Notes
Nimbus v22.8.0 is a medium urgency release, featuring full support for the upcoming mainnet merge! All users should upgrade at their earliest convenience, 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
-
Nimbus will refuse to start unless connected to a properly configured execution client in Bellatrix-enabled networks:
#4006 -
The custom error code returned by Nimbus when a validator doppelganger is detected has been changed from 1031 to 129 to improve compatibility with
systemd:
#3977
Improvements
-
Support for external block builders (a.k.a. MEV):
#3883 -
Beta release for the Nimbus stand-alone light client, which can be used to drive any execution client without requiring a full-blown beacon node:
https://nimbus.guide/light-client-data.html -
The first spec-compliant implementation of the LibP2P protocols for serving light client data:
https://nimbus.guide/light-client-data.html -
Keystore locking prevents accidentally loading the same validator keys in multiple instances of the Nimbus beacon node and the Nimbus validator client, thus eliminating a potential slashing risk:
#3907 -
Debian and RPM packages for the Nimbus beacon node and the Nimbus validator client are now available as part of the release. In the near future, Status will also provide a package repository, offering a more convenient installation:
#3974
status-im/infra-nimbus#79 -
Improved performance on networks with heavy forking activity through a reduction of the required state replays:
#3990 -
The Nimbus validator client now supports validator activity metrics such as
beacon_attestations_sent,beacon_aggregates_sent,beacon_attestation_sent_delay,beacon_blocks_sent,beacon_blocks_sent_delay,beacon_sync_committee_messages_sent,beacon_sync_committee_message_sent_delay,beacon_sync_committee_contributions_sent:
#3915 -
The sync status displayed in the Nimbus status bar and certain log messages now describes the state of the client more accurately (optimistically synced vs fully synced):
#3987
Fixes
-
Spec violation in the expected payload of the
/eth/v1/validator/prepare_beacon_proposerBeacon API end-point:
#3938 -
Invalid empty execution payloads being produced when the execution client is not responding:
#3991 -
Potentially incorrect Eth1 block votes, disagreeing with the forming majority:
#3944 -
More resilient deposit synchronization when Nimbus is paired with a highly loaded execution client:
#3943
#3957 -
A potential delay in detecting the terminal total difficulty block:
#3956 -
Missing Gossip filtering rule for sync committee contributions resulting in unnecessary traffic:
#3941 -
Compatibility issue preventing trusted node sync from Lodestar nodes:
#3934 -
A potential crash while processing rare gossip messages such as slashings and exits:
#3965 -
Inappropriate attestations sent by the validator client when the connected beacon node is only optimistically synced:
#3968
Urgency guidelines
low-urgency: update at your own convenience, sometime within our normal update cycle of two weeks
medium-urgency: may contain an important stability fix, it is better to update sooner rather than later
high-urgency: update as soon as you can, this is a critical update required for Nimbus to function correctly
SHA512 checksums
# Linux AMD64
18f37b94347e67abfc0bcebb25ccc806ae0d6b0fd22185a27ae5ac3415a30791d003235c77e5873c88c7f79681c74d83bc8873a4f367896f3e303b42164a5954 nimbus_beacon_node
bb6f75cc591b18b6cee9740cbde45b5440c7ab495e1bfbfca69c1c4ab9ea83cd59a12a504436cce382be40c3f1a455391a8b7deb7f9872befdb754c4cf680895 nimbus_validator_client
# Linux ARM64
a35f86847b9b0c6560a76865f777d5e746b13ed0a55b0607d6a4368849259df28c55ab092c513a62c437c63d9d417adaa22ae008995e4dcb0a5922ce13af4743 nimbus_beacon_node
36c7c1f486edbf886dade44f0a09c2e08815acf9ae47adb6797299e2d9dab8c780be85a87dae35732aecc46ef6d98f93ce2c4f3619efcc68856efac20b7ae035 nimbus_validator_client
# Linux ARM
bf8f2ddef1faa466ddb30533ba575a13d2b9f25b0f644f4d1f90a068d9386e5e02ec9c23b38a1230ce263d27581625cc6a2742f922bcdc21bc7ff173fbb7ba12 nimbus_beacon_node
391155ee4dc54f2bec084a4e304f4938695dbe2d5af3a15f67d7f7449a228958ababfc857a84765fa680f6b25f5da3b2ff743784b50a9f6301dc85e97f0cf015 nimbus_validator_client
# Windows AMD64
fa8a416c8cafa490db54f05068db92d68607012da0628b261c48ceaa52229fc7b5c987279fe3dd6098c5a6a245c18d443426f701f8bc6a9da36aea28e64e6911 nimbus_beacon_node.exe
a620f9d0077abd354198f03d5b7a0f5f356ea8fe428f60db352f86f5b422e945ab5cc6d15f42ae203ae6aec1047a08797e45639fdd3d64cc1daa6deddff04b71 nimbus_validator_client.exe
# macOS AMD64
f1e5365e225cf3c8c8d4d26359ba96c3dc2156bae5884410886de40e44f5d9e095fe89cb2746165958fb4817c770772cfc63edf88587cd27038acd3009bf5281 nimbus_beacon_node
5336c374ef9213a77abe5bc9a65e160444ee345a9a81bbed05d74d7f26ed15c51ef9f43a66345ae501780da5587171c9200a6bd721ef0e62f293a83e9464ba89 nimbus_validator_client
# macOS ARM64
1671a124406b9c4a30845d9a343cb8687cb6305aa5b0702733fb0842eb3abe65b64cca35cae6cdd1536369088ae0d4d697a5998b327d999cb53c6ae630ae4ff4 nimbus_beacon_node
041b15cb4193b5c89a4506963964a7fa65b18400b2a0a727b68651d57b172a42bd1ebe38a74ad921cd00ed14eddd77b21317d905e46f7d4c7962ca9645976c95 nimbus_validator_client