Time to launch the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain

It is time for the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain to be launched.

We’ve spent the past nine months testing this thing for life. The year started with huge and long-lived single client testnets: Sapphire, Topaz and Onyx networks operated by Prysmatic Labs. In April, there were small multi-client networks: Schlesi, Witti and Altona, all named after subway stations, in keeping with the Ethereum testnet tradition.

And then the most important, the Medalla testnet. Named after Medalla Milagrosa on the Buenos Aires metro, it has been in operation for over two months, with four different customer implementations involved throughout that time. It continues to work today with over 50,000 validators actively participating, making it one of the largest decentralized consensus networks in existence.

Progress has not all been smooth. A few days into the Medalla testnet, one of the clients suffered a critical problem that broke the chain for a few days. But that’s what testnets are for. We kept the chain running and were able to bring it back to full health, with a series of lessons learned.

Among them, customer diversity is important. If we want the beacon chain to be resilient, no single client implementation can dominate. As Danny Ryan, a principal investigator at the Ethereum Foundation wrote, “The incident on Medalla has been greatly amplified by the failure of the dominant Prysm client, and as we move towards the mainnet, we, as a community, must consciously try to remedy this “.

Four high-quality, battle-tested and tested clients are currently available for the launch of the beacon chain: Teku, Lighthouse, Nimbus and Prysm. Each has their own taste and target user base. For example, Teku, ConsenSys Eth 2.0 client, was designed and built primarily with institutional and professional stakers in mind (although I’ll manage it at home), with extra security tools like a remote signature service and cut prevention service. .

Customer teams have also learned to agree on common standards for information migration between their implementations. This allows stakers to quickly switch between clients safely and will be a great help for incident recovery in the future.

See also: A day in the life of an Ethereum 2.0 validator

Perhaps the biggest lesson? It is difficult to faithfully replicate the proof of the stakes on non-incentivized networks. Participation in these testnets is completely free, which is not realistic at all. On testnet, stakers can neglect their nodes without real consequences; they can register thousands of validators and then just turn them off and they can place bets but never join the network.

On the true chain of beacons, with significant value at stake, we expect user behavior to be very different.

This is why the time has come to go live with the chain of beacons. We have tested everything else in every possible way: the deposit agreement has been formally verified; the deposit instruments have been verified; the specification has been verified; the lighthouse chain was formally modeled; the node discovery protocol has been verified; the network protocol has been verified; the crypto economy was simulated; we are running incentivized attack networks; we did fuzz tests; each customer has undergone at least one third party security check. Hundreds of pairs of eyes have gone through the entire process over the past year.

However, the real beacon chain will have real rewards and real penalties, and we simply can’t simulate them with testnets.

From a reward standpoint, with the minimum required number of 16,384 individual 32 ETH stakes (one stake is a validator), the gross yield for validation on the beacon chain is over 20% per year. Even in these days of heady – albeit temporary – DeFi (decentralized finance) returns, this is pretty compelling.

The penalties are not particularly onerous. As long as you are able to keep your validator online at least half of the time, you will not lose your stake except in extreme circumstances. And as long as you follow reasonable guidelines, there is enough protection available that there is no chance of your mail getting cut.

We have tested these things as far as possible in the lab – now is the time to run it free. The Ethereum 2.0 roadmap has been carefully phased so that you can try this new, ambitious proof-of-stake mechanism in isolation, in phase 0, before anything else depends on it.

Therefore, in the absolute worst case of a bankruptcy or catastrophic attack affecting a large percentage of stakers, there is always an opportunity to agree to undo the chain without chain consequences.

We are planning another launch test in mid-October, the Zinken testnet. Not many days later I expect the deposit agreement to be implemented, with a genesis of the target beacon chain within about six weeks.

See also: 3 things you should know before betting on Ethereum 2.0

The episode, from the start, will not be for everyone.

One reason is that it can be quite technically demanding. Stakeholders need to keep a server running as close as possible 24/7. They need to keep their systems secure and stay up to date on client software updates. For those who aren’t sure about hosting a staking node on their own, there are many third-party services available. Within ConsenSys, we are offering Codefi Staking, a turnkey white label solution for companies that want to focus on Ethereum 2.0.

Another thing to be aware of is that, once inside, you are committed to the long haul. From the outset, stakers will be able to stop validation and freeze the stake and rewards if they wish. However, that ether will remain stuck on the beacon chain until Phase 1.5 of the Eth 2.0 roadmap is delivered.

Phase 1.5 is where the current Ethereum chain is integrated into the Ethereum 2.0 system, along with all of its accounts and contracts. Only after this will the stakers be able to claim their rewards and recover their stakes. Until then, there is no way out of your funds. Work on phase 1.5 is progressing well, but it does not have a fixed delivery schedule. It could take another couple of years.

As for me, I’ve been involved with Ethereum 2.0 long enough, and have followed it closely enough, that I believe I know where all the bodies are buried. I am quite confident in the integrity and safety of what we have built, and of the teams that have built it, this one my family plans to focus on the chain of signals from day one.

If you want to join us in supporting this amazing evolution of the Ethereum network, check out the official announcements in the coming weeks. In the meantime, it is not too late to get a practical idea of ​​what lies ahead by joining the Medalla testnet.

See Also: 3 Ways Staking Will Disrupt Ethereum’s Economy