tl;dr
This week, the FE announced the Eth2 Staking Community Grants tour with the aim of supporting a more enjoyable staking experience.
This is an open call for grant proposals aimed at improving everything related to staking: tools, documentation, educational resources, etc.
Check it out for more details, including a not exhaustive wish list.
Proposals must be submitted before December 22!
v1.0 eth2 testnets – Toledo and Pyrmont
This week, client developers led by protolambda launched the Toledo Devnet — a 16k validation testnet with a v1.0 mainnet configuration. Although you can sync your preferred node with this testnet, you cannot make any validator deposits due to the use of a modified and permissioned deposit contract. Toledo is intended for initial testing of v1.0 and continued developer experimentation.
Next week we plan to launch Pyrmont — a validation testnet of 100,000 imitating main network conditions as closely as possible. Once Pyrmont is launched and stable, the testnet will be open to the community. Pyrmont can serve as a final location for testing mainnet software releases and hardware configurations as mainnet launch approaches.
Since Pyrmont uses the mainnet setup, it is subject to the same (slow) activation queue mechanisms that you might experience on the mainnet. Be a good citizen and only make one or two validator deposits. This will help maintain reasonable wait times over the coming weeks and provide a productive testbed for all users.
Pyrmont will be supported at least through eth2 mainnet genesis. From there, we’ll look at the options available for building a long-term testnet with better stability and UX properties. This would likely include faster queue processing and a much higher minimum eject balance.
But until then, enjoy Pyrmont!
Mainnet deposits
In case you didn’t realize last week, the eth2 mainnet deposit contract is live with the mainnet. Launch pad. The mainnet deposit contract can be found at: 0x00000000219ab540356cBB839Cbe05303d7705Fa. Please triple check this address before sending funds anywhere.
A little reminder — although the MIN_GENESIS_TIME is December 1st at 12:00 UTC, there is a 7 day delay GENESIS_DELAY. This means that to ensure your deposits are included in the Genesis block, you need to put them on-chain. before November 24 at 12 p.m. UTC.
For a more detailed discussion of how genesis begins, see Ben Edgington’s work. writing of genesis.
Happy staking 🚀