Status Update on the Dencun Hard Fork Proposal
TLDR; Dencun proposal for LUKSO Testnet delayed, due to instabilities in Ethereum clients.
On May 6th, 2024, our network team released version v0.17.0 of the LUKSO CLI. This update was intended to prepare our network for the Dencun Hard Fork by updating client versions. However, after this release, we started receiving reports from node operators using the latest Prysm client about increased memory problems. We reported this issue to the Prysm team and mitigated further network issues by downgrading the Prysm and Geth clients in the v0.17.2 release of the LUKSO CLI.
Delaying the Dencun Hard Fork Proposal
Due to the challenges associated with Prysm's memory usage and other clients still releasing bug fixes for recently introduced features like blobs, we've decided to postpone the Dencun hard fork proposal for the LUKSO Testnet.
Our main priority is to ensure a seamless transition during the hard fork, and we believe that waiting on client teams to resolve such issues is crucial, especially with the high number of LUKSO node operators using the Prysm client.
The Importance of Client Diversity 👩🏾🦰🧑🦰🦊
This situation has underscored the importance of client diversity in ensuring network stability and security. Having a variety of clients makes the network infrastructure more resilient, as it lessens the impact of any one client experiencing issues.
On Ethereum, client diversity has proven essential in maintaining the network's robustness during several incidents. Some of the most notable incidents include the Shanghai DoS Attacks in 2016 and the OpenEthereum Consensus Bug in 2020, either tremendously slowing down block propagation or making nodes get stuck at a certain block. In 2023, several clients were affected by a Transaction Sorting Incident, causing the Ethereum network to stall for 25 minutes before continuing with tremendous workloads for several days. Therefore, maintaining a healthy diversity is mandatory.
We are currently working on a client diversity website, to track the network topology. ⛰️
If you are running Prysm and Geth for your nodes, please consider switching to other clients, such as Teku and Erigon to increase the client diversity and stability of the LUKSO network.
👉 We prepared a guide on Switching Consensus Clients. A list with supported clients for LUKSO can be found here. Besu is currently being tested as a execution client.
Outlook
We are actively monitoring and testing new releases to ensure the Dencun fork happens as soon as it is safe for all infrastructure. The network team is also working on bringing more transparency and monitoring tools to the LUKSO network and supporting more execution and consensus clients.
Both measures will help prepare and monitor network behaviour and future updates. Please stay tuned for any upcoming announcements.