v1.0.10

This release contains important security and performance improvements.

Note: You may have noticed that we've skipped a release version. While we did push v1.0.9 to the stable branch, we didn't make an official release or publish any binaries for it. v1.0.10 differs from v1.0.9 only in that it keep tracks of your attestations in both the old and the new database formats. This ensures you are able to safely rollback should you need to do so. If you're already running v1.0.9, upgrading to v1.0.10 is safe (we recommend you upgrade at your convenience); in order to be extra safe, please do not switch off doppelganger detection (it should be on by default).

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Upgraded:

• We're now running version 0.3.3 of the BLST library:
  https://github.com/supranational/blst/releases/tag/v0.3.3

• We've switched to a more recent version of BearSSL
  (this version features a more up-to-date list of trusted root certificates)

• We're now consistent with the v1.0.1 Eth2 spec (which allows for Eth1 withdrawal credentials -- ethereum/consensus-specs#2149)

We've fixed:

• A frequent crash occurring on certain hardware configurations after
  building Nimbus from source.

• Long processing delays triggered by the reception of attestations that
  reference already pruned states.

• LibP2P peer management issue which led to an accumulation of inactive
  connections.

• A false-positive in doppelganger detection triggered by rebroadcasted
  older attestations arriving with a significant delay.

New features:

• A new improved format of the slashing protection database:

  • Significantly reduces the disk load with a large number of validators (1000+).

  • Makes it possible to enhance our doppelganger detection in the future ---
    waiting for 2 epochs before attesting on launch will no longer be necessary.

  • To ensure a smooth upgrade and the possibility for emergency rollbacks between older and future Nimbus versions, v1.0.10 will keep track of your attestations in both the old and the new database formats. This extra load should be negligible for home stakers.

• Automatic configuration of external IP address when a public IP address is used or when a public IP address is provided as a listener address. This is active by default (--nat:any) and with the option --nat:none. It is deactivated when you pass in --nat:upnp, --nat:pmp or --nat:extip:<ip address>. In practice this means that if you run your node and are not behind NAT (e.g. cloud setups without docker), you should no longer need to provide --nat:extip:<ip address>

v1.0.8

This release includes important JSON-RPC stability improvements and compatibility fixes, which make it possible to use Nimbus as a RocketPool operator.

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New features:

• RocketPool integration ready: see rocket-pool/smartnode#89 and rocket-pool/smartnode-install@da720ac

• Next attestation time displayed on every Slot end log message (helps you select the best time for restarting the node)

• libp2p scoring: disconnect from badly performing peers and prioritise peers with better latency and throughput

We've fixed:

• A rare crash triggered when connecting to a web3 provider using a secure web socket

• JSON-RPC spec violations (we fixed a bug in the json module used to read eth1 data which could have allowed a malicious eth1 provider to crash Nimbus)

• Two stale bootstrap node addresses

v1.0.7

A release which provides additional protection against accidental slashings and further performance improvements across the board.

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New additions:

• New slashing protection mechanism (doppelganger detection) prevents your validator from contradicting itself if you have accidentally left it running on another machine(see the --doppelganger-detection option).

• Optimized batching of BLS signature verification leading to faster sync speeds and reduced CPU load.

• Further improvements to attestation subnet walking resulting in a reduction in both bandwidth and CPU usage.

• A new --subscribe-all-subnets option allowing the node to maintain peers from all attestation subnets (most suitable for bootstrap nodes).

• Official docker images published at https://hub.docker.com/r/statusim/nimbus-eth2

• Official Windows binaries created from a reproducible build recipe.

• An option to enable the automatic updating of IP:Port in the ENR (off by default, specify --enr-auto-update:true to turn it on)

We've fixed:

• A bug that had the potential to completely halt all syncing activity.

• Inefficient processing of blocks with Eth1 deposits which occassionally led to increased latencies when delivering attestations.

• Outdated records in our bootstrap nodes list.

• An Eth1 syncing issue which manifested itself as a "Corrupted deposits history detected" error.

• Non-standard encoding of certain data types such as signatures and bit sequences within the results of JSON-RPC requests.

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We've deprecated:

• make beacon_node will no longer compile the beacon node. You'll need to run make nimbus_beacon_node from now on

• On monday we'll phase out the old master branch. If you're still building Nimbus from master, please switch to stable.

v1.0.6

A release that brings reproducible precompiled binaries for ARM devices and
significant performance improvements.

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New additions:

• Reproducible build recipe for creating Nimbus Linux binaries intended for
  ARM devices.

• Improved attestation subnet walking logic: this brings significant reductions
  in bandwidth usage and CPU load.

• Better usage of the Sqlite3 checkpointing API (minor performance
  improvement).

• Larger window for the candidate attestations included in blocks: this can lead
  to higher block rewards.

We've fixed:

• Incorrect attnets value announced in ENR records.

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Please note that the 1.0.5 release was retracted: it included an
optimization to the reproducible build scripts that turned out to be buggy
(specifically, the binary for AMD64 systems was affected). Manually built binaries (through Make) were not affected. This release (1.0.6) fixes the problem and contains the same release notes.

v1.0.4

A release that brings further stability improvements and minor performance
optimisations.

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New additions:

• Nimbus can now be safely shut down with the SIGTERM signal on POSIX systems.

• Discovery IP limits greatly increase the cost of eclipse attacks.

• A make benchmarks target for obtaining a performance score for your system.

