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nimbus-eth2/CHANGELOG.md

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2023-09-12 v23.9.0

Nimbus v23.9.0 is a low-urgency upgrade providing full support for the upcoming Holešky testnet and simplifying the required configuration for using remote signers.

We've been hard at work researching and developing a GossipSub protocol upgrade, designed to vastly improve bandwidth and latency, especially when dealing with the upcoming larger EIP-4844 blob messages. This release introduces the initial steps towards this upgrade, along with CPU optimizations and enhanced DDoS protection.

Improvements

Fixes

2023-08-23 v23.8.0

Nimbus v23.8.0 is a low-urgency upgrade focusing on performance and stability improvements, aiming to address the increasing number of validators on mainnet and upcoming testnets such as Holesky.

Please note that this version enables the new attestation subnet subscription logic, proposed in the Ethereum 1.4 consensus spec. This will significantly reduce the CPU usage and the consumed network bandwidth on beacon nodes with many validators, but it will slightly increase them on nodes with a single validator. The --subscribe-all-subnets option can still be used on powerful hardware configurations to produce potentially more profitable blocks by processing all attestations directly instead of relying on aggregators.

The upgraded BLST library now identifies your CPU model and selects the most efficient instruction set at run-time which significantly speeds up docker and binary builds. We have tested this on a wide range of hardware, but should the CPU incorrectly advertise extensions it does not have, a downgrade might be necessary while we investigate.

Improvements

Fixes

Removed functionality

2023-07-19 v23.7.0

Nimbus v23.7.0 is a low-urgency upgrade, bringing advanced profit optimisation capabilities to the Nimbus validator client and addressing risk factors that can contribute to poorer validator performance.

Improvements

Fixes

2023-06-26 v23.6.1

Nimbus v23.6.1 is a low-urgency point release significantly improving the performance of database pruning on Nimbus instances that have accumulated history prior to April 2021 (Nimbus 1.1.0). Affected users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible in order to reduce the risk of missed attestations and blocks.

Fixes

2023-06-20 v23.6.0

Nimbus v23.6.0 is a medium-urgency upgrade, further improving the efficiency and the standards-compliance of Nimbus while laying out the foundations for the upcoming Deneb hard-fork.

Improvements

Fixes

Removed functionality

2023-05-18 v23.5.1

Nimbus v23.5.1 is a medium-urgency point release improving the compatibility of Nimbus with 3rd party validator clients and beacon nodes and introducing the support for incremental pruning. If you are still not using the --history:prune option, we recommend testing it in a non-production environment, as it will be enabled by default in our next release.

Breaking changes

  • The Nimbus validator client no longer accepts under-specified beacon node URLs that doesn't include a port number or a protocol scheme. When a protocol scheme is specified, Nimbus now uses the default port for the selected protocol (80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS):

    https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/4921

Improvements

Fixes

2023-05-09 v23.5.0

Nimbus v23.5.0 is a medium-urgency upgrade that addresses a critical issue which was introduced in the previous version (v23.4.0). The issue was causing missed block proposals for users who were utilizing an external builder.

Improvements

Fixes

2023-04-25 v23.4.0

Nimbus v23.4.0 is a medium-urgency upgrade addressing a number of low probability risks for missed block proposals, bringing performance improvements in setups relying on the Nimbus validator client, and introducing some exciting new capabilities of the Nimbus light client and Builder API implementations.

Improvements

Fixes

2023-03-22 v23.3.2

Nimbus v23.3.2 is a low-urgency, but mandatory upgrade providing full-support for the upcoming Capella hard-fork on Mainnet. Please upgrade at your earliest convenience - before the 12th of April.

Improvements

Fixes

2023-03-14 v23.3.1

Nimbus v23.3.1 is a medium-urgency point release addressing a number of accidental configuration handling breaking changes that were shipped in the v23.3.0 release. It also improves the stability of Nimbus when paired with a Besu execution client and improves the fault-tolerance when driving multiple execution clients.

Fixes

  • Nimbus was performing eth_getLogs request with parameters that were exceeding the default --rpc-max-logs-range=1000 limit on Besu. This was a non-fatal issue that resulted in slower deposit syncing speed and the frequent warning message "Connection to EL node degraded". The limit will be increased in the next mainnet release of Besu, but Nimbus v23.3.1 honours the existing limit at the cost of a slightly slower syncing speed with all other execution clients:

    6fb48aca7d

  • v23.3.0 did not support Engine API URLs which don't specify a protocol in the URL (e.g. http, https, ws or wss). v23.3.1 is backwards-compatible with all previous Nimbus releases:

    3a35809a02

  • v23.3.0 produced a parsing error on TOML configuration files that specify the web3-url parameter as an array of strings. v23.3.1 is backwards-compatible with all previous Nimbus releases and introduces a new more convenient way for specifying the Engine API configuration in TOML:

    https://nimbus.guide/eth1.html#running-multiple-execution-clients 46f48269ef

  • v23.3.0 removed the hidden configuration option --web3-force-polling which remained in use by some users. v23.3.1 restores the option as a deprecated one. Please note that all hidden configuration options are intended for use only by the Nimbus development team for testing purposes:

    ee610cbf34

  • The release addresses a potential crash triggered by Engine API connections experiencing frequent error responses:

    d899a6a834

  • The release addresses a potential issue where a single non-synced execution client may cause the Nimbus sync state to revert to synced/opt, even when all validator duties can be performed through the remaining execution clients that are still synced:

    d899a6a834

2023-03-11 v23.3.0

Nimbus v23.3.0 is a low-urgency upgrade bringing full support for the upcoming Capella hard-fork on the Goerli testnet. Keep an eye out for future mainnet releases!

