Ethereum Merge Updates! | Tim Beiko

Hey guys, Bankless Nation. Welcome to another episode of State of the Nation. David, this episode, we're going to be asking Tim Bako all about the merge. Are we there yet, Tim? Are we there yet? I think we're only

Asking Tim when merge. That's the whole show.

we need an update on the merch because I feel like some things have happened recently that uh may look, there were never dates for for for the merge, of course, but we want to get an assessment of actually when, but also more importantly, what needs to happen between now and the merge. And Tim Bako is the person to ask about all of these things. He is a master coordinator on everything Ethereum. So uh David, what else are we going to discuss with Tim today?

Yeah, there are just a number of test nets that we have to get through, and so we're gonna talk about each step of the test met test nets, uh, what needs to happen which which uh with each of those. Uh there's also like most uh hard forks in Ethereum happen at that block height, but not the merge. The merge happens with a different uh pr uh like prerequisite, I guess, for like what when actually that merge happens. Uh so there's a bunch of information to parse apart there. And also overall, there's just like a bunch of misconceptions we want to clear up. No, the Ethereum merge will not reduce gas fees. We're gonna talk about why people think that and why it's wrong. Uh, and uh also just talk about like what does happen at the merge. Like, does ether issuance go down? Uh yes, it does. But why? Will users or apps have to do anything? Uh can you run a node without staking? What other popular misconceptions there are? And then of course what happens after the merge. So after we ask Tim Baco when merge, uh, we will be asking all about the misconceptions and the things on the horizon beyond the merge as well. Uh, but first we're gonna talk about the road to the merge. Um, so that's what comes up next.

Awesome. All right. And also, uh, our friends over at MetaMask have wanted us to tell you about the buy button inside of the MetaMask wallet. I'm a super user of MetaMask. It's fantastic. Use the extension, use MetaMask in mobile. But David, I haven't noticed until recently that there's actually a buy button inside of both the browser extension and inside of the mobile wallet. What does that buy wallet unlock for people?

Yeah, for me I use it uh when I need to top up a wallet uh for gas payments, for example, it's nice because you can use that buy button in MetaMask with your credit card or debit card, or it can hook also straight into your bank account. Uh but if you just need to quickly get some like uh some ETH into your wallet, uh the MetaMask buy button is super convenient. It has a bunch of just integrations with your bank accounts via different providers. Uh and so uh like I believe there's wire, there's transact, there's moon pay, uh, and so it's probably the fastest way to go from a credit card or a bank account into Ether into your wallet for whatever reason. Maybe you need to buy a quick uh NFT on OpenSea, maybe you need some gas and a brand new wallet and you don't want to dox yourself. Uh it's on both the the desktop version, so like listeners who are watching this on YouTube right now, you can open up MetaMask and you'll see that little buy button. Uh you probably didn't really think about that too often, but it's also on MetaMask Mobile as well, uh, being probably the fastest way to get from fiat into uh crypto. Uh, you know, buy buttons. We like buy buttons more than we like sell buttons, don't we, Ryan?

Yeah, you know what? It always makes me sad whenever I pay uh get for gas fees in ETH because I'm like, oh, I spent I spent ETH. I don't want to spend ETH. And so it's nice to have a way to automatically like buy that back right inside of the wallet extension. You know, if there was like an auto buyback option, I'd probably just click that and have MetaMask replace all of the uh gas fees I spent on ETH. But uh

Possible to paying for gas with your credit card.

there you go. There you go. Uh David, before we get into the episode with Tim, want to ask you the question I always ask, which is what is the state of the nation today?

I'm gonna go ahead and guess the state of the nation is annoying, Ryan. My answer was previously we are verging, as in we are on the verge of the merge. But since like everyone is asking Tim, when merge? When merge, I'm gonna go ahead and say, Ryan, that the state of the nation is really annoying for people like Tim Baco, who's always bombarded with the question when merge. Uh, we're about to ask him the same question, so we're the annoying ones uh this week, Ryan. So yeah, State of the Name, Ryan, is annoying.

Yeah, well, you know, it's kind of like the the kids in the backseat of the car, right? Always asking dad and you know Tim's sitting in that place. But uh may maybe we'll save that question toward to a little bit towards the end. I think it is getting close though, David. I think we are on the verge of the merge of regardless. It's just like when exactly will that happen? And I think that's not even the most important question, right? An important question, of course, is how do we make sure we get this thing right? Because it would be very bad if um, you know, we we did this a little bit too early before all of the boxes were checked and before we felt uh secure as a community. So we'll talk about all of those things with Tim Baco. You want to say something and then we'll get to sponsors, David?

Yeah, I'll say everyone is asking when merge, but no one is asking about how's the merge doing. And so we're going to ask Tim Bako how the merge is doing right after we get through some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

Hey guys, we are back here with uh Tim Bako talking all about the merge today. It's a it's a merge check-in. I think we're probably gonna have a few of these episodes on Bankless, but of course you guys know Tim. He's been on the Bankless podcast a number of times. He runs the core protocol meetings called the All Core Devs Call, that essential ACD call that you may have heard about for Ethereum. This is where all the devs come together, they discuss what to do next with Ethereum. They they get input from all corners of the ecosystem, protocol researchers and client teams and everyone else. And Tim, of course, coordinates and is a liaison for a lot of that activity. Uh, and Tim also spends a lot of time talking to the outside world about the Ethereum roadmap. So he is the guy we can ask about the merge. Tim, how are you doing, man? It's good to have you back.

Thanks. Yeah, glad to be back.

