Ethereum Bulletin #5

TL;DR

Ropsten has already reached TTD but Beacon Chain is scheduled to launch on Monday so basically TTD is just pushed over by the core devs
Why 7 block reorg of the Ethereum Beacon Chain wasn't a big deal
A deep dive on Ethereum's ambitious roadmap
What are Layer 3 scaling solutions?
Immutable X now supports Metamask mobile app

Ropsten has already reached TTD but Beacon Chain is scheduled to launch on Monday so basically TTD is just pushed over by the core devs

Just reached TTD on ropsten, we decided to push TTD, so if your node is stuck, please use `--override.terminaltotaldifficulty 100000000000000000000000` to unstuck it and run `debug.setHead("0xBBCE88")` in the console to force the node to sync the correct chain https://t.co/Cnerlol0JY
— MariusVanDerWijden (@vdWijden) May 26, 2022

Terminal Total Difficulty aka TTD is the difficulty value where the PoW chain will be moved to PoS consensus protocol. Ropsten is going to be the first chain to shift its protocol to PoS after reaching a TTD of 43531756765713534 followed by Goerli and Sepolia. Yesterday , Ropsten was basically stuck because someone purchased a significant chunk of hashpower for Ropsten (20x the usual hashrate) and was running it for a few days. More the hashpower, there will be more difficulty per block in order to keep the time between subsequent blocks consistent .This increase made TTD to be met earlier today , a week before it was supposed to be met and meeting TTD means the net will stop working if the Beacon Chain is not ready to be merged and that is exactly what happened!

Tim Beiko, a core developer at Ethereum has attempted to explain this situation in more depth in this article.

The solution which the core developers have come up with is to push the TTD value further. Also if your node is stuck please use --override.terminaltotaldifficulty 100000000000000000000000 to unstuck it and run debug.setHead("0xBBCE88") in the console to force the node to sync the correct chain.

This thread below explains the situation pretty well -

If you've noticed the state of Ropsten right now, you'll see that every block has a single transaction, with metadata saying "WILL RECOVER ASAP".https://t.co/W0Dt7OIT6O

So, what happened?

TL;DR it's Merge/TTD related. Settle in for one of the rare few threads I'll write.

🧵 pic.twitter.com/I3TZKStgfT
— laurence (🫡, 🫡) (@functi0nZer0) May 26, 2022

Why 7 block reorg of the Ethereum Beacon Chain wasn't a big deal

Recently Ethereum Beacon Chain faced a re org of 7 blocks which took 84 seconds (Refer Ethereum Bulletin #4 to know more about re-org) , this created a sense of doubt around the Ethereum PoS consensus protocol which is going to be deployed soon . Martin Köppelmann ,Co-founded of Gnosis hereby explained why the reason behind the re-org was not fundamental to Ethereum and this would most probably won't happen on Mainnet after the switch to PoS .

The reason was that clients updated their behavior on what they considered the "best block".So there arose a situation in which different client implementations rolled out their updates at different times and also validators updated at different times. Finally, leading to a situation where roughly 50% of the network would use rule A and 50% rule B. He further added that "changes like this should be rolled out like hard-forks. With a specific point in time (slot number) when they activate and a clearly communicated expectation for all validators to have updated at that time." and "if in the future such updates are approached more mindful there is no reason to believe that we will experience 7 block deep reorgs in the future of Ethereum POS regularly."

Some context - why this could have been a big deal but in the end was not really.
A thread: https://t.co/UY3X4njynL
— Martin Köppelmann 🇺🇦 (@koeppelmann) May 26, 2022

A deep dive on Ethereum's ambitious roadmap

If you are interested in learning about the exact roadmap of Ethereum Jon CharbonneauandDankrad Feist has come up with a long and dense read called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ethereum" . It is a fairly long read so you gotta have some time in your hands to learn these things , technical jargons etc .

You can access the roadmap here.

What are Layer 3 scaling solutions?

Layer 3 is built on top of Layer 2 by settling the proof recursively onto the L2. It's a rollup inside of a rollup! Recently, Immutable X and StarkWareLtd announced a global "liquidity layer" for all NFTs running on top of it (whether L2 or L3).L3s will be utilized for app-specific rollups as fees will be exponentially cheaper than L2. Additionally, seamless interoperability is possible as L3s inherit the L2 they are on!

Layer 3 is a paradigm shift in blockchain scaling. Here's what you need to know:

🧵 👇
— pseudotheos (@pseudotheos) May 25, 2022

Immutable X now supports Metamask mobile app

Now things like Deposit/withdraw $ETH $GODS $GOG $IMX $USDC, purchase/sell of NFTs, managing NFTs can be done through the Mobile screens .

We've launched our @MetaMask mobile app support on the @Immutable X protocol🎉

Enjoy more interactions via iOS or Android on any platform #poweredbyIMX 📲

☑️ Deposit/withdraw $ETH $GODS $GOG $IMX $USDC
☑️ Purchase/sell NFTs
☑️ Manage NFTs

Try it now at https://t.co/lNW2m7R6Xg pic.twitter.com/mk6cgGc78R
— Immutable | $IMX ⓧ (@Immutable) May 26, 2022

Read more about Ethereum in previous Bulletins -Ethereum Bulletin

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