tl;dr

• Merge progress — minor spec updates, engineering full steam forward 🚂
• No progress in consumer range. Be egocentric, run a minority consumer!

Merge replace

To begin with — incredible work to all the engineering groups on the Kintsugi dash, which culminated within the launch of the Kintsugi Merge testnet. It’s unbelievable to see 3 execution purchasers and 5 consensus purchasers for a complete of 15 totally different pairings working on a unified entrance.

Kintsugi🍵, the primary long-standing Merge testnet, was not with out pleasure. The #TestingTheMerge effort hammered the testnet with transactions, dangerous blocks, and quite a few different chaotic inputs, effervescent up some bugs in state transition, sync, and extra. We look forward to finding such bugs in early testnets, however with every iteration, purchasers develop into increasingly steady.

Kiln reboot 🔥🧱

Groups recognized an necessary situation just a few weeks in the past. This was a mismatch within the engine API (how the PoS consensus-layer drives the execution-layer) semantics associated to how execution-layer purchasers really operate in observe. The tl;dr is that, in some contexts, the consensus-layer was by chance inducing sudden load on the execution-layer.

Engineers then realized that if the engine API semantics have been barely extra versatile, the 2 layers may work extra harmoniously. This led to a delicate, but vital, modification of the engine API and a associated breaking spec launch.

As we speak, the Kiln spec🔥🧱 was launched, and engineers are busy knocking out the adjustments. On the finish of this dash, groups purpose to convey production-ready implementations to a brand new testnet for public consumption. Hold your eyes peeled for the way to take part.

From there, groups will transition public testnets to proof-of-stake earlier than making mainnet preparations.

Consumer range metrics

Michael Sproul launched a brand new wave of consumer range metrics utilizing his novel fingerprinting mechanism. Sadly, the consumer distribution of validating nodes has not budged prior to now 6 months.

The variety of consensus-layer consumer implementations allows Ethereum and its customers to have a singular and sturdy resilience to software program failures and assaults. Customers obtain some resiliance by utilizing a minority consumer whatever the community make-up, however the community itself positive aspects resiliance at just a few key validator distribution thresholds.

If a single consumer:

• Doesn’t exceed 66.6%, a fault/bug in a single consumer can’t be finalized
• Doesn’t exceed 50%, a fault/bug in a single consumer’s forkchoice can not dominate the top of the chain
• Doesn’t exceed 33.3%, a fault/bug in a single consumer can not disrupt finality

From the appears to be like of the fingerprinting mechanism, Prysm nonetheless sits above the 66.6% mark.

I wish to give an enormous shoutout to the groups, people, and communities taking consumer range critically (exhibit A, exhibit B). Working a minority consumer is just not solely wholesome for the community however can be safer for the person person’s funds.

Be egocentric (rational)! Run a minority consumer 🚀