ETH1x Roadmap

What is the ETH1x Roadmap?

Guiding question for this conversation. Ask questions, share resources, have a discussion.

• Why is this so important?
• Why now? Why not earlier, or later?
• How does it tie into Eth2? / Fit into the overall roadmap
• Who is responsible for it?

What are the upcoming hardforks?

Istanbul this year, October 2019

6 or 9 Month Hardforks?

Istanbul Hardfork Timeline

• May 17th - hard deadline to accept proposals
• July 19th - soft deadline for major client implementations
• August 14th - projected date for testnet network upgrade (Ropsten, Görli, or ad-hoc testnet)
• October 16th - projected date for mainnet upgrade

See https://en.ethereum.wiki/roadmap/istanbul

Istanbul Hardfork Process

EIP 233 describes the formal process - @bmann & @axic to propose some updates.

EIP 1679 is the Istanbul hardfork Meta EIP.

Propose EIPs, get them to Last Call, implementations in at least 2 major clients, bring to CoreDevs to move to Accepted.

Feb 6th Webinar

Held a webinar with State Fee & eWASM discussion on Feb 6th. Notes & video on EthMagicians.

State Fees

Alexey @realledgerwatch has taken the lead in research & planning state fees.

Ethereum state is growing to unmanageable sizes, hit critical point in ~2 years.

State Fee Timeline

18 - 27 months

Ewasm

Ethereum-flavoured Web Assembly

https://github.com/ewasm

Ewasm background

• Project initiated circa 2016 by Martin Becze, Alex Beregszaszi
• Martin built Primea for Dfinity based on early concepts
• Originally intended for mainnet, then Eth2, now mainnet again?
• Has been a proper team for ~1 year
• Testnet launched at DevCon IV
• Goals
  • Better precompiles, more efficient
  • More languages, better DevEx
  • Standards-compliant, broader ecosystem and tooling

Open Questions

• Interpreters vs. compilers
  • Safety, JIT bombs
• Metering
• Route to mainnet:
  • One precompile to rule them all
  • Precompiles
  • User-deployed contracts
• Eth1x vs Eth2
• Which languages to support?

Ewasm Timeline

Need to prepare a similar hard fork timeline as Alexey's State Fees plan.

• Now: Research on benchmarking, Wasm engines/interpreters/compilers, gas metering, etc.
• Q1 2019: Based on this research, decide on Eth1x roadmap and goals, author EIPs
• Q2 2019: Development, testing
• Q3 2019: Eth1x launch?
• In parallel: Eth2 R&D

EVM Evolution

• Greg Colvin, Brooklyn Zelenka, Boris Mann
• Have an outstanding application for EF Grant
• See https://fission.codes/evm-evolution/

EIP615 Static Jumps & Subroutines proposed for Istanbul.

Improve & maintain EVM specs with Jello Paper, formal verification

April 17th & 18th CoreDevs in Berlin

Working on bringing together a CoreDev meeting in Berlin to focus on planning. Need to set aside time that isn't adhoc at conferences – planning to improve the network needs to have priority.

Funding

Testing? Security reviews?

Open Discussion

Further notes and discussion on EthMagicians.

#eth1x