Improvements

Fixes

2023-02-16 v23.2.0

Nimbus v23.2.0 is a low-urgency upgrade providing full support for the upcoming Capella hard-fork on the Sepolia testnet. Keep an eye out for future mainnet releases!

Improvements

Fixes

2023-01-25 v23.1.1

Nimbus v23.1.1 is a high-urgency hotfix for users who have already enabled block history pruning after upgrading to v22.3.0. It fixes an issue where the client may fail to start after the database has been pruned.

Fixes:

  • A crash on start-up after running the client with --history:prune option - "backfill block must have a summary". https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/4554

  • The validator-monitor-details option was accidentally enabled by default in 23.1.0, which lead to significant increase in resource usage.

2023-01-18 v23.1.0

Nimbus v23.1.0 is a low-urgency upgrade, introducing support for on-the-fly database pruning making the storage requirements of Nimbus much more predictable on long-term time scales. When pruning is enabled, a typical beacon node expected to consume around 60 to 70 GB of storage. To take advantage of the new functionality without facing any downtime, users are advised to sync a fresh node through trusted node sync which now features a quicker history backfilling implementation.

Improvements

Fixes

2022-12-21 v22.12.0

Nimbus v22.12.0 is a medium-urgency release which improves the doppelganger detection in the Nimbus validator through the use of standardized APIs that are compatible with all third-party beacon nodes. Furthermore, it addresses several inconsistencies in the behavior between the stand-alone beacon node and the validator client. This release also allows users of trusted node sync to skip downloading the entire history of validator deposits by syncing against a server that supports the standardized /eth/v1/beacon/deposit_snapshot REST endpoint.

Improvements

Fixes

Breaking changes:

  • The built-in support for the Ropsten testnet has been removed:

    https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/4280

    You can still connect to the Ropsten network by specifying its metadata directory on the command line through the --network parameter.

  • The statusim/nimbus-eth2 docker image no longer includes the nimbus_validator_client binary and the shell scripts included in the release tarballs. Please use the new dedicated image for the Nimbus validator client.

2022-12-12 v22.11.1

Nimbus v22.11.1 is a high-urgency hotfix for all users who are running validators backed by remote keystores and web3signer. This update addresses a compatibility issue that may result in missed block proposals. If you are not using a remote signer, you can safely skip this release.

Fixes

2022-11-30 v22.11.0

Nimbus v22.11.0 is a low-urgency release, bringing the first production-ready version of the Nimbus validator client. The validator client will enable advanced users such as professional institutional operators to take advantage of features such as support for redundant beacon nodes, enhanced validator privacy and distributed keystores. Meanwhile, existing users still can use the streamlined stand-alone beacon node setup, as this mode of operation will continue to be supported and improved.

Improvements

Fixes

  • A small risk for missing block proposals was present under heavy forking activity in the network due to potential inclusion of inappropriate attestations in the produced blocks:

    https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/4273

  • A new batching approach for the registration of validators in the builder network will prevent the creation of requests of excessive size that might be rejected by the network. This was a problem affecting testnet nodes running with thousands of validators:

    https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/4364

Deprecated features

2022-10-14 v22.10.1

Nimbus v22.10.1 is a low-urgency point release introducing support for the official light client REST API and improving the stability of Nimbus when paired with an external block builder.

Improvements

Fixes:

2022-10-03 v22.10.0

Nimbus v22.10.0 is a medium-urgency release, continuing our briefly accelerated release schedule and bringing further stability and performance improvements after the merge.

Improvements

Fixes

Upcoming breaking changes

  • The pre-altair REST API paths /eth2/beacon_chain/req/beacon_blocks_by_{range,root}/1/ are now deprecated and will be removed in the next Nimbus version. Since these APIs support only phase0 responses, it is unlikely that there are any remaining clients using them.

2022-09-20 v22.9.1

Nimbus v22.9.1 is a medium-urgency upgrade addressing several frequently reported issues after the merge and bringing minor performance improvements in the post-merge world.

Breaking changes

Improvements

Fixes

2022-09-07 v22.9.0

Nimbus v22.9.0 is a high-urgency upgrade that fixes a critical pre-TTD block production issue affecting users that restarted their node after Bellatrix. It also improves compatibility with Besu, Prysm and slow block builders and provides a speed boost in block processing important for those running on Raspberry Pi and similar hardware.

With the merge drawing near, the focus of this release has been to include low risk changes that improve stability and compatibility - if you are unsure whether to upgrade, do reach out to us in discord to discuss your particular deployment.

A shout out to our great community for reporting and helping diagnose the issues that led up to this release - in particular Michael Sproul (Lighthouse) and Joe Clapis (Rocket Pool).

Improvements

  • Allow more time for block builder to deliver block #4088

  • Improve Bellatrix block processing performance #4085 and #4082

  • Optimize execution layer calls when not producing blocks, improving Besu performance and compatiblity #4055

  • Revise timing of execution layer configuration call, resolving warnings that no consensus client is present on Geth and Besu #4077

  • Log Exchanged engine configuration when first connected to correctly configured execution engine #4096

  • Switch to nim-websock for websocket connections, resolving delays when payloads exceed 1mb #4061

Fixes

  • Fix pre-TTD block proposals on nodes that (re-)started after Bellatrix #4094

  • Fix gossip message id, improving connectivity health with Prysm #4076

  • Improve handling of blocks deemed invalid by the execution layer #4081

  • Fix a rare crash that could happen when execution layer disconnected #4095

2022-08-31 v22.8.2

Nimbus v22.8.2 is a low-urgency hotfix release, eliminating a risk for potential crash during block production that was introduced in the v22.8.1 release. You can safely skip this release if you haven't enabled DEBUG logging on your beacon node, as the risk exists only when DEBUG logging is enabled.

