Oh you, Spadina, Finally, finality Hello and farewell
tl;dr
- A quick autopsy of Spadina
- New test network: Zinken. Launch bar is live; Genesis deposits due in one week!
Spadina’s autopsy
The dress rehearsal for the Spadina testnet was launched last Tuesday. Although Spadina is now healthy and nearing completion, the launch did not go as smoothly as it could have. Validator participation started very weak and it took around 70 epochs (nearly 8 hours) to reach the 2/3 participation threshold needed to finalize the chain. But since then, the channel has remained remarkably stable.
At first, we thought this lack of early finality was because since validators only stake the ETH testnet, there are no real incentives to not activate your node in time for genesis. But it soon became clear that, while this was part of the problem, there were some errors near the edge of the stack regarding client version and configuration.
A note on the diversity of clients: Spadina was strongly oriented towards the client Prysm which had a critical peering problem at genesis. At this point there is a lot robust eth2 clients. If we achieve better mainnet distribution, single client issues, like we saw on Spadina, will have a much smaller overall impact on network health.
If the problem was simply low initial participation, there would be no need for another dress rehearsal, but since many users experienced critical issues getting their nodes to work, we’re opting for another attempt before the contract launches deposit. and a genesis date of the main network is set. Enter Zinken.
Zinken announcement
Zinken is another eth2 testnet launch aimed at giving client teams a chance to resolve issues with their release process, and validators a chance to experience a smoother genesis before mainnet.
In the optimal case, Zinken is stable and finalizes from the start. However, the most important signal we are looking for is that users have few problems setting up their nodes and joining the network. A lot of this relies on customer teams releasing solid builds, but we also ask users to take this genesis seriously.
This means making deposits only for validators you intend to run and, if possible, keeping an eye out for discord between ethstaker and the client team during the 24 hours before genesis; There’s always a small chance that you’ll need to make a last-minute configuration change or node upgrade.
Important details:
- THE Zinken Launch Zone is live Today.
- Genesis deposits are due by Thursday October 8 at 12 UTC.
- The time of Genesis should be approximately Monday October 12 at 12 UTC.
Note that Genesis deposits are due 4 days before launch. If you deposit after this, your validator will not be activated immediately. Instead, you will be added to a queue and slowly inducted into the pool of validators once the chain begins to finalize.
As with Spadina, Zinken’s main goal is to practice the genesis process. This means that while the testnet may run longer, customer teams and ecosystem tools will only provide support for a few days.
If this is your First of all eth2 testnet, be sure to check out the EthStaker Discord for advice and discussions. From there, you should be able to choose a client and access the client-specific Discords.
Good testnet 🚀
