A Lodestar for Ethereum Consensus #5
Authored by Phil Ngo
An update on ChainSafe's TypeScript implementation of Ethereum Consensus
Welcome back to another edition of the "A Lodestar for Ethereum Consensus" series, where we share updates on our progress in building Lodestar. Join us as we highlight recent milestones and our contributions to the Ethereum protocol ecosystem. Let's dive in!
From Capella to Deneb
Being a production-ready client officially endorsed by the Ethereum Launchpad, we are proud to offer a reliable consensus client to a mainnet audience and expand diversity within the Ethereum protocol. We have successfully upgraded Lodestar to the Capella/Shanghai specification to enable withdrawals and are now leading client teams toward the next milestone: Deneb/Cancun.
Lodestar has undergone an extensive experimental phase, and we continue to push experimental implementations as part of our broader effort to upgrade the Ethereum protocol. Our next step? Integrating blobspaces!
Distributed validator technology support
Speaking of experimentation, Lodestar is the first client to support aggregation duties as part of a distributed validator cluster. We continue to work with Obol to advance the Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) design space and to promote greater accessibility for stakers in network security. Our latest (v1.8.0) release supports most DVT-related requirements as a viable validator for Obol's stack.
Community-driven user adoption
The Ethereum community's supportive and collaborative nature remains one of its greatest strengths, and our shared vision of empowering both retail and solo stakers to secure the network allows us to facilitate onramps. These onramps enable more individuals to experience Lodestar and contribute to network resilience.
We have successfully integrated with DappNode on mainnet, eth-docker, and Rocketpool's Smart Node application and expanded our reach to node operators.
For advanced users, our Lodestar Quickstart scripts allow easy deployment of Lodestar and any of the four supported execution clients through simple customization of docker containers.
Additionally, our recently launched Lodestar User Adoption Incentive Program for solo stakers is still ongoing, and we are thrilled by the positive response from the staking community. With a prize pool of $20,000 USD and $5,000 USD from EthStaker, we are grateful for the community's support as we join as the fifth consensus client.
As a token of our appreciation, participants in the adoption program will receive an exclusive Lodestar POAP. Eligible individuals can also claim a specially crafted POAP for participating in the incentive pool. Don't miss out on this opportunity!
Performance enhancements for all users, including large operators
To maximize Lodestar's utilization on mainnet, we have been actively addressing issues for users of all types. Valuable feedback from RockLogic, a generous node operator testing Lodestar, has significantly improved our keystore caching strategy and key decryption in a thread pool. This resulted in a 5x faster key loading process for large node operators with multiple validator keystores. Version 1.9 will further enhance the experience by making our validator client (VC) more stable from a lot of excess disk read/writes which were happening from our validator slashing protection DB.
We hope that some of these improvements will allow Lodestar to continue to serve small and large operators alike!
⚡️Alongside Sygma, Lodestar played a part in the creation of the Goerli Validator Faucet - an efficient way to distribute Goerli ETH for people to test their validator setups⚡️
Give it a try! https://validator.faucet.chainsafe.dev/upload#
Pushing the Ethereum protocol roadmap forward
At Lodestar, we are fortunate to have visionary engineers who actively contribute to cutting-edge advancements in the Ethereum community. We are dedicated to driving the progress of Ethereum's specifications, aiming to solidify its position as the global settlement layer.
Dapplion, the lead of the Lodestar team, plays a crucial role in shaping this roadmap and will be sharing insights on our work at ETHDubai 2023.
Lodestar is hiring!
At ChainSafe, we are constantly seeking exceptional talent to join our team. If you're interested, contributing to our open-source projects is the best way to get started. To any TypeScript developers looking to take on challenges and push the boundaries of the JavaScript ecosystem, we can't wait to hear from you!
Getting involved with Lodestar is simple - just visit our GitHub repository.
If you wish to contact the team, join Chainsafe's Discord in the #lodestar-general channel or explore our job openings page. Alternatively, you can email us at info@chainsafe.io.
Remember to visit our official website and follow us on Twitter for more updates.
Lodestar is built and maintained by ChainSafe, a leading blockchain R&D firm.
