nimbus-eth2/CHANGELOG.md

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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  • Outdated records in our bootstrap nodes list.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.