Um, so aside from yourself, I'm c I'm curious, Tim, who else can we ask the question of of when merge? Like you know, because we would be doing this weekly if we could.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

the reason I'm happy to come on here is that

hope this way researchers and devs are not spending their times uh answering these questions and they can actually work on the merch. Um so I yeah, uh they can obviously give you an answer, but hopefully they can spend their time working on it instead.

Um, I mean,

Trent from the EF is another really good person for this. Like he he he just likes me, like follows all of this and and has a bit more of like a community role. Um Danny can also give you some some really good answers, but he's like

Heads down writing all these specs. So again,

um you you don't want him to

spend too much of his time doing this stuff.

We got another name. That's good. So Tim and Trent. And then this is a message to the community. Every time you ask a dev or researcher when merge, it delays the merge by another 10 minutes. Okay. So we need to stop doing that. We need to uh you know it comes to the case. Only ask only thanks to aggregate. We can only do it of Tim and uh and Trent now. Um, but like so if the imagery here is like we are kind of the annoying kids in the back of the car asking the drivers, the developers, you know, uh when when merge, when's this all gonna happen? I I guess the next follow up question is maybe more broadly is what mile marker are we on? Okay, so if uh the road to the merge is a hundred miles long, what mile mark marker are we on at this point in time? Are we are we, you know, 70? Are we 80? Are we like, you know, 90, 95, something like this?

Right. Um

it's it's weird because it's not like a straight road, right? Like it's a winding road, and

and there's some some turns that get added as we drive on.

Tim.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so I I I don't have a a great

Like answer, I mean, like at a high level, like you know, we

test nets are the last thing we do before going to mainnet. And tomorrow we're forking the first of the three test nets we plan to fork.

Um,

we did

so and that's Robston, just to be to be clear. Um

and

we are forking Robston a bit earlier than we otherwise would.

Um, because

basically we're asking a bit more of node operators and stakers in this upgrade than we are in previous ones. Um so in previous uh upgrades on say the execution layer or even on the beacon chain.

The only thing people usually have to do is download a new version of the client that they're running, and that's it. They're good to go. It takes like five minutes and that's it.

This one's a bit more complicated. So if you're running on the beacon chain or on the kind of execution chain or proof of work chain today, you now need to download this other client, which you may not have had before.

You need to configure it to work with your current client. And there's a couple extra parameters you need to set. And so because this is like a bit more complicated than previous upgrades, we figured it would be good to run Robson first as a way for people to kind of test drive this process. And we do plan to deprecate the Robson testnet kind of shortly after the merge. So even if it doesn't go exactly as smoothly as we'd want, we're fine with that.

Because this way, you know, like home stakers, for example, or infrastructure providers can run through the merge on Robson, figure out if anything went wrong, we can fix all of that, and then we'll hopefully have like a much smoother deployment on like Gordy, uh, which would be like our next test net. Um, but but at a high level, you know, it's we want to run through Robson, then there's two more test nets, Gordy and Sipolia. And once those are done, we'd move to mainnet.

Uh the big caveat is obviously if we found a big issue at any point during that, then we'll want to pause and fix that.

Um

Yeah, so in terms of steps, there's not that many steps, but it's it's very hard to tell you how long each of those steps can take. Um

And e each test net is actually a proof of work test net, and so every test net is going to transition into proof of stake. Uh and so

is that correct?

kind of so two of the three are proof of work. So Robsten is and and Sipolia is. The Gordy testnet actually runs under what's called proof of authority. And that's basically we whitelist a bunch of nodes and we tell them you can produce a block at this at this time, and we just rotate through them. Um so they'll all move to proof of stake. Uh but there's only two of the three that are moving that are moving from proof of work, and Robsten is one of them. Yeah.

Okay, and so what are we testing with every single test net, right? Each test net has uh various like variables, and and of course the merge has a bunch of variables with it has the consensus layer clients, it has the uh uh execution layer clients. Uh as we let's let's start with Gorly, the one that's coming up here in a couple days. What are we actually testing when we do when we merge a test net?

Right, that's that's a good question. Um, so Ruffson is the one that's tomorrow, uh, to be clear. Um so yeah, yeah. Um so

what we're testing is basically whether you know the code in client works as expected. Um, but for the, and that's usually what we test on test nets. It's like, you know, does this thing work as we'd expect in conditions that are more or less similar to mainnet?

Um, but for the merge, we've actually done this quite

a lot of times before uh with these shadow forks that we've run. Um so these shadow forks were kind of

Forks that would happen on testnet or mainnet, but there would only have a small number of nodes that's controlled by testing and client teams that would fork. So we've we've done those,

I think about 10 times so far. And so we have high confidence that like, you know,

things work. And we wanted to have that extra level of confidence because the merge is such a like complex change. So I think the thing that we're looking at for test nets even more today than just like the code working is whether the community

Like manages to like smoothly upgrade. And

basically it's like, you know, once it's happened, you know, are the validators able to run through the commands? Is it clear? Uh what type of tutorials and documentation do we need to write for them? So I think that's like the additional parts that like we're really paying a lot of attention to here. Um and we know that this first one probably won't be perfect just because of how kind of new and different it is. Um, but then hopefully for the next one, which will probably be Gordy, um, we're gonna fix a bunch of those issues, have better documentation as so that it goes smoother and people kind of have many runs uh to try things on before it actually happens on mainnet. And when it does happen on mainnet, then they have really high confidence that their setup is is correct.

So this is not only a test net on of the software of the protocol of the code, it's also a test net for humans, right? This is also

Yeah.