Ethereum Cat Herders Update #50
Updates on Amphora (Merge interop) — Pithos, Altair (Oct 27th), ArrowGlacier (Dec 08), Sepolia PoW testnet, EIPs insight, PEEPanEIP-3607, community events, and more.
Welcome to the 50th edition of the Ethereum Cat Herders community update to share what’s going on in the Ethereum clients’ developers meeting and bring you up to speed since the last update. A huge round of applause for Ethereum Cat Herders’ community contributors to help reach us here!
TL;DR
- The Merge — Pithos, the M5 Amphora devnet is launched on October 14th.
- ArrowGalcier — is planned to be activated on block# 13773000 (~Dec 8th, 2021)
- Sepolia the new PoW testnet to possibly replace Ropsten.
- Altair — Expected on epoch 74240 (Oct 27, 2021, 10:56:23am UTC)
- EIPs Insight — 2 new EIPs, 115 EIPs moved to Stagnant status.
The Merge
Amphora
- The Ethereum Foundation planned the Merge interop workshop with 40 representatives of Execution Layer (Eth1) and Consensus Layer (Eth2 teams) from October 2nd to 9th, in Greece. The goal was to tackle engineering-related problems on Ethereum Merge implementations, track clients’ progress on the devnet called Amphora. The developers’ team considers this to be successful testing for the Merge, where Ethereum will move from PoW to PoS algorithm.
- Paul Hauner of Sigma Prime has made a nice write-up of the challenges. Adrian Sutton posted a demo of the Merge local testnet. And we can expect some more write-ups coming soon.
- Pithos, the M5 Amphora devnet is launched on October 14th with 3 consensus clients + geth. Besu + Nethermind will be added soon Synchronized… Pithos with EthereumJS<>Lodestar
- @peter_szilagyi is working on the post-merge sync and expects a spec refresh
- Follow the discussion in the #merge “Interop” channel of Eth R& D Discord.
Other resources:
- Amphora Client Milestone Tracker
- Amphora Merge Technical plans
- The Merge Mainnet Readiness Checklist
- Fuzzer for the Engine API
- EF released a blog “Amphora: A Major Merge Milestone”
Execution Layer (Eth1)
Sepolia
It is a new testnet to replace Ropsten. Martin Swende from Geth team added upport for Sepolia testnet. Ref: Pull Request. However, Ropsten isn’t being actively maintained by the Ethereum developers so it will stay online as long as people continue to mine on it.
Arrow Glacier
- EIP-4345: Difficulty Bomb Delay to June 2022 is proposed to push the difficulty bomb.
- Arrow Glacier is planned to be activated on block# 13773000 (~Dec 8th). Client releases can be expected a month before the date of deployment.
- ACD meeting 124 — Agenda, video, Tim’s tweet, Meeting notes.
Resources:
- A writeup on The Minority Client by Péter Szilágyi
Execution Clients’ (latest specs release)
- Geth — Sytau (v1.10.10)
- OpenEthereum v3.3.0-rc.10
- Besu — 21.7.4
- Erigon — 2021.10.03-alpha
- Nethermind — v1.11.4
- Ethereum JS — ethereumjs-util v7.1.3
PS: If you’re running an OpenEthereum client node, consider switching to a different Ethereum execution client. OpenEthereum is no longer maintained. However, if you have questions or need help you may post your concern on Ethereum Cat Herders Discord #discontinued-products-clients.
Consensus Layer (Eth2.0)
Altair upgrade
- Mainnet upgrade has been scheduled for epoch 74240 (Oct 27, 2021, 10:56:23am UTC). Follow the latest specs of your respective clients for upgrade-ready releases.
- Follow these enlightening episodes on the Beacon chain proposals on the educational video series PEEPanEIP to learn about the features expected with Altair.
- Consensus-specs — Protect Poutu-te-rangi
Clients’ update
Mainnet Altair ready client
Ethereum Improvement Proposals Updates
EIPs Insight (October 2021)
So far in the month of October, 115 EIPs are moved to Stagnant. 2 new proposals have been introduced as Draft. 1 ERC category proposal, EIP-1581: Non-wallet usage of keys derived from BIP-32 trees is moved to Review. The review period ends on 2018–11–13. There are some non-normative changes & other improvements made to the existing EIPs. One of the noticeable updates is the list of EIP editors in EIP-1.
PEEPanEIP
EIP-3607: Reject transactions from senders with deployed code (Marius W & Andrew A.)
Upcoming
- Upgrading beacon chain (Altair, Merge) with Paul Hauner on Oct 25th.
- A technical deep dive into the Portal Network with Piper Merriam on Nov 10th.
For upcoming meetings follow the PEEPanEIP schedule.
Events & hackathons
- Ethereum 2.0 EIPs and Processes Community Hall — Oct 21, at 8:00 AM EDT
- ETHLISBON — 22nd — 24th October
- hackCBS 4.0–29th — 31st October 2021
Ethereum Cat Herders
ECH Website
Last week we published Ethereum Cat Herders website v1.4.0 with adding information on upcoming network upgrades. Now, follow the latest Beacon chain client specs, resources for the Altair & Arrow Glacier upgrade with Ethereum Cat Herders website’s network upgrade page.
Support the Ethereum Cat Herders
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