99186f775e
The `step` parameter has not seen much implementation in real life clients which instead opt to request variations on a few epochs at a time (instead of interleaving single blocks, entire epochs are interleaved). At the same time, supporting `step` on the server side brings several complications: more complex bounds checking logic, more complex loading of blocks from linear storage (which presumably stores all blocks and not just certain increments). This PR suggests that we deprecate the whole idea. Backwards compatibility is kept by simply responding with a single block when `step > 0` - this is allowed by the spec and should thus be handled gracefully by requesting clients already, should there exist any that use larger step counts. Removing `step` now allows simplifying the EL-CL protocol for serving execution data from the EL to avoid double storage.
Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Consensus Specifications
To learn more about proof-of-stake and sharding, see the PoS FAQ, sharding FAQ and the research compendium.
This repository hosts the current Ethereum proof-of-stake specifications. Discussions about design rationale and proposed changes can be brought up and discussed as issues. Solidified, agreed-upon changes to the spec can be made through pull requests.
Specs
Core specifications for Ethereum proof-of-stake clients can be found in specs. These are divided into features. Features are researched and developed in parallel, and then consolidated into sequential upgrades when ready.
The current features are:
Phase 0
- The Beacon Chain
- Beacon Chain Fork Choice
- Deposit Contract
- Honest Validator
- P2P Networking
- Weak Subjectivity
Altair
- Beacon chain changes
- Altair fork
- Light client sync protocol
- Honest Validator guide changes
- P2P Networking
Bellatrix (also known as The Merge)
The Bellatrix protocol upgrade is still actively in development. The exact specification has not been formally accepted as final and details are still subject to change.
- Background material:
- An ethresear.ch post describing the basic mechanism of the CL+EL merge
- ethereum.org high-level description of the CL+EL merge here
- Specifications:
Sharding
Sharding follows Bellatrix, and is divided into three parts:
- Sharding base functionality - In early engineering phase
- Custody Game - Ready, dependent on sharding
- Data Availability Sampling - In active R&D
- Technical details here.
- Core types and functions
- P2P Networking
- Fork Choice
- Sampling process
Accompanying documents can be found in specs and include:
Additional specifications for client implementers
Additional specifications and standards outside of requisite client functionality can be found in the following repos:
Design goals
The following are the broad design goals for the Ethereum proof-of-stake consensus specifications:
- to minimize complexity, even at the cost of some losses in efficiency
- to remain live through major network partitions and when very large portions of nodes go offline
- to select all components such that they are either quantum secure or can be easily swapped out for quantum secure counterparts when available
- to utilize crypto and design techniques that allow for a large participation of validators in total and per unit time
- to allow for a typical consumer laptop with
O(C)resources to process/validateO(1)shards (including any system level validation such as the beacon chain)
Useful external resources
For spec contributors
Documentation on the different components used during spec writing can be found here:
Consensus spec tests
Conformance tests built from the executable python spec are available in the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Consensus Spec Tests repo. Compressed tarballs are available in releases.