Update Released for Ethereum's Beacon Chain to Address Finality Issues
In response to recent finality issues affecting Ethereum's Beacon Chain, core developers have released patches for Prysm Labs and Teku clients. These issues were hindering block finalization on the Beacon Chain, which serves as the consensus layer for the Ethereum network.
On May 11, Ethereum developers reported problems with transaction confirmation on the Beacon Chain. While new blocks could be proposed, an unknown issue prevented their finalization. The disruption lasted approximately 25 minutes. A similar issue occurred on May 12, resulting in over an hour of block finalization delay.
According to a statement from the Ethereum Foundation, finality could not be reached for three and eight epochs due to high load on some of the Consensus Layers clients, caused by an exceptional scenario. Fortunately, thanks to client diversity, live and end users were still able to transact on the network as not all client implementations were affected.
Client diversity, which refers to the variety of software clients used by network validators, contributes to a more robust and secure network. Teku and Prysm have released upgrades that include optimizations to prevent excessive resource consumption by beacon nodes.
A similar issue occurred on March 15, which caused a delay in the deployment of Ethereum's "Shapella" upgrade on the Goerli testnet. However, the upgrade was successfully deployed on April 12. The integration of Ethereum's preexisting proof-of-work chain with the Beacon Chain on September 15, 2022, facilitated the network's transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, offering faster transaction processing and reduced energy consumption.
The recent hype surrounding memecoins has increased Ethereum's activity and staking rewards rates. On-chain data indicates that validators earned $46 million, equivalent to 24,997 Ether (ETH) valued at $1,804, in the first week of May. This represents a 40% increase compared to the previous week, which saw $33 million in rewards distributed (18,339 ETH).