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What surprises me most about the Ethereum ecosystem is the software and release engineering of the implementations, especially the reference (now execution laye

What surprises me most about the Ethereum ecosystem is the software and release engineering of the implementations, especially the reference (now execution layer) go-ethereum. As has been noted elsewhere "the merge" has been in progress for years. Here we are approximately three weeks out and just this morning the (allegedly) working merge ready go-ethereum client was released. Given that the Bellatrix upgrade is scheduled for 9/6 this gives the approximately 4500 Ethereum nodes (of which 3381 are geth)[0] 10 days to update... It also doesn't help that they botched the prior release (two days ago) of the geth client that had a nasty corruption issue that requires a little more than the update warning footnote in this release to fix[1]. Many people who deployed 1.10.22 are re-syncing from (almost) scratch. Even if you followed Prysm and the other Beacon implementations the deployment and configuration changes required are non-trivial[2] and again, the v3 release referenced in this announcement was only released two days ago! As someone who runs Ethereum nodes I'm a little gun shy at this point deploying new releases of this stack, especially given how things have gone the past two days. Even with our relatively trivial application this gives little time for any testing or assurance process. It's amazing to me given the stakes (value of the Ethereum chain) and complexity (huge) node operators are essentially in the position of waiting until mere days (or hours) to upgrade their nodes and as noted - there are thousands of us around the world. IMO this is yet another indication that the real issue with regard to decentralization of blockchain solutions is the fact that (as pointed out by Moxie and others) the vast majority of the real users and platforms of Ethereum interact with the chain via a handful of centralized node providers (Alchemy, Infura, etc). Who can blame them given what a mess this is? I'm also not picking on Ethereum specifically, the same things could be said about most of the other chains and implementations I've interacted with. Given the hype, promise, age, and value in the blockchain ecosystem the software itself makes Apache circa 1996 look like mature, rock solid software. BTW, the Ethereum Foundation alone holds approximately $1.6B in assets[3] and investors have poured tens of billions of dollars in this ecosystem. IMO the quality and process of the fundamental software enabling all of this is inexcusable - it's not like they're wanting for resources to do this right. [0] - https://ethernodes.org/ https://ethernodes.org/ [1] - https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/releases https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/releases [2] - https://docs.prylabs.network/docs/prepare-for-merge https://docs.prylabs.network/docs/prepare-for-merge [3] - https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/19/ethereum-foundation-holds-13b-in-ether-300m-in-non-crypto-investments/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/19/ethereum-founda...

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
> IMO the quality and process of the fundamental software enabling all of this is inexcusable - it's not like they're wanting for resources to do this right. If anything, this just shows how complex the system is. Distributed systems are hard to write. The recent Geth 1.10.22 bug only occurs on shutdown- an edge case I imagine they will be testing from now on.
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  I'm not saying it's not complex and hard. On the contrary - it's incredibly complex and hard but that raises another question: just how far from this ecosystem being ready for prime time are we? At the risk of yet another comparison of blockchain and the internet: Ethereum is at least seven years old, has a market cap of $200B, and the main "sponsor" alone (Ethereum Foundation) has over a billion dollars. For reference Google was built within two years (in the 90s!) with a total inflation adjusted investment of a few hundred thousands dollars - all starting a few years after the release of the web. I know it's not the same thing but CERN says "the web" was "released" in 1993. Would the web have been nearly as successful with these kinds of hijinks taking place with the fundamental enabling software and protocols in 2000? Seven years in the web and the internet (which was also incredibly complex and hard) was already rock solid (certainly by comparison) with many orders of magnitude more users interacting with and depending on it everyday. All of this (and countless other references) makes blockchain look more like fusion power than the "early days" (first thirteen years) of the internet, personal computers, mobile, etc.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    Google wasn't "built within two years". It is a living software program backed by massive infrastructure. It was iterated on for decades and continues to be. The very first iteration of page rank maybe was done in two years. But stop implying that Sergey and Larry built it in their dorm and could walk away from it with zero input or assistance from the tens of thousands of engineers they hired in the ensuing years. The web "rock solid" in the year 2000? Bud, I was still on dial up in the year 2000. Microsoft was still licking its wounds from antitrust lawsuits regarding the web in the year 2000. Flash plugins with huge security deficiencies were still common on the web in 2000. JavaScript was slow as hell because some of Google's tens of thousands of employees hadn't invented V8 yet or Chrome browser yet. Good lord you are washing over a hell of a lot of complexity and effort that went into making the modern web fairly solid.

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago

> IMO the quality and process of the fundamental software enabling all of this is inexcusable - it's not like they're wanting for resources to do this right. If anything, this just shows how complex the system is. Distributed systems are hard to write. The recent Geth 1.10.22 bug only occurs on shutdown- an edge case I imagine they will be testing from now on.

kkielhofner 4y ago
I'm not saying it's not complex and hard. On the contrary - it's incredibly complex and hard but that raises another question: just how far from this ecosystem being ready for prime time are we? At the risk of yet another comparison of blockchain and the internet: Ethereum is at least seven years old, has a market cap of $200B, and the main "sponsor" alone (Ethereum Foundation) has over a billion dollars. For reference Google was built within two years (in the 90s!) with a total inflation adjusted investment of a few hundred thousands dollars - all starting a few years after the release of the web. I know it's not the same thing but CERN says "the web" was "released" in 1993. Would the web have been nearly as successful with these kinds of hijinks taking place with the fundamental enabling software and protocols in 2000? Seven years in the web and the internet (which was also incredibly complex and hard) was already rock solid (certainly by comparison) with many orders of magnitude more users interacting with and depending on it everyday. All of this (and countless other references) makes blockchain look more like fusion power than the "early days" (first thirteen years) of the internet, personal computers, mobile, etc.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Google wasn't "built within two years". It is a living software program backed by massive infrastructure. It was iterated on for decades and continues to be. The very first iteration of page rank maybe was done in two years. But stop implying that Sergey and Larry built it in their dorm and could walk away from it with zero input or assistance from the tens of thousands of engineers they hired in the ensuing years. The web "rock solid" in the year 2000? Bud, I was still on dial up in the year 2000. Microsoft was still licking its wounds from antitrust lawsuits regarding the web in the year 2000. Flash plugins with huge security deficiencies were still common on the web in 2000. JavaScript was slow as hell because some of Google's tens of thousands of employees hadn't invented V8 yet or Chrome browser yet. Good lord you are washing over a hell of a lot of complexity and effort that went into making the modern web fairly solid.