• An upgrade of the BLST library bringing minor performance improvements.

We've fixed:

• Gossipsub resource leaks that were reducing the quality of the gossipsub mesh and
  the attestation effectiveness of the client.

• Incomplete validation of forwarded attestations that may have been negatively affecting peer scores.

• An issue halting the activity of the Eth1 monitor.

• An incorrect zero validator balance displayed while the node is syncing.

• A regression preventing Nimbus from being used with custom testnet metadata files.

v1.0.3

This release fixes issues that have been responsible for Nimbus' lower peer scores on the network.

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New additions:

• New metrics to track the syncing progress of the Eth1 deposit contract
  monitor.

• A new web3 test command to test the compatibility of a web3 provider
  before using it. Example usage: build/nimbus_beacon_node web3 test ws://localhost:1000

We've fixed:

• An incorrect timing error that occurred when sending aggregated attestations.

• Stale ENR records that didn't take into account the dynamic attestation subnet
  hopping.

• An invalid error message (validator
  state unknown) produced by the deposits exit command.

v1.0.2

A release that fixes an issue regarding the occasional missed block proposal.

Proposing a block is arguably the most important duty you have as a validator. So we recommend updating at your earliest convenience.

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New additions:

• 8 new JSON-RPC calls that bring us to feature parity with the official beacon node API.

We've fixed:

• A deposit merkle proofs generation issue which occasionally resulting in missed block proposals shortly after a new Eth1 head was selected.

• Slow status bar updates in the absence of logging messages.

v1.0.1

A release with a number of important fixes and optimisations.

Please update at your earliest convenience.

In order to minimise downtime, we recommend updating and rebuilding the beacon node before restarting.

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New additions:

• More conservative Eth1 syncing requests to reduce the likelihood of going over the maximum allowed burst rates under the Infura free plan (predominantly aimed at those running Nimbus on resource-restricted device like Raspberry Pi's) + more resiliency in case of errors.

We've fixed:

• A "Only one concurrent read allowed" crash reported by multiple users.

• An error in the default configuration preventing the node from discovering peers on mainnet unless the --network=mainnet flag was passed (note, this did not affect users starting their node with the ./run-mainnet-beacon-node command).

• The fractional part of the ETH balance in the Nimbus status bar (the value displayed should now be correct).

• An issue that occasionally caused the Eth1 syncing process to get stuck before reaching the head of the chain.

• Unnecessary network traffic related to GossipSub IHAVE.

• Incorrect gossipsub pruning which occasionally resulted in messages getting lost.

• An issue where an excessively long graffiti string could cause a crash on startup.

• A Linux-only issue that resulted in the deposits import command ignoring its supplied arguments.

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Stay Updated 🙏

If you're building Nimbus from source, to update (from master) run:

git pull && make update

Followed by

make nimbus_beacon_node

✨

Stateofus (v1.0.0)

As promised, a slightly more polished release before Mainnet launch ✨

Please make sure you update to this release before Eth2 genesis on
Tuesday (December 1 12:00:23 UTC), as it contains some important improvements.

We recommend monitoring the release channels (Discord, here) for new releases over the next 48 hours (i.e until genesis is over and things are stable).

New additions:

• Updated list of bootstrap nodes for Mainnet.

• Prometheus metrics for validator balances. The beacon node will also
  display the total balance of all attached validators in the status
  footer by default.

• deposits import now automagically finds the validator_keys directory
  produced by the eth2.0-deposit-cli if it is located in the same working
  directory.

• A deposits exit command for submitting a voluntary validator exit.

• A record CLI command for inspecting and creating ENR records.

• An --agent-string option for specifying how Nimbus will present itself
  in LibP2P messages. The default value is now nimbus.

• New RPC calls to track node and config status. Specifically, a JSON-RCP
  call for inspecting the active config preset (get_v1_config_spec).

We've fixed:

• Inaccurate peer counts (an occasional mismatch between the number of
  syncing peers and GossipSub peers) -- the default peer limit has been
  increased to maintain a healthy gossip mesh.

• High bandwidth usage of GossipSub (due to sub-optimal caching and lack
  of limits in the IWANT/IHAVE exchange messages) -- we're now using the
  latest spec GossipSub parameters.

• High sync memory footprint -- we've reduced the number of sync workers
  from 20 to 10 (note, this should not affect sync speed).

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Stay updated 🙏

If you're building Nimbus from source, to update (from master) run:

git pull && make update

Followed by

make nimbus_beacon_node

As usual, see the Nimbus book for the latest documentation updates. In particular we've pushed a significant update to our Raspberry Pi guide (we now recommend using a 64-bit OS and an Enterprise grade SSD), added a page on Mainnet recommendations for Pi users, a page on voluntary exits, and documented our new simplified key-importing process.

v0.6.6 (hope)

New additions:

• New RPC APIs for inspecting the internal state of the Eth1 monitor.

We've fixed:

• A fork-choice issue causing Nimbus to get stuck on a particular slot.

• A logic error causing Nimbus to vote for an incorrect Eth1 block.

• A crash during initialization when the web3 provider refuses
  to serve data (for example, when a request quota has been exceeded).

Notes:

• This release takes a bit longer to start than usual - this will be addressed in the next release

• To update to the latest version, run:

git pull && make update

Followed by

make nimbus_beacon_node

(If your beacon node is already running, you'll need to disconnect -- Ctrl+C -- and reconnect for the changes to take effect)

Seen the Nimbus book for more.