Author: Michael Johnson

Community organizers are the glue that holds the Ethereum ecosystem together, and whether they’re leading large-scale events, local meetups, hackathons or seminars, we might all be wandering in the dark forest of the analog world without them. But where’s the fun in relying on chance encounters with kindred spirits identified by a telltale laptop sticker, or that indefinable air of cryptocool? Although major events tend to generate more buzz, not everyone can travel halfway across the world for a conference. Smaller events play a crucial role in making Ethereum inclusive, accessible and cohesive: anyone with an internet connection and a…

Important Update On July 21, 2021, a consensus issue was identified on the Ropsten network, where the go-ethereum, Erigon and Nethermind implementations had different transaction validation logic than Besu and OpenEthereum. New versions of the affected clients have been released and are linked in the “Client Versions” table below. The block number for London is unchanged, and still is 12 965 000. Node operators using an affected client MUST upgrade to the latest version. An overview of the issue is provided in the “Ropsten Consensus Issue” section. London After a successful testnet deployement, the London upgrade is now ready to…

tl;dr Upgrade for London, yes you! The hotly anticipated upgrade to Ethereum mainnet — London — has a fork block scheduled, and mainnet client releases are out. As mentioned before, to allow for validator deposits, the beacon chain validators come to consensus on the state of the proof-of-work chain and process deposits sequentially from there. To maintain this link, all mainnet validators must upgrade their proof-of-work nodes (often called the “eth1 endpoint”). Please see the London announcement for more details. 🚨🚨🚨 Warning 🚨🚨🚨 Due to an issue uncovered last week on the Ropsten testnet (see restrospective), Go-Ethereum (geth), Nethermind, and…

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! InterRep For a user switching to a new social media platform, one of the biggest points of friction is rebuilding their reputation. InterRep aims to reduce this friction by allowing a user to link a social media account with an Ethereum address, which can be used to confirm their…

Welcome to London! This is an exciting time for the Ethereum ecosystem, and the pace will only pick up further as we approach Altair [1] [2] and the Merge in the months ahead. The Beacon Chain now has 6.5+ million Ether staked, and 200K+ active validators online across five clients, and the network is now burning Ether as part of the changes made with the London update. As always, there’s much more progress being made by EF-supported projects and teams that help to improve our Ethereum experience. This roundup series is an opportunity to highlight their efforts to grow and…

Ethereum’s diverse client ecosystem is at the foundation of all that we’re building together. This includes both execution-layer and consensus-layer clients, both of which are essential parts of Ethereum’s post-merge future. Supporting execution-layer (formerly “Eth1”) clients remains one of the Ethereum Foundation’s highest priorities. These client teams have supported Ethereum’s growth over the past several years, and they will continue to provide critical infrastructure for the network post-merge, as Ethereum transitions to a Proof of Stake consensus system. Since January 2020, the EF has spent more than $10M on execution-layer client R&D. Our steadfast support will continue as these teams…

The Road to Altair edition 🛣⭐️ tl;dr Pyrmont forks, testing in progress After a series of small but very valuable Altair devnets, Pyrmont — a large public testnet — upgraded last week. The transition to Altair went off without a hitch, setting the stage for the next wave of testing and upgrades. This week, Pyrmont is being put through the ringer as we run a number of test scenarios on the soon-to-be-deprecated testnet. Don’t panic! At the time of writing, Pyrmont is already 482 epochs without finality with a large share of validators taken offline for a few days. Such…

Does development of the core protocols that power the Ethereum blockchain excite you? Are you interested in getting involved at the most fundemental and technical levels of the Ethereum protocol? I am excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for the second cohort of the Core Developer Apprenticeship Program (CDAP)! What is CDAP My name is Piper Merriam and I’m a core developer. That means that development and maintenance of the Ethereum protocol is part of my job. Lately, protocol development has been accelerating. The “merge” is getting closer every day, the road to achieving “Stateless Ethereum” continues…

Earlier this year, we launched a bug bounty program focused on finding issues in the beacon chain specification, and/or in client implementations (Lighthouse, Nimbus, Teku, Prysm etc…). The results (and vulnerability reports) have been enlightening as have the lessons learned while patching potential issues. In this new series, we aim to explore and share some of the insight we’ve gained from security work to date and as we move forward. This first post will analyze some of the submissions specifically targeting BLS primitives. Disclaimer: All bugs mentioned in this post have been already fixed. BLS is everywhere A few years…

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! Imapp for EVM Gas Cost Estimator Gas costs in Ethereum are a constant topic of debate and improvement. The average user only sees what they pay to send a transaction – whether the gas limit is very high, very low or just volatile. But where do those suggested gas…