Improvements:

Fixes:

2022-08-30 v22.8.1

Nimbus v22.8.1 is a high-urgency upgrade, improving the stability and performance of Nimbus in post-merge networks. Upgrading is highly recommended due to improved timing of the interactions with the execution engine which may lead to higher profitability from block production, especially for users running Nethermind.

Improvements

Fixes

2022-08-23 v22.8.0

Nimbus v22.8.0 is a medium urgency release, featuring full support for the upcoming mainnet merge! All users should upgrade at their earliest convenient, but no later than 5th of September.

Since the network will go through the Bellatrix hard-fork on Sept 6, 2022, 11:34:47am UTC, failure to upgrade in time will result in inactivity penalties.

Please note that once the network reaches the terminal total difficulty (currently estimated to happen between 13th and 15th of September), it will no longer be possible to operate a beacon node without pairing it with a single non-shared merge-ready execution client. Nimbus is fully compatible will all execution clients and the required configuration steps for all of them are the same. Please refer to our merge guide for more details:

https://nimbus.guide/merge.html

To raise awareness of the required configuration changes, once the Bellatrix fork is activated on 6th of September, Nimbus will refuse to start unless a properly configured and authenticated Engine API end-point is provided through the command-line options --web3-url and --jwt-secret. If you need more time to complete the transition, you can temporarily run the beacon node with the command-line option --require-engine-api-in-bellatrix=no, but please note that such a setup will stop working once the network TTD is reached!

We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to all of our users who provided immensely valuable feedback in the many months of hard work leading to the merge and to all the fellow research and implementation teams who made this historic release possible!

Onwards and happy merging!

Breaking changes

Improvements

Fixes

2022-07-26 v22.7.0

Nimbus v22.7.0 is a low urgency release packing everything necessary for the upcoming Prater/Goerli merge and introducing the Nimbus validator client (currently in BETA).

Other Improvements

Fixes

2022-06-29 v22.6.1

Nimbus v22.6.1 is a low-urgency release which comes pre-configured with the correct TTD value for the Sepolia network and improves the behavior of Nimbus in merge testnets.

Improvement

Fixes

2022-06-20 v22.6.0

Nimbus v22.6.0 brings support for the merge testnets Ropsten and Sepolia (please stay tuned for TTD announcements for the latter) and a lot of polish where we've taken the time to address a long list of UX improvements and bug fixes suggested or reported by our users. We are deeply grateful to everybody who contributed valuable feedback for this release.

Improvements

Fixes

Removed functionality

  • The Nimbus-specific JSON-RPC service which was deprecated in version v22.3.0 is now removed. If you are currently relying on the JSON-RPC API, please consider switching to the official REST API. Using any of the --rpc flags will now result in a warning: https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/3656

2022-05-30 v22.5.2

Nimbus v22.5.2 is a low-urgency maintenance release updating Ropsten testnet support.

Fixes:

2022-05-20 v22.5.1

Nimbus v22.5.1 is a low-urgency maintenance release addressing a Web3 compatibility regression and introducing Ropsten testnet support.

Improvements:

Fixes:

2022-05-17 v22.5.0

Nimbus v22.5.0 is a low-urgency maintenance release. It implements the proposer boosting fork-choice policy and is compliant with the latest Bellatrix specifications. It also provides an early preview of our built-in support for BLS threshold signatures (via regular Web3Signer instances): this marks the first step of our long-term secret-shared validators roadmap which enables node operators / staking pools to deploy Nimbus in secure high availability setups (guaranteeing ~100% uptime).

Improvements:

We've fixed:

2022-04-12 v22.4.0

Nimbus v22.4.0 is a low-urgency upgrade which brings with it further optimisations, and better user experience around trusted node sync. It lays the foundations for upcoming the merge hard-fork which will be fully supported in our next release (v22.5.0).

Improvements:

We've fixed:

Removed functionality:

2022-03-10 v22.3.0

Nimbus v22.3.0 is a low-urgency upgrade that marks the beginning of a more predictable release cadence for Nimbus. Going forward, we'll be publishing a new release each month, following a feature freeze period with intensified testing and monitoring of the introduced code changes on our dispersed fleet of mainnet validators.

Please note that the new versioning scheme is tied to the calendar. The number 22 indicates the year of the release (2022), while 3 is the month (March). The last digit is the patch number of the release and it will have a non-zero value only when we ship a hotfix during the month.

Improvements

We've fixed:

Deprecated features:

  • The JSON-RPC service (--rpc flag) option is now deprecated. It's scheduled for removal in version v22.6 (i.e. June of this year). If you are currently relying on the JSON-RPC API, please consider switching to the official REST API.

2022-02-15 v1.7.0

Nimbus v1.7.0 is a low-urgency feature-packed upgrade, which brings support for trusted node sync (also known as checkpoint sync) and HTTPS web3 providers.

Of particular note: the Keymanager API now supports remote keystores (a.k.a web3signer keystores).

Breaking changes:

  • Nimbus will no longer rewrite HTTP(S) web3 URLs to their respective WebSocket alternatives. Please review your setup to ensure you are using the desired web3 end-point.

  • The peer scoring has been further tuned. As such the --max-peers should not be set below 70. Note that Lowering max-peers does not significantly improve bandwidth usage, but does increase the risk of missed attestations.

