We have all been very busy with all these things! I’ll try to keep these posts coming, but in the meantime, be sure to check out Ben Edgington’s post. What’s new in Eth2 to get your solution.
Connect with Ethereal Virtual Summit this Thursday and Friday! It’s full of great eth2 content and it’s 100% FREE. Thanks to all the organizers for their hard work in moving to online mode. I’m super excited 🙂
tl;dr
Double Bounty Rewards
Departure Today all the rewards in the Phase 0 Pre-Launch Bonus Program are doubled for one maximum of $20,000 for critical bugs!
This program is designed to encourage You to find and report bugs in Eth2 Phase 0 main specs before mainnet launch 🐛.
The Ethereum Foundation will run this program from now until just before the Phase 0 mainnet launch. Once Phase 0 is in production, we will transition Phase 0 bounties to standard Ethereum Bounty Program.
Learn more for more details on the rules, how to report, severity levels, and rewards.
Happy 🐛 hunting!
Schlesi Multi-Client Testnet
On April 17, the first eth2 multi-client testnet — Schlesi — was born!
Schlesi is an eth2 multi-client effort led by Afri Schoedon, and this current iteration of the network is the first ever persistent multi-client testnet. Many thanks to Afri for their work in getting various clients to interoperate, filing detailed bug reports along the way, and successfully maintaining a network that has already lasted for several weeks!
The backbone of the network started with Prism And Lighthousebut since then, both Nimbus And Teku have managed to sync up and are in the process of getting their validators playing nice. Discover the graffiti in testnet blocks, many are tagged with client/build and while others have funny messages.
Schlesi could very well transform into THE multi-client testnet in a few iterations, but for now expect the net to be restarted every week or two As bugs are found, versions are changed and more clients come online.
Join us in the Channel Schlesi Eth R&D if you want to join the net and get more involved!
Preparation for v0.12
Much of my time recently has been spent preparing for eth2 specifications for a semi-major version, go to v0.12. Unless security-critical elements are found, this is expected to be the last specification change before mainnet. The version will include Draft 7 from the hash to the IETF curve for BLS, continued improvements to the network specification, and some non-substantial changes to the state transition to make testing easier.
The IETF BLS standard has been both a point of excitement and stress in the eth2 process. On the one hand, we look forward to adopting a carefully vetted industry standard and benefiting from more robust tools and cleaner interoperability. But on the other hand, the standardization process is an external dependency that we cannot fully manage. Each update introduces a radical change in the eth2 specifications, requires development work to make implementations conform to specifications, and brings uncertainty to our timelines.
IETF specifications maintainers are happy with version 7 and are not expecting any more changes in the queue. The Eth2 teams, along with a number of other blockchain projects, plan to adopt version 7 at this point and will only consider further changes if critical security issues are found.
As for networking, we had some very productive work call this morning to hash out some of the finer details of initial synchronization, peer discovery of particular features, type-based message size limits, and much more. Discover that of Ben Edgington excellent grades for a recap 🚀
