Jim McDonald

Attestant is pleased to announce that it has been acquired by Bitwise Asset Management Inc: businesswire.com/news/home/2024…

Bitwise is acquiring @AttestantIO, a non-custodial institutional Ethereum staking provider with $4B in staked ether. Why? We fell in love with the Attestant team and their work. They are: - Ethereum staking experts. Staked since Beacon chain genesis. CTO Jim McDonald @jgm has contributed to the consensus protocol, from design through specs to code. - Open source contributors. Maintains Vouch (multi-node validator client) and Dirk (distributed remote keymanager), which is used by 23% of Lido's node operators. - Engaged community members. Publishes research on client diversity, consensus node performance, mev, restaking, and more. None of this will change post-acquisition. We'll aim to protect and amplify the protocol focus, open source contributions, and community engagement. Over the coming months we'll rebrand Attestant to Bitwise "Onchain Solutions". At Bitwise, our goal remains to be a great partner to clients and good stewards of this ecosystem. Now expanding into non-custodial onchain investments solutions is a step we're thrilled to be taking. Grateful and excited for the journey ahead together with the Attestant team —

@pintail_xyz It's definitely the case that not all builders provide payloads to all relays, because we commonly see a mix of payloads when querying multiple relays. I don't know the extent to which that this is the case, however.

@jgm Does that happen in practice though? If the highest bidder is a censoring builder isn't it likely they'll be picked up by all relays?

Seems like it would actually be quite easy for proposers to tell relays to ignore payloads from known censoring builders (thus the relays remain impartial). Any reason why this shouldn't be part of mev-boost?

@pintail_xyz Vouch will use the largest bid from all queried relays that isn't in the excluded list, so as long as at least one relay returns a payload from a non-excluded builder you won't have to use a local payload.

@jgm Oh wow. Does that work with all relays? If the highest bigger is on the excluded builders list, will the relay supply an alternative, or does it just fall back to local building?

Exploring Ethereum’s Correlation Risk x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

@mevproposerbot @ultrasoundmoney Bad bot. It was virtually all withdrawals, and the proposer lost out on better payloads due to the relays accepting them in the bid value.

High Proposer Payment Alert! 💸 Validator Kiln (id: 799652) received 320.17 ETH. Builder: 0x81476c... (I can haz block?)👷‍ Slot: 8,444,661. Received through the @ultrasoundmoney relay. beaconcha.in/tx/0x8bb780405…

@superphiz @beacon Genesis validators: 21063 Genesis validators exited: 6271 Genesis validators with 0x00 credentials: 2144

I wonder if anyone has the time or inclination to determine how many genesis depositors are still staking and how many have exited. It might also be interesting to know how many have or haven't updated withdrawal credentials. @beacon

@stevifi @superphiz @AttestantIO Vouch is a validator client, Dirk is our signer. The biggest difference between Dirk and web3signer is that Dirk uses threshold signing, which means that you don't need to have multiple copies of the same key on different computers for resilience, or rely on a central database.

I just had a GREAT talk with @jgm and Robert from @AttestantIO about Vouch, a validator client that works with multiple beacon nodes. I was intimidated until I found out it takes five minutes to implement. I can't wait to share the video!

@JayBuidl @superphiz @AttestantIO Vouch provides the same level of protection for execution clients as consensus clients, as for the consensus client to accept a block as valid its paired execution client must validate the payload as well.

@superphiz @AttestantIO @jgm Is there an equivalent to Vouch for execