Ethereum developers have patched Beacon Chain finality issues in Prysm Labs and Teku clients, ensuring uninterrupted network transactions.
Ethereum network developers recently deployed fixes for the Beacon Chain, Ethereum’s consensus layer, which had been facing finality issues. Developers patched Prysm Labs and Teku, two client software of the network, in order to resolve these issues.
On May 11th and 12th, Ethereum’s Beacon Chain faced issues in finalizing blocks, despite the successful proposal of new blocks. The first issue led to an approximately 25-minute delay in finalizing blocks. The second issue, which occurred the following day, was more severe, leading to a delay of more than an hour.
The Ethereum Foundation indicated that the finality issue was a result of excessive load on some of the Consensus Layers clients. This high load was attributed to an unprecedented scenario. The issues resulted in three to eight epochs not reaching finality. However, despite the inability to finalize, network users were still able to transact due to the diversity of the client software implementations.
Importance of Client Diversity in Ethereum Network
Client diversity, which refers to the variety of software clients available to network validators, was crucial in ensuring that users could continue transacting during these issues. This diversity is key to a robust and secure network since the aforementioned scenario did not impact all client implementations.
To prevent similar issues from recurring, both Prysm and Teky have released updates that optimize beacon nodes to avoid consuming excessive resources.
The finality issues witnessed this time were similar to those experienced on March 15th, which had delayed the deployment of the Goerli testnet version of Ethereum’s “Shapella” upgrade. However, the upgrade was successfully deployed on April 12th. The merge of Ethereum’s pre-existing proof-of-work chain with the Beacon Chain on Sept. 15, 2022, was a significant step in Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which is both faster and less energy-intensive.
The recent trading hype around memecoins has led to increased activity on Ethereum, resulting in higher staking rewards rates. On-chain data revealed that in the first week of May, validators earned a whopping $46 million, or 24,997 Ether, marking a 40% increase from the previous week’s income of $33 million, which saw the distribution of 18,339 ETH as rewards.