Ethereum Beacon Chain Upgrade – Prysm Release v4.0.4 and Teku Release 23.5.0

Owned by Egya (Unlicensed)
Jun 01, 2023
3 min read

Developers of the Ethereum network have implemented two urgent upgrade releases on the Ethereum Beacon Chain (the consensus layer of the Ethereum network responsible for the transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism). The upgrade releases were implemented following a finality challenge identified on the beacon chain which led to the network’s first inactivity leak (an emergency state where the chain is unable to finalize, during which attesters receive no rewards while non-participating (inactive) validators receive increasingly large penalties based on their track records) on the main network. The issue was first identified on the on 11th and subsequently on the 12th of May 2023 for 4 epochs and 9 epochs in finalization respectively including 200,551 to 200,760 estimated to have lasted for a total duration of over 40 minutes, which is considered a long period for such non-finality on the mainnet to persist and eventually resulted in an inactivity leak.  

The root cause of the incident is attributed to the chain’s inability to process valid attestations with an old target checkpoint in an optimal way. However, during this incident, end users on the mainnet (execution layer) were not impacted, as transactions and blocks were processed as expected. Stakers and developers were mainly impacted by the incident. The issue was resolved on the same day (12th May) restoring finality on the beacon chain with blocks in sync and the upgrade release put in place to mitigate against future persistence or recurrence.  

Ethereum Mainnet Finality (05/11/2023) | by Offchain Labs | May, 2023  

 

Evaluation Process   

MidChains has:   

  • Evaluated what is changing 

  • Analysed the impact of the changes 

 

What is Changing? 

  • Prysm Release v4.0.4 - This release contains several optimizations, fixes and the introduction of new features as an enhancement of the last release v4.0.3 - hotfix . The new release is expected to improve the resilience of the Consensus layer and the operational efficiency of the Beacon chain.  

  • Teku Release 23.5.0 - This release includes additions, changes, improvements, and bug fixes that is a recommended update containing old attestation filtering with old target checkpoint. 

 

Impact Analysis of the Upgrade Releases 

MidChains was not required to perform any action towards the upgrade releases on the Beacon Chain of the Ethereum network. Consensus Layer (CL) client users were advised to upgrade to the relevant releases (Prysm release tag v4.0.4 and Teku release 23.5.0). Node operators within the Execution Layer (EL) were not required to update their nodes. No action was required by clients who hold Ether (ETH), and MidChains clients’ funds were not impacted by these Beacon chain upgrades. Deposit, withdrawal, and trading remained uninterrupted for ETH, ERC20 tokens and related listed trading pairs as the upgrades had no effect on the Execution layer of the Ethereum network upon which the listed virtual asset Ether (ETH) primarily operates. 

Impact on Client Funds: No impact to clients' funds. All transactions are expected to be processed without issues as per usual.  

Regulatory implications: None  

Maturity / Market Capitalization: None  

Security and Operations: Improved security against possible attacks such as 51% attacks or double-spending attempts, and enhanced stability 

Traceability / Monitoring: None 

Exchange Connectivity and Demand: No impact   

Type of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT): No impact 

Innovation and /Efficiency: Improved network performance, efficiency and user experience specifically for DApps and smart contracts that rely on timely block confirmations 

Upgrade  

Beacon chain validators, and stakers utilizing Prysm and Teku were advised to immediately upgrade to the relevant releases (Prysm release tag v4.0.4 and Teku release 23.5.0). Node operators within the Execution Layer (EL) were not required to update their nodes. No action was required by clients who hold Ether (ETH), and clients’ funds are not impacted. 

The Finality issue identified on the Beacon chain did not result in any outages both on the consensus layer and execution layer of the Ethereum network, hence did not have any impact on the listed virtual asset ETH on the custodian and MTF.   

Deposit, withdrawal, and trading for ETH, ERC20 tokens and the related listed trading pairs continue to be operational with no impact/interruptions experienced during the period for transactions on the custodian and on the MTF.