What’s Ahead for the OpenEthereum Client
We’re happy to share the first update from OpenEthereum, a project overseen by Gnosis to continue development of the former Parity Ethereum client.
Clients are core infrastructure that allow users to run a node for the Ethereum blockchain. Through running a node, users can participate in mining, create services like exchanges, and install network upgrades. There are several clients for Ethereum, and while providing similar services, they differ in implementation, features, and compatibility. Since 2015, Parity developed and maintained Parity Ethereum, a client implemented in Rust programming language. In December of last year, Parity announced they would be stepping down from maintenance work on the Parity Ethereum client and handing over its further development to the community. While there have been several public workshops, open discussions amongst stakeholders, and smaller updates since, we’re glad to formally share that Gnosis is overseeing this initiative to continue the client as OpenEthereum.
At Gnosis, we’re happy to support this initiative because we believe it’s mission critical to have client diversity on Ethereum, and standards are only as good as the implementations that uphold them. Internal bugs would gravely affect network security, and if not checked by alternative client implementations, those bugs would become the de facto behavior on Ethereum. By keeping OpenEthereum competitive, we allow the community to validate popular clients like Geth and vice versa.
Given our track record of developing decentralized applications on Ethereum since the beginning of 2015, we’re looking forward to this opportunity to put our expertise to work and continue development of OpenEthereum with an informed focus on developers’ needs and requirements. We are thankful for the support to continue this project from Parity, especially from developers David Palm, Andronik Ordian, Niklas Adolfsson, Wei Tang, and Tomasz Drwięga.
To manage this project, we’ve received an initial grant from the Ethereum Foundation for $150,000. This has allowed us to begin building out an OpenEthereum team, and we’re still hiring for the additional positions of Rust Developer and Project Manager.
Our work so far has culminated in the release of OpenEthereum v3.0, which includes some important updates:
- Support for eth/64 protocol and Node Discovery v4 Ethereum Node Records extension
- Removal of accounts bloom data, which will decrease the database size
- Significant codebase cleanup and updates for dependencies
- Deprecation of the light client, inbuilt auto updater, and private transactions feature (See here for justification and discussion: #11681, #11695, #11696)
- Codebase licensing updated to GPLv3, no longer any CLA
Of course, we look forward to continuing OpenEthereum development in conversation with the community. If you’d like to closely follow its development, please join the public Discord chat. Watch out for regular updates on our blog, the newly created OpenEthereum Twitter account, and the new website coming soon at OpenEthereum.org.
From the world computer to decentralized finance, we’re looking forward to ushering in the next phase of Ethereum network growth in a spirit of permissionless innovation and transparent collaboration.
