Ethereum core developers deployed patches to Prysm Labs and Teku clients in response to two Beacon Chain finality issues in a 24-hour period. Beacon Chain serves as the consensus layer for the Ethereum network.
On May 11, Ethereum developers reported that the Beacon Chain was experiencing problems confirming transactions. Although new blocks could be proposed, an unknown issue prevented their completion. The blackout lasted around 25 minutes. A similar issue occurred on May 12, preventing the block from completing for over an hour.
Finality could not be reached for 3 and 8 epochs, the Ethereum Foundation said in a statement. shared by an Ethereum consultant on Twitter. The problem “seems to have been caused by a high load on some of the Consensus Layers clients, which itself was caused by an exceptional scenario.”
The beacon chain stopped terminating about thirty minutes ago. I don’t know why yet, but in general the chain is designed to be resilient to this, transactions will continue as usual, and completion will trigger when the issue is resolved. pic.twitter.com/utAS0uAWpG
—superphiz.eth️ (@superphiz) May 11, 2023
Although the network could not be finalized, real and end users were able to transact on the network thanks to the diversity of clients “as not all client implementations were affected by this exceptional scenario.”
Diversity of clients relates to the number of software clients available to network validators. Greater diversity among customers means a more robust and secure network.
Both Teky and Prysm have released updates that implement optimizations to prevent beacon nodes from consuming excessive resources.
A similar issue occurred on March 15, resulting in a delay in the Goerli testnet version of the Ethereum “Shapella” update, which was successfully deployed on April 12. Ethereum’s pre-existing proof-of-work chain was merged into the Beacon Chain on September 15, 2022, allowing the network to transition to the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which is faster and consumes less power.
Recent Memecoin trading hype has increased Ethereum activity and staking reward rates. According According to on-chain data, validators earned $46 million in the first week of May, or 24,997 Ether, a 40% increase from the previous week’s revenue of $33 million, when 18,339 ETH were distributed as rewards.
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