Summary

This update serves to outline the focus and vision of the project over the coming months.

In particular: - The primary goal is to deliver a Beacon Chain testnet client in March. - Implementation of a validator client will begin in late-January. - We have clarified task delegation amongst the team. - Implementation of Eth 2.0 specification components is resuming. - More resources are being applied to the project.

Details

March testnet

Many of the Eth 2.0 teams are targeting the release of a testnet in March 2019. Lighthouse has adopted this goal as well.

A Beacon Chain testnet involves multiple implementations establishing network connectivity and working together to construct a common chain. This will be the first time that different Eth 2.0 clients interact and is considered a significant milestone for the project.

Validator client implementation

A "Validator Client" is a distinct binary from the Beacon Chain implementation which is dedicated to validation duties. These duties include attesting as to the validity of announced Beacon Chain blocks, Shard Chain blocks, and producing new blocks.

The Lighthouse team have not yet started on the Validator Client binary, however its core logic is shared with the Beacon Chain and is presently being implemented.

The team will start on the Validator Client implementation later this month, once the Lighthouse RPC is up and running.

Project management

The past weeks have seen a significant amount of project management around recruitment and keeping the team aligned. For the next fortnight, we have the following core team members assigned as follows:

• Adrian: libp2p and syncing.
• Alex: Specification implementation.
• Chris: Documentation and fork-choice analysis (part-time).
• Luke: Provisioning of devops infrastructure.
• Mehdi: Security processes and analysis (part-time).
• Paul: Project management and RPC implementation.
• Kirk: Supporting tasks.

Community contributors will also be providing valuable assistance across a variety of implementation details.

Specification implementation

We have been holding back on implementation of the Eth 2.0 specification over the past weeks to avoid implementing components that are subject to change. Instead, we have been working on other components of Lighthouse, such as database and networking.

We're glad to have taken this approach as it conserved some resources, but now it's time to resume spec. implementation. Alex is starting work on the spec helpers, for which progress can be followed on issue #104.

More resources

We have applied more resources to the project in the new year. This is partly due to stabilisation of the specification, and also due to the completion of some large security projects at Sigma Prime.

As a result, we have increased the amount of resources dedicated to Lighthouse, to the tune of an additional two full-time employees (spread across three individuals). We're also preparing to add another full-time resource in the coming weeks.

Contributors

As always, we're keen for more contributors! If you want to get involved, please find a "good-first-issue" and leave a comment or drop a line on the gitter channel.