Final steps | Ethereum Foundation Blog

An update as promised: all systems are now “Go” on the technical side (word game) and we intend to publish Frontier this week.

Thank you to everyone who provided comments on my previous blog article. What has become obvious is that before the big day, many of you wanted to know more about the sequence of events exactly and how to prepare your machine at the exit.

A transparent and open version

Frontier users will first generate, then load the Genesis block in their Ethereum client. The Genesis block is roughly a database file: it contains all the transactions of the sale of ether, and when a user enters it in the customer, it represents its decision to join the network according to its terms: this is the first stage of the consensus.

Because the ether pre-sale took place entirely on the Bitcoin blockchain, its content is publicAnd anyone can generate and check the Genesis block. In the interest of decentralization and transparency, Ethereum will not provide the Genesis block as download, but rather created an open source script that anyone can use to generate the file, a link to which are below in this article.

Since the script is already available and the version must be coordinated, an argument of the script must be provided in order to “launch” the border in unison. But how can we do that And Stay decentralized?

The argument must be a random parameter that no one, not even us, can predict. As you can imagine, there are not too many parameters in the world that meet these criteria, but good is the hash for a future block on Ethereum Testnet. We had to choose a block number, but which one? 1,028 201 is to be both privileged and palindromic, as we love. So # 1028201 is it.

Stage sequence to the version:

• The latest steps in the revealed version: you read this now.
• Block # 1028201 is formed on the Ethereum Tesnet and receives a hatch.
• The hash is used by users around the world as a unique parameter in the Genesis Block Generation script.

What you can do today

First of all, you will need the customer installed, I will use Geth as an example, but the same can be done with Ethn (C ++ implementation of Ethereum). Geth installation instructions for Windows, Linux and OSX are available on our wiki.

Once you have installed a customer, you must download the Python script that generates the Genesis file. His name is ‘mk_genèse_block.py’ and can be downloaded here.

Depending on your platform, you can also download it from the console by installing curl and running;

curl -O 

This will create the file in the same folder where you have invoked the command. You must now install the pybitcointools created by our own Vitalik Buterin. You can get it via the Python Package Manager Pip, so we will install Pip first, then the tools right after.

The following instructions must operate on OSX and Linux. Windows users, good news, PIP ships with the standard Python installer.

curl -O 
sudo python get-pip.py

or (if you have already installed it),

sudo pip install --upgrade bitcoin

One last step, if you use ETH, we recently support the new Block Genesis parameter, you will therefore have to recover the correct version of the software to be ready for the big day:

cd ~/go-ethereum/
git checkout release/1.0.0
git pull
make geth

Those who would like to be “as ready as possible” can follow the instructions to this point, which says, a git Just before the fateful block is probably recommended to operate the latest version of all software.

If you have managed customers before:

• Support your keys (maybe some of them are eligible for Olympic rewards) – they are located in ./ethereum/Keystore
• Delete your old chain please (it is located in ./ethereum, delete the following 3 files: ./extra, ./state, ./Blockchain)
• You can safely leave your ./ethereum/nodes, ./ethereum/history and ./ethereum/nodekey in place
• Have dags pre -eating. / Ethash will not hurt, but do not hesitate to delete them if you need space

For complete ventilation regarding the location of configuration files, please consult this page On our forums.

Then, it is a question of waiting for block # 1028201, which, at present of the resolution of the block, should be formed about Thursday evening GMT + 0.

Once 102,8201 has been formed, its hatching will be accessible by questioning a node running the testnet using Web3.eth.getblock (1028201) .HashHowever, we will also put this value available on this blog as well as on all our social media canals.

You can then generate the Genesis block by operating:

python mk_genesis_block.py --extradata hash_for_#1028201_goes_here > genesis_block.json

By default, the script uses blockr and blockchain.info to recover the results of the Genesis presale. You can also add the –preview Communicate if you prefer to use the private Ethereum server for this information. If you are faced with problems with the script, please raise a problem on github.

Although we will not provide the Genesis block as a file, we will always provide the hash of Genesis Block (shortly after we have generated it ourselves) in order to ensure that the invalid or malicious third-party files are easily rejected by the community.

Once you are satisfied with the generation of the Genesis block, you can load it in customers using this command:

./build/bin/geth --genesis genesis_block.json

Or:

./build/eth/eth --genesis genesis_block.json

From there, instructions on the creation of an account, importing your presailed portfolio, transaction, etc.

Note that if you have already used Ethereum, you need to generate new keys using a recent customer (RC) and not reuse the Testnet keys.

Some other things …

We would also like to give you a little head on the “defrosting” phase – the period during which the gas limit per block will be very low to allow the network to grow slowly before transactions can take place. You must expect network instability at the very beginning of the version, including forks, an abnormal display potential information on our Page and various problems of peer connectivity. Just like during the Olympic phase, we expect this instability to settle after a few hours / days.

We would also like to remind everyone that even if we intend to provide a long-term safe platform, Frontier is a technical version directed against a developer audience, not a general version of the public. Please keep in mind that the first software is often affected by bugs, problems with complex instability and user interfaces. If you prefer a more user -friendly experience, we encourage you to wait for the future property or the versions of Metropolis Ethereum.

Please particularly be wary of third -party websites and software of unknown origin – Ethereum will never publish software than via its GitHub platform in https://github.com/ethereum/.

Finally, for more clarity, it is important to note that the Olympic The program ended in block 1m this morning, however, the bug bonus is still underway – and will continue until further notice. Security vulnerabilities, if found, should continue to be reported https://boundy.ethdev.com/.