Improvements:

We've fixed:

  • Unnecessary CPU and bandwidth usage: https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/3308
    • The result of staying subsribed to sync committee topics even when there were no validators in the committee.
  • Excessive logging on beacon nodes with large numbers of validators (in particular, those with --validator-monitor-totals enabled): https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/3332
  • Deviations from the spec in the REST API; this led to sub-optimal performance when Nimbus was paired with Vouch.
  • Naming inconsistencies in the "totals" metrics (this was produced by the validator monitor).
  • Non-compliant implementation of the /eth/v1/node/health API (we were not producing HTTP status codes as mandated by the spec).
  • Unnecessary restarts of the Eth1 syncing progress when the web3 provider connection was lost during sync: https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/pull/3354

2022-01-14 v1.6.0

Nimbus v1.6.0 is a low-urgency performance optimisation release with improved peer management.

v1.6.0 adds support for the Keymanager API (currently in BETA):

https://nimbus.guide/keymanager-api.html

As well as a comprehensive set of metrics for validator performance monitoring:

https://nimbus.guide/validator-monitor.html

Improvements:

  • Tuned peer management: reduces the likelihood of missed attestations
    • If you've seen frequent "No peers for topic" in your logs, this release will help
  • Improved buffer management in the networking layer: reduces both CPU and memory usage.
  • Further optimised batch verification of gossip messages: provides a 2-fold improvement in throughput.
  • Comprehensive set of metrics for live validator performance monitoring in Grafana and support for producing detailed historic reward analysis in ncli_db (note that ncli_db is available only when compiling from source at the moment).
  • Support for the new Keymanager API: add, remove, and migrate validators on the fly (BETA).
  • Blazingly fast historical traversals in the REST API for beacon chain data mining: state caching brings up to a 10x speed-up in some common usage patterns (e.g. obtaining historic data slot by slot or epoch by epoch).
  • 3x speed-up in snappy compression and decompression.
  • Support for obtaining JSON payloads from the REST API.

2021-12-03 v1.5.5

Nimbus v1.5.5 is a medium-urgency bugfix release which contains a number of significant optimisations; of particular note is a 6x speed-up in epoch processing and 2x speed up in Altair block processing.

In addition, v1.5.5 adds support for the web3signer protocol (currently in BETA).

We've fixed:

  • The potential for missed block proposals when a third-party validator client (with at least one imported validator) is used with a Nimbus beacon node (with no imported validators)

    • The web3 connection not being enabled when running third-party validator clients

  • A rare condition in which the REST service becomes unavailable.

  • Inappropriate error messages produced by the REST API: when a validator client is publishing the same attestations or sync committee messages through multiple beacon nodes.

Improvements:

2021-11-09 v1.5.4

Nimbus v1.5.4 is a medium-urgency hotfix release. It addresses an important issue which, in rare cases, can lead to the loss of attestations and sync committee messages. This can, in turn, lead to a reduction in rewards.

Please upgrade at your earliest convenience.

We've fixed:

  • A rare issue during the construction of sync committee contributions: invalid BLS aggregate signatures were being produced under certain conditions; this had the potential to negatively affect the peer score of the node, and impact its ability to deliver gossip messages.

  • A non-spec-compliant implementation of the /eth/v1/validator/duties/sync/{epoch} REST API.

  • A crash in the /eth/v2/debug/beacon/states REST API call on systems with limited stack space.

Improvements:

  • A nice little performance improvement for block verification and replay.

  • Improved error messages in the REST API.

  • The /eth/v1/config/spec REST API now returns more information regarding spec config parameters.

Other notable changes:

  • The --log-file option is now deprecated and may be removed in a future release (if you wish to log to a file, we recommend redirecting the standard output).

    Please note that the --log-file option was previously supported only when Nimbus was built from source. If your existing configuration used the --log-file option with a binary release, upgrading to v1.5.4 will enable the log file creation (though a deprecation warning will be printed on start-up).

2021-10-21 v1.5.2

Nimbus v1.5.2 is a high-urgency release for all users who haven't yet upgraded to the v1.5.x series which add support for the upcoming beacon chain Altair hard-fork.

Please upgrade as soon as possible - before the 27th of October.

For users already running v1.5.1, the release brings a number of important bug fixes and optimizations and upgrading is still highly recommended.

Notable changes

Improvements:

  • Faster ramp up of peers when starting the beacon node.

  • Added new metrics for keeping track of dropped gossip messages:

    bf6ad41d7d

  • The run-*-node.sh scripts provided in out Github repository will now enable the --rest and --metrics options by default.

We've fixed:

  • Potential crashes triggered by certain JSON-RPC and REST API requests.

  • Unnecessary source of syncing time when the beacon node is restarted after the Altair transition.

  • Certain non spec-compliant responses of the REST API.

2021-10-11 v1.5.1

Nimbus v1.5.1 is a high-urgency release for all users who have already upgraded to v1.5.0. It fixes a deposit contract syncing issue manifesting as the warning message "Eth1 chain not synced". Under specific circumstances, such a failure to sync the Eth1 chain may result in missed Eth2 block proposals, so affected users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible.

For anyone still running Nimbus v1.4.x or earlier, migrating to v1.5.1 continues to be a medium-urgency but mandatory upgrade that must be installed before October 27th.

2021-10-04 v1.5.0

Nimbus v1.5.0 is a medium-urgency but mandatory upgrade which adds support for the upcoming beacon chain Altair hard-fork.

Please upgrade at your earliest convenience - before the 27th of October.

N.B You must upgrade before October 27th in order to follow the mainnet beacon chain. Failure to do so will result in downtime penalties.

