tl;dr
- Finalized: rebranding of the blog
- Improve your knots!
Finalized, rebranding of the blog
If you’ve read my recent writings or listened to me talk about Ethereum and this big upgrade happening, you may have noticed that I’m not just shying away from discussing “phases” (instead , I’m referring to a series of independent updates), but I’ve also tried to set aside the terms “eth1” and “eth2”. I have speak that these terms were terrible and I talked about them again in the January issue “The State of Eth2”.
What we call “eth2” is a series of major improvements to Ethereum. consensus layer — to ensure the protocol is secure, durable and scalable — while “eth2 clients” are implementations of this proof-of-stake consensus.
And what we call “eth1” in this context is the rich application layerand similarly, the “eth1 clients” (after upgrading to proof-of-stake) are the software that does the heavy lifting in this layer. Ethereum’s application layer is currently driven by a proof-of-work consensus algorithm, but will soon be driven by Beacon Chain – the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism currently in production and secured by approximately 3.5 million of ETH.
Now, to continue my campaign, I am renaming this blog series. From now on, this series will be known as “Finalized: The Ethereum Consensus Layer”, where the name is a tribute to the most critical function of the Proof of Stake consensus layer: purpose.
Stakers: upgrade your nodes
To stay connected, you must be Berlin compatible
The Ethereum PoW chain is undergoing a mainnet upgrade, called Berlin, on April 14, 2021. This is a backwards compatible fork and therefore requires updating your software to continue tracking the main network. You can read more about this in the EFs Ethereum Berlin Upgrade Announcement.
As a beacon chain staker, you need an Ethereum PoW endpoint to successfully complete all of your different tasks as a validator. This functionality serves as a one-way link between system components to enable new validator deposits.
It follows that, to successfully maintain this link, stakers need to upgrade their Ethereum PoW nodes! If you are running the Pyrmont testnet, you need to upgrade your Goerli nodes before March 172021, and if you validate on mainnet, you need to upgrade your mainnet PoW nodes before April 142021.
Now is also a good time to upgrade your beacon node
In addition to upgrading your PoW nodes, I highly recommend upgrading your beacon nodes as well. There was a lot juicy optimizations recently for all mainnet clients. To ensure your validators are running at peak performance (and cost effectiveness), download the latest version and try it.
Improve your knots! 🚀
