Ethereum Cat Herders Update #27
ETC 51% attack, YOLO & Berlin, Medalla testnet launch, critical client information survey, community events, and other updates
Welcome back to the recap of Ethereum development with another edition of the Ethereum Cat Herders update. Hopefully, it will bring you to the speed since the previous ECH update.
Ethereum All Core Developers meeting
Ethereum Classic 51% attack
Blockchain community recently witnessed two (successful) attacks on the ETC chain. To understand the possible cause, ways to prevent, and how this could apply on Ethereum, this was the first item in the Ethereum All Core Dev meeting, last Friday. Wei Tang mentioned that the most noteworthy technical aspect of these attacks is the maximum reorg cap that’s part of clients. He said that the first attack was detected because there was a split between Open Ethereum and Geth Classic clients, which was originally thought to be a bug in Open Ethereum, but instead, it was different max reorg cap of Open Ethereum & Geth Classic. For the second attack, there were no Open Ethereum miners, so everyone re-organized to the heavier chain. The ETC teams are implementing an “immutability threshold” in Geth-classic, which is a max-reorg cap that is much lower than the default value in Geth.
- In-depth analysis of the ETC attack — Make ETC Mutable Again?
- ETC Chain Split Diagnosis report by Yaz Khoury, Sam Johnson, Austin Roberts
YOLO & Berlin update
Coming back to YOLO testnet after the break form further development, there is a general agreement to restart the YOLO ephemeral testnet. However, EIPs for V2 are still to be confirmed, given it will be started as YOLO V2 which would depend on the progress of EIP-2046 (& EIP-2666). Read more about YOLO ephemeral testnet here.
EIP-2046
Alex Vlasov provided an update about EIP-2046, and EIP-2666. He mentioned that clients seem to have integrated and run the benchmarks but the results are yet to be published. On that, Geth, Besu, and other client teams agreed to confirm and share the benchmarks before the next ACD meeting.
Newly proposed Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs)
EIP-2780: Reduce intrinsic transaction gas
This is a proposal to Reduce the intrinsic cost of a transaction from 21,000 to 7,000 gas. While explaining the proposal, Uri Klarman mentioned some issues identified:
- Implications on the state size
- Incentives for Gas Token
- Impact on the uncle rate
Martin and Peter from the Geth team highlighted the specific numbers in the EIP, where proposers agreed to double-check the numbers and calculations on the EIP and come back to discuss in the future Core Dev meeting. Watching the ACD meeting video is highly recommended.
- ACD meeting#93: agenda, video, live-tweet by Tim Beiko, detailed ECH’s notes.
- Next meeting is scheduled on Friday, August 21, 2020, at 14:00 UTC
Critical Client Installation Information
The Ethereum Cat Herders are collecting ‘Critical Client Installation Information’ based on the recent discussion in the Ethereum All Core Developer’s meeting about the network health. If you’re running multiple Ethereum nodes, respond to the survey today!
The survey is closing on Aug 15, 2020, at 11:59 EST.
Ethereum 2.0
- eth2 quick update #14 by Danny Ryan
- Eth 2.0 Implementers meeting#45: Agenda, Video, Ben’s quick notes, and ECH’s detailed notes.
- What’s New in Eth2 #48 by Ben Edgington
- Client team update from Prysmatic Labs.
- A nice guide from CoinCashew on staking with Teku on Ubuntu.
- Join the Eth R&D discord #attacknet channel for discussions and tips to get started.
Medalla testnet launch
The Ethereum Foundation and /r/ethstaker organized an Eth 2.0 Medalla Testnet Launch live stream for the genesis event that took place at 1300 UTC on Tuesday, August 04. Over 1700 watching live on YouTube at one point. If everything goes well, Medalla will be the last big testnet before the Beacon chain launch. It has the same spec as the planned Mainnet.
- Eth 2.0 Medella testnet launch scoop by Hudson Jameson
- Medalla has special POAP NFTs for running each client type at launch. Read up on the details here.
- Eth2 LaunchPad for Medalla testnet — https://medalla.launchpad.ethereum.org/
Ethereum Community Updates
Ethereum turns 5 🎂
Eth 2 security team
Events and hackathon
- EDCON AUGUST 9–11, 2020 / ONLINE.
- The Randomness Summit (Virtual): August 13, 15:00–21:00 UTC
A one-day virtual conference for distributed systems and critical infrastructure enthusiasts about the state of the art in randomness beacon research and deployment.
— Social Governance by Mattison Asher
— EIP Improvement Proposals by Alita Moore, Edson Allyon, Pooja Ranjan.
— EIP1559 (Recording will be available soon) by Barnabe Monnot, Dan Finlay, and Tim Beiko.
Other updates
EIP-1559 Implementers meeting
EIPIP meeting
- EIPIP meeting 13: agenda, video, notes.
- THE next EIPIP meeting is proposed on Wednesday, August 12, 2020, at 1500 UTC. Agenda.
Ethereum Cat Herders
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