This is the first hard fork for the beacon chain, and while a significant amount of testing has been conducted in the run up to this release, we recommend users regularly monitor our announcement channels (discord and/or the newsletter) for potential updates.

To celebrate the feature complete release candidate of our REST API, we've opened up the ports on some of our fleet nodes - don't do this at home ;)

In order to interact with these, you should point your apps and tools to:

Note that right now these are very much unstable testing instances. They may be unresponsive at times - so please do not rely on them for validation. We may also disable them at any time.

Notable changes

  • Support for the Altair hard fork and the latest Ethereum consensus spec (v1.1.1)

  • Our REST API is now feature complete, supporting the full Beacon API specification. This API should not be exposed to the public Internet as it includes multiple endpoints which could open your node to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

    • Known limitations: To use the REST API with a validator client, you need to enable the --subscribe-all-subnets option. This requirement will be removed in future versions.

  • A new experimental --num-threads=X option allows Nimbus to take advantage of multiple CPU cores when verifying attestations. Set it to 1 to use one worker thread, 2 for two worker threads, etc. The default value is set to 1 in this release, but future versions will set it to 0 (this tells the client to use as many worker threads as there are CPU cores available). N.B .enabling anything other than 1 is considered experimental at this stage.

  • Improved peer discovery logic that ensures good connectivity to all gossip subnets.

  • A new version metric that makes it easy to keep track of client upgrades within Grafana dashboards.

  • New metrics libp2p_peers_identity, libp2p_peers_traffic_read_total, libp2p_peers_traffic_write_total, subdivided through Prometheus labels by the client type of the peer (i.e. nimbus, prysm, teku, lodestar or lighthouse).

  • BLST has been upgraded to the latest version (v0.3.5).

  • The --network option now accepts a directory with custom network metadata in the format of the eth2-testnets repository. The SECONDS_PER_SLOT configuration value remains the only setting that must be supplied at compile-time through the -d:SECONDS_PER_SLOT=X nim compilation flag.

2021-07-10 v1.4.2

Nimbus v1.4.2 - "Upgrade procedure: Hotfix release"

This release is marked as low-urgency for all Nimbus users other than those who have recently updated to v1.4.1 from a version earlier than v1.1.0 - for these users this is a high-urgency release.

Notable changes

This release fixes an issue in the upgrade procedure when upgrading from a version earlier than 1.1.0 to 1.4.x.

How can I tell if I've been affected?

If you've already upgraded to 1.4.1, you can tell that you've been affected if you're seeing the following WRN log:

 Received invalid sequence of blocks

To re-iterate, this issue only affects users who are upgrading from 1.0.12 or earlier (released on 2021-03-10), and have not run any release in between. Everyone else can ignore this release.

2021-07-10 v1.4.1

Nimbus v1.4.1 - "Every attestation counts"

This release is marked as low-urgency

Notable changes

Nimbus v1.4.0 users might have noticed that they are missing a small number of (seemingly random) attestations since the update. Our investigation into the matter has showed that, due to v1.4.0's significant performance improvements, Nimbus validators occasionally send their first attestation for a new epoch before some peers are ready. These "slow" peers end up dropping early attestations because they're busy with the epoch transition.

It's a rare occurrence, since it requires a validator to be scheduled to attest in the first slot of an epoch and for the beacon node to only be connected to "slow" peers for the respective libp2p topic. If both these conditions are true, a premature attestation may be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

As a fix, we are using a larger send delay: #2705.

Fo those Nimbus v1.4.0 users who are concerned about reaching optimal attestation effectiveness, we encourage you to upgrade as soon as possible.

Other changes include log flushing and metrics fixes.

Full list:

  • increase attestation wait time (#2705)
  • ensure logs are printed without delays (#2669)
  • fix metrics on Windows (#2707)

2021-06-21 v1.4.0

This release is marked as low-urgency - please update at your convenience.

It contains improvements to attestation effectiveness and CPU usage.

It also contains improvements to the RPC APIs, as suggested by DappNode and RocketPool, and in preparation for our refactored validator client.

Outdated Nimbus instances

A reminder that if you're running Nimbus with a version prior to 1.0.10 (March 2021) you are exposed to a vulnerability in our core cryptography library (this library is used by all eth2 clients). See this blst security advisory for more information. If this concerns you, please update as soon as you can.

Notable changes

We've added:

We've fixed:

We've improved

2021-05-17 v1.3.0

This release offers safer and easier options to migrate to Nimbus from other clients. It also brings further performance optimizations.

We've added:

  • A new slashingdb sub-command with import and export options. This allows for safely migrating to Nimbus from another client (as per the EIP-3076 slashing protection interchange format). Please see the the newly prepared migration guides for the details.

  • A new ncli_db validatorPerf command. This can be used to perform a textual report for the attestation performance of a particular validator (please note that ncli_db is available only when compiling from source).

  • Official binaries for macOS (AMD64 and ARM64).

  • Pruning of the slashing protection database and a transition to more optimal queries. This results in a significant reduction in both disk and CPU usage on nodes running a large number of validators.

  • More consistent level of validation for the attestations received from third-party sources and the JSON-RPC and REST APIs. This prevents invalid attestations from being broadcasted to the network.

  • Performance tuning of attestation subnet transition timings and state snapshotting intervals. This results in improved CPU and bandwidth usage.

We've fixed:

  • Problems in the GossipSub subnet walking logic leading to unnecessary bandwidth and CPU costs.

2021-05-03 v1.2.2

This is a bugfix release improving the stability of the REST API and addressing issues discovered during the mainnet deposit processing accident of 24-25 April.

New features:

  • More efficient attestation processing pipeline using less queuing.

