.

I'm aware of three websites that use data from blockprint:

• https://clientdiversity.org/ – displays the diversity of Ethereum clients.
• https://q3dm6.xyz/ – overview of the chain heads.
• https://pools.invis.cloud/ – summary of what percentage of staking pools run on Prysm.

I halfway implemented blockprint's Public API into my website, which looks like the following:

Additionally, the creator of blockprint, Michael Sproul, created credentials for me for blockprint's Private API.

If you want to dig deeper into my work, you can check out these two links:

• Code: https://github.com/kevinbogner/data-analysis-consensus-clients.
• Detailed Research & Development Process: https://github.com/eth-protocol-fellows/cohort-three/tree/master/notes/kevinbogner.

That's cool, but what's next?

Next Steps

It is hard to name the following steps if you are aware that you don't fully understand what you are doing for now. Therefore, I must spend more time researching, reading, and asking the right questions.

However, short-term I'm thinking of taking the following directions:

• Research about attestations because it was often suggested that attestation data might be interesting for my project.
• Check out blockprint's private API.
• Implement blockprint into my project.

Let's see how this will go. Bye