Author: Sophia Brown
With the arrival of the beacon chain in 2020, Ethereum today supports two types of clients: those focusing on the execution-layer (often referred to as eth1) and those powering the proof-of-stake consensus layer (aka eth2). As those running validators are well aware (since they run both client types), each serves a specific purpose, and powers a different part of one Ethereum. Recognizing the importance that both client sets represent to the long term health and network diversity of Ethereum, our work to support the full landscape of clients is fundamental to our work in the ecosystem. Layer-specific client support updates…
tl;dr Altair pre-release is out Over the past week, beacon chain Altair pre-release specs — Stargazer v1.1.0-alpha.1 and Half of ’em just look like dots v1.1.0-alpha.2 — were released. These represent the first feature complete releases of the upcoming Altair upgrade to the beacon chain, and give engineering teams something concrete to dig into. Altair is an upgrade to the beacon chain that brings light client support, minor patches to incentives, per-validator inactivity leak accounting, an increase in slashing severity, and cleanups to validator rewards accounting for simplified state management. In addition to these various features, Altair also represents a…
It’s always fun to hear about new grants as they’re awarded, but what happens after the announcement? In this series, we’ll check in on projects that are well underway – or already at the finish line. Read on to learn about some recent milestones and achievements by grantees! Baseline The Baseline project is defining a protocol that allows businesses to synchronize their systems of record and reduce costly errors in B2B transactions. It uses the Ethereum Mainnet as a common frame of reference, while keeping confidential business logic and data private using zero-knowledge proofs. The project is housed under the…
tl;dr Rayonism☀️, hacking the Merge together This week, protolambda and others released plans for Rayonism, an ambitious month-long hack to create Merge devnets based on current specs with a stretch goal of adding sharding to these devnets along with L2 rollup integrations. The primary motivation is to unite development around a unified Merge spec to onboard all client teams firmly into the Merge design and process so that an informed decision on the Merge roadmap can be agreed upon in the coming months. That, and have a little bit of fun 🙂 In addition to Rayonism, Merge specs and design…
Friends, The year ahead will be filled with upgrades and big ideas from across the Ethereum ecosystem. Since our last Supported Teams post (which followed the launch of the beacon chain), the network has seen 3.8+ million Ether staked, and 120K+ active validators online across multiple clients. In recent days, the launch of the Berlin network upgrade was completed, and since there’s always progress being made by other EF-supported projects, these updates are an opportunity to highlight more efforts to grow and improve Ethereum as a whole. Included in this edition are updates from many teams highlighted in the previous…
It’s always fun to hear about new grants as they’re awarded, but what happens after the announcement? In this series, we’ll check in on a couple of projects that are well underway – or already at the finish line. Read on to learn about some recent milestones and achievements by grantees! Devfolio for Ethereum India Fellowship 2.0 Devfolio’s Ethereum India Fellowship 2.0 had two tracks, each targeting different groups for a rigorous 8 weeks of training and mentorship with the goal of onboarding talented developers into the Ethereum ecosystem. Track 1 brought 20 talented Web2 developers with little or no…
The progress being made in the Ethereum ecosystem lately is really inspiring. Whether you’re excited by the adoption of proof of stake (and a faster, more secure, greener Ethereum), the coming Merge and other big upgrades, or by some of the many applications and solutions that have the power to change diverse industries, it is a great time to be a part of the Ethereum community. Our evolving role While we are all excited about the growth of Ethereum and the future that our collective work can help to create, I am also often asked about the role of the…
Have you have ever been interested in getting involved in the development of the core Ethereum protocols? If so, there is a new program to discuss that’s targeted at you. As part of an EF procotol-support initiative, I’m very excited to announce the “Core Developer Apprenticeship Program”. What to expect Hi 👋, I’m Piper Merriam. I’ve been part of the Ethereum ecosystem for while. It’s been a wild ride. I’m reasonably sure that this is the best job I’ll ever have. This program is my way of trying to help more people find their way into doing impactful and interesting…
With this blog post, the intention is to officially disclose a severe threat against the Ethereum platform, which was a clear and present danger up until the Berlin hardfork. State Let’s begin with some background on Ethereum and State. The Ethereum state consists of a patricia-merkle trie, a prefix-tree. This post won’t go into it in too much detail, suffice to say that as the state grows, the branches in this tree become more dense. Each added account is another leaf. Between the root of the tree, and the leaf itself, there are a number of “intermediate” nodes. In order…
TL;DR: Ethereum will use at least ~99.95% less energy post merge. Ethereum will be completing the transition to Proof-of-Stake in the upcoming months, which brings a myriad of improvements that have been theorized for years. But now that the Beacon chain has been running for a few months, we can actually dig into the numbers. One area that we’re excited to explore involves new energy-use estimates, as we end the process of expending a country’s worth of energy on consensus. There aren’t any concrete statistics on energy consumption (or even what hardware is used) as of yet, so what follows…