We've fixed:

  • Insufficient validation of third-party Eth1Data votes.

  • Sporadic REST API connection interruptions resulting from large request or result payloads.

  • Incorrectly sent empty GossipSub IWANT messages.

2021-04-20 v1.2.1

This is a hotfix release that solves the database migration issue highlighted in the previous release -- this problem affected new Nimbus users who used v1.1.0 to sync with the network from genesis, essentially resetting their state database and causing them to start re-syncing from genesis.

If you have used an older version of Nimbus prior to upgrading to v1.1.0, you should not be affected.

If you were affected, you have a couple of options available to you:

  1. If you have backed-up your database prior to upgrading to v1.2.0, you can restore the database from backup and execute the migration successfully after upgrading to this release.

  2. If you haven't backed up your database, you can upgrade to this release at your convenience; rest assured it won't delete your sync history.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience we may have caused. We are reviewing our release testing policies to ensure that we cover a greater number of possible upgrade paths going forward.

2021-04-19 v1.2.0

If v1.1.0 was the big I/O update, v1.2.0 is all about the CPU - together, these updates help secure Nimbus against future network growth, and provide us with a higher security margin and substantial [profitability improvements] (https://twitter.com/ethnimbus/status/1384071918723092486).

To highlight just one data point, CPU usage has been cut by up to 50% over v1.1.0 ( 🙏 batched attestation processing). This makes it the first release we can officially recommend for validating on a Raspberry Pi 4.

N.B. this release contains a critical stability fix so please make sure you upgrade!

New features:

  • Beta support for the official Beacon Node REST API: https://ethereum.github.io/eth2.0-APIs/. Enable it by launching the client with the --rest:on command-line flag

  • Batched attestation verification and other reforms -> massive reduction in overall CPU usage.

  • Improved attestation aggregation logic -> denser aggregations which in turn improve the overall health of the network and improve block production.

  • More efficient LibP2P connection handling code -> reduction in overall memory usage.

We've fixed:

  • A critical stability issue in attestation processing.

  • scripts/run-*-node.sh no longer prompts for a web3 provider URL when the --web3-url command-line option has already been specified.

2021-04-05 v1.1.0

This release brings planned reforms to our database schema that provide substantial performance improvements and pave the way for an an improved doppelganger detection ready immediately to propose and attest to blocks (in a future release).

Please be aware that we will remain committed to maintaining backwards compatibility between releases, but this release does not support downgrading back to any previous 1.0.x release.

As a safety precaution, we advise you to please backup your Nimbus database before upgrading if possible.

New features:

  • More efficient state storage format ==> reduced I/O load and lower storage requirements.

  • More efficient in-memory cache for non-finalized states ==> significant reduction in memory usage.

  • More efficient slashing database schema ==> scales better to a larger number of validators.

  • The metrics support is now compiled by default thanks to a new and more secure HTTP back-end.

  • Command-line tools for generating testnet keystores and JSON deposit files suitable for use with the official network launchpads.

  • setGraffiti JSON-RPC call for modifying the graffiti bytes of the client at run-time.

  • next_action_wait metric indicating the time until the next scheduled attestation or block proposal.

  • More convenient command-line help messages providing information regarding the default values of all parameters.

  • --direct-peer gives you the ability to specify gossip nodes to automatically connect to.

  • Official docker images for ARM and ARM64.

  • Support for fallback --web3-url providers.

We've fixed:

  • Long processing delays induced by database pruning.

  • File descriptor leaks (which manifested after failures of the selected web3 provider).

  • The validator APIs now return precise actual balances instead of rounded effective balances.

  • A connection tracking problem which produced failed outgoing connection attempts.

Breaking changes:

  • Nimbus-specific JSON-RPCs intended for debug purposes now have the debug_ prefix:

    • getGossipSubPeers is now debug_getGossipSubPeers
    • getChronosFutures is now debug_getChronosFutures

2021-03-10 v1.0.12

This is bugfix release correcting an error in the Prater testnet config leading to incorrect Eth1 voting.

2021-03-10 v1.0.11

This is a minor release adding support for connecting to the Prater testnet.

2021-03-10 v1.0.10

This release contains important security and performance improvements.

Upgraded:

  • We're now running version 0.3.3 of the BLST library: https://github.com/supranational/blst/releases/tag/v0.3.3

  • We've switched to a more recent version of BearSSL (this version features a more up-to-date list of trusted root certificates)

  • We're now consistent with the v1.0.1 Eth2 spec

We've fixed:

  • A frequent crash occurring on certain hardware configurations after building Nimbus from source.

  • Long processing delays triggered by the reception of attestations that reference already pruned states.

  • LibP2P peer management issue which led to an accumulation of inactive connections.

  • A false-positive in doppelganger detection triggered by rebroadcasted older attestations arriving with a significant delay.

New features:

  • A new improved format of the slashing protection database:

    • Significantly reduces the disk load with a large number of validators (1000+).

    • Makes it possible to enhance our doppelganger detection in the future such that waiting for 2 epochs before attesting is not necessary.

    To ensure smooth upgrade and emergency rollback between older and future Nimbus versions, v1.0.10 will keep track of your attestation in both the old and the new format. The extra load should be negligible for home stakers.

2021-03-09 v1.0.9

This version was an internal release candidate build for the 1.0.10 release.

2021-02-22 v1.0.8

This release includes important JSON-RPC stability improvements and compatibility fixes, which make it possible to use Nimbus as a RocketPool operator.

New features:

  • RocketPool integration: see https://github.com/rocket-pool/smartnode/pull/89 and da720acc8f

  • Next attestation time displayed on every "Slot end" log message (helps you select the best time for restarting the node)

  • libp2p scoring: disconnect from badly performing peers and prioritise peers with better latency and throughput.

