tl; dr
Altair pre-release is now available
Over the past week, Beacon Chain’s Altair pre-release specs… Astronomer v1.1.0-alpha.1 Y Half of them just look like dots v1.1.0-alpha.2 — were released. These represent the first full feature releases of the upcoming Altair update to the beacon chain, and give engineering teams something concrete to dig into.
Altair is a beacon chain update that provides light client support, minor patches to incentives, per-validator idle leak accounting, an increase in throttling severity, and cleanups for validator reward accounting for a state admin simplified.
In addition to these various features, Altair also represents a “warm-up upgrade” for beacon chain and beacon chain clients. Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system has worked smoothly since its inception, but before performing the high-risk merger, customer teams want to go through the process of a live update to further test and prepare their code bases and the live system.
Customer teams are currently integrating the preview changes and providing feedback along the way. After this process, we will do a full release and start the testing phase.
Open Call: RfP Security
Last week, the EF published a beacon chain security+testing RfP. This is an open call for proposals that aims to improve beacon chain security, analysis, and testing. Beyond customer engineering, much remains to be done to continue to examine, refine, and strengthen the beacon chain system ahead of the merger, and we want to bring in more teams with a wide variety of experience to dig deeper.
Take a look at the RfP possible focus areas for some ideas, but if you’re having trouble narrowing down these various domains into a more refined proposal, feel free to email [email protected] for some guidance. Provide some background on yourself or your team’s skill set and experience, along with some basic direction, and we can work together to refine a proposal.
If you know of a team or individual who might be a good fit for this RfP, please submit!
merge progress
Fusion progress is heating up 🔥
What is the fusion you ask? It is the unification of the Ethereum application layer (currently supporting proof of work) with the Ethereum proof-of-stake consensus layer, the beacon chain. Although the beacon chain is already live, it currently only comes to a consensus on itself, but after the merger, the beacon chain will be the powerhouse for all the dapps, smart contracts, and accounts you use today.
In recent weeks, the combination designs have continued to be refined. Check out Mikhail’s recents Spec PR for the latest synthesis of merger plans and structure. We expect these basic designs to be integrated into the specifications shortly and engineering teams to begin work on the next wave of demos and testnets.
In addition to our asynchronous research, design, and engineering, we have started a bi-weekly call to increase collaboration among the many teams. You can track progress and actively participate in the Eth R&D Discord #merge channel 🚀
