The internet has been quieter than usual, but we’ve been very busy hacking eth2! Between focusing on Devcon5 and our work, we seem to have left the community in the dark about a few items. Here’s a quick update to fill in the gaps:
deposit agreement
Even though the deposit contract has been completed written, Tested.and officially confirmed, we are working to ensure that BLS standardization is stabilized prior to launch. One of the goals of eth2 is to be able to easily interoperate with other blockchains and systems in general. To that end, we don’t want BLS signatures to go the keccak way (oops!).
BLS standards (BLS Signature, hash-curve) has recently reached a stable point with the participation of multiple blockchain teams (Eth2, Chia, Filecoin, Algorand, etc.). The draft is expected to be further solidified at the IETF meeting in November. That said, a formal standard could be quite a while away, so the parties involved plan to signal public support for the draft and enter into a ‘blockchain agreement’ to use the draft standard as drafted, regardless of the IETF’s final form. That way, if that becomes the core of the signature, we won’t be there alone. 🙂
Fortunately, this focus on standardization is not expected to have any impact on the Phase 0 launch date, as deposit contracts will not need to be put into production until closer to Phase 0 launch.
Eth2 testnet
If you follow ethresearch, the spec repository, or one of Devcon’s many workshops, you’ll find: Changed sharding proposal. Enables inter-shard communication between all shards in all slots in a way that greatly improves developer and user experience. To facilitate this improved design, the Phase 0 specification needs to be slightly modified. To do this while limiting disruption to Phase 0 development and testnet, we have chosen the simplification path. That means completely removing the cross-links at step 0 (they were stubbed anyway). This change has been codified and is undergoing final review. here It is expected to be released for development within this week.
We expect a multi-client public testnet to be launched soon after this simplified change is complete. This update will support Phase 0 progress to mainnet and ultimately make Phase 1 and Phase 2 launches easier.
Eth2 Testnet is now available! Private clients are in the process of being spun out on some networks for both private and public consumption. Many customers have just eth1-eth2 These single client testnets are useful for initial testing of these components. There is limited cross-client testing on these nets, but they are generally stable because most have a single client.
Once clients have had time to properly test larger single-client nets and integrate phase 0 changes, we’ll hit full speed on public multi-client nets. We’re as excited about this as you are and will be posting more information about getting involved (Stake your ETH) will be released soon on both testnet and mainnet. Casper is really coming.