We've fixed:

  • A rare crash triggered when connecting to a web3 provider using a secure web socket.

  • JSON-RPC spec violations and potential DoS attack vectors.

  • Two stale bootstrap node addresses.

2021-02-04 v1.0.7

A release which provides additional protection against accidental slashings and further performance improvements across the board.

New features:

  • New slashing protection mechanism (doppelganger detection) prevents your validator from contradicting itself if you have accidentally left it running on another machine (see the --doppelganger-detection option).

  • Optimized batching of BLS signature verification leading to faster sync speeds and reduced CPU load.

  • Further improvements to attestation subnet walking resulting in a reduction in both bandwidth and CPU usage.

  • A new --subscribe-all-subnets option allowing the node to maintain peers from all attestation subnets (most suitable for bootstrap nodes).

  • Official docker images published at https://hub.docker.com/r/statusim/nimbus-eth2

  • Official Windows binaries created from a reproducible build recipe.

  • An option to enable the automatic updating of IP:Port in the ENR (off by default, specify --enr-auto-update:true to turn it on)

We've fixed:

  • A bug that had the potential to completely halt all syncing activity.

  • Inefficient processing of blocks with Eth1 deposits which occassionally led to increased latencies when delivering attestations.

  • Outdated records in our bootstrap nodes list.

  • An Eth1 syncing issue which manifested itself as a "Corrupted deposits history detected" error.

  • Non-standard encoding of certain data types such as signatures and bit sequences within the results of JSON-RPC requests.

We've deprecated:

  • make beacon_node will no longer compile the beacon node. You'll need to run make nimbus_beacon_node from now on

  • On monday we'll phase out the old master branch. If you're still building Nimbus from master, please switch to stable.

2021-01-10 v1.0.6

A release that brings reproducible precompiled binaries for ARM devices and significant performance improvements.

New features:

  • Reproducible build recipe for creating Nimbus Linux binaries intended for ARM devices.

  • Improved attestation subnet walking logic: this brings significant reductions in bandwidth usage and CPU load.

  • Better usage of the Sqlite3 checkpointing API (minor performance improvement).

  • Larger window for the candidate attestations included in blocks: this can lead to higher block rewards.

We've fixed:

  • Incorrect attnets value announced in ENR records.

2021-01-09 v1.0.5

The 1.0.5 release was retracted because it included a potential optimization to the reproducible build scripts that turned out to create a buggy binary for AMD64 systems. Manually built binaries through the Makefiles were not affected. After fixing the problem, the release was re-published as 1.0.6 with the same release notes.

2020-12-16 v1.0.4

A release bringing further stability improvements and minor performance optimisations.

New features:

  • Nimbus can now be safely shut down with the SIGTERM signal on POSIX systems.

  • New discovery IP limits making theoretic eclipse attack much more costly.

  • A new make benchmarks target for obtaining a performance score for your system.

  • Upgrade of the BLST library bringing minor performance improvement.

We've fixed:

  • Gossipsub resource leaks that may reduce the quality of the gossipsub mesh and reduce the attestation effectiveness of the client.

  • Incomplete validation of the forwarded attestations that may affect negatively the peer score of Nimbus.

  • An issue halting the activity of the Eth1 monitor.

  • The incorrect zero validator balance displayed while the node is syncing.

  • A regression preventing Nimbus to be used with custom testnet metadata files.

2020-12-09 v1.0.3

A release fixing issues that have contributed to Nimbus's lower peer scores on the network.

New features:

  • New metrics tracking the syncing progress of the Eth1 deposit contract monitor.

  • A new web3 test command for testing the compatibility of a web3 provider before using it.

We've fixed:

  • Incorrect timing when sending aggregated attestations.

  • Stale ENR records not taking into account the dynamic attestation subnet hopping.

  • An invalid error message produced by the deposits exit command (validator state unknown).

2020-12-03 v1.0.2

A release that fixes an issue regarding the occasional missed block proposal.

Proposing a block is arguably the most important duty you have as a validator. So it's important you update at your earliest convenience.

New features:

  • 8 new JSON-RPC calls that bring us to feature parity with the official beacon node API.

We've fixed:

  • A deposit merkle proofs generation issue occasionally resulting in missed block proposals shortly after a new Eth1 head was selected.

  • Slow status bar updates in the absense of logging messages.

2020-12-02 v1.0.1

A release with a number of important fixes and optimisations.

Please update at your earliest convenience.

In order to minimise downtime, we recommend updating and rebuilding the beacon node before restarting.

New features:

  • More conservative Eth1 syncing requests to reduce the likelihood of going over the maximum allowed burst rates under the Infura free plan (predominantly aimed at those running Nimbus on resource-restricted device like Raspberry Pi's) + more resiliency in case of errors.

We've fixed:

  • A "Only one concurrent read allowed" crash reported by multiple users.

  • An error in the default configuration preventing the node from discovering peers on mainnet unless the --network=mainnet flag was passed. Please note that this not affect users starting their node with the ./run-mainnet-beacon-node command.

  • The fractional part of the ETH balance in the Nimbus status bar (the value displayed should now be correct).

  • An issue that occasionally caused the Eth1 syncing process to get stuck before reaching the head of the chain.

  • Unnecessary network traffic related to GossipSub IHAVE.

  • Incorrect gossipsub pruning which occasionally resulted in messages getting lost.

  • An issue where an excessively long graffiti string could cause a crash on startup.

  • A Linux-only issue that resulted in the deposits import command ignoring its supplied arguments.

2020-11-29 v1.0.0-stateofus

As promised, a slightly more polished release before Mainnet launch ✨

Please make sure you update to this release before Eth2 genesis this Tuesday (December 1 12:00:23 UTC), as it contains some important improvements.

New features:

  • Updated list of bootstrap nodes for Mainnet.

  • Prometheus metrics for validator balances. The beacon node will also display the total balance of all attached validators in the status footer by default.

  • deposits import now automagically finds the validator_keys directory produced by the eth2.0-deposit-cli if it is located in the same working directory.

  • A deposits exit command for submitting a voluntary validator exit.

  • A record CLI command for inspecting and creating ENR records.

  • An --agent-string option for specifying how Nimbus will present itself in LibP2P messages. The default value is now nimbus.

  • New RPC calls to track node and config status. Specifically, a JSON-RCP call for inspecting the active config preset (get_v1_config_spec).

We've fixed:

  • Inaccurate peer counts (an occasional mismatch between the number of syncing peers and GossipSub peers) -- the default peer limit has been increased to maintain a healthy gossip mesh.

  • High bandwidth usage of GossipSub (due to sub-optimal caching and lack of limits in the IWANT/IHAVE exchange messages) -- we're now using the latest spec GossipSub parameters.

  • High sync memory footprint -- we've reduced the number of sync workers from 20 to 10 (note, this should not affect sync speed).

2020-11-25 v1.0.0-rc1

We're happy to join the other client teams in announcing our v1.0.0 release candidate with support for Mainnet ✨

You can use this release/binary to set up your rig and monitoring for Eth2 genesis next Tuesday (December 1 12:00:23 UTC).

N.B. There will be at least one more release, before December 1st. In particular, we are planning a more polished release for Sunday which will act as a drop-in replacement for this release candidate.

Don't worry if your peer count appears low at first -- It should increase as more validators connect to Mainnet.

Highlights include:

  • The addition of a deposit contract "state snapshot" to network metadata. This allows the client to skip syncing deposits made prior to the snapshot.

  • A much faster startup time. We've removed the deposits table from the database, which means the client no longer needs to process all deposits on start-up.

  • The Eth1 monitor no longer starts if the beacon node has zero validators attached to it.

  • The genesis detection code is now optional and disabled by default.

  • An RPC call to get Chronos futures at runtime.

  • Eth2 spec gossip parameters.

We've fixed:

  • A database corruption issue affecting Pyrmont nodes.

  • Unnecessary copy/memory alloc when loading DbSeq entries.

  • A block production issue affecting clients that hadn't finished downloading the latest deposits.

2020-11-20 v0.6.6

New features:

  • New RPC APIs for inspecting the internal state of the Eth1 monitor.

We've fixed:

  • A fork-choice issue causing Nimbus to get stuck on a particular slot.

  • A logic error causing Nimbus to vote for an incorrect Eth1 block.

  • A crash during initialization when the web3 provider is refusing to serve data (e.g. due to exceeded request quota).

2020-11-17 v0.6.4

New features:

  • Support for the Pyrmont testnet.

  • The PCRE library is no longer necessary for building Nimbus.

  • Sensitive files such as keystores are now accessible only to the user of the beacon node on POSIX systems (the group rights have been dropped).

We've fixed:

  • An issue preventing blocks to be downloaded when the client goes out of sync.

  • Resource leaks that may lead to reduction of network activity due to a build-up of malfunctioning peer connections.

2020-11-12 v0.6.2

A bugfix release addressing issues discovered in the Toledo network.

New features:

  • GossipSub 1.1

  • The beacon node status bar (footer) now contains a time-left-until-synced estimate.

  • A JSON-RPC method setLogLevel for dynamically changing the log level of selected components at run-time.

  • The ability to launch Nimbus with a partially-synced Geth node.

We've fixed:

  • A bug preventing the node from proposing blocks when connected to a web3 provider

  • An invalid "corrupted database" error message appearing on start-up

  • Incorrectly set message-ids in gossip message causing other clients to penalise and potentially disconnect our nodes from the network.

  • An issue occuring when Nimbus is paired with a Geth node that is not fully synced.

2020-11-09 Hope (v0.6.0)

Nimbus eth2 0.6.0 was the first externally audited and stable release of our beacon node software. When compared to the 0.5x series, it features significant reductions in storage and memory requirements, a faster sync speed, and a plethora of usability and security enhancements across the board. Under normal network conditions, the delivery rate of attestations and block proposals is expected to be above 99%. Going forward, our release schedule will start to accelerate, with multiple new releases expected before the Eth2 mainnet launch.

Changelog highlights include:

  • Full support for the 1.0 Eth2 phase0 spec and the monitoring of the mainnet validator deposit contract.

  • LibP2P and GossipSub fixes which drastically improve the delivery of attestations and blocks (nearly 100% expected rate of delivery).

  • Fixes for all major resource leaks: you no longer need to restart your node to improve its performance.

  • Efficient caching and storage mechanisms: ensures our memory consumption remains comparatively low both during smooth and turbulent network conditions.

  • Several storage and networking optimisations leading to an order of magnitude improvement in beacon chain sync speed.

  • Audits to our codebase by ConsenSys Diligence, NCC Group and Trail of Bits. More than 60 of the security findings have already been addressed. The remaining items will be resolved before mainnet launch.

  • Support for pairing with a locally running Geth instance to allow for decentralised monitoring of the validator deposit contract.

  • An extensive user guide for managing the beacon node.

  • Slashing protection mechanisms + database.

  • Support for storing the validator signing keys in a separate process, isolated from the network, with a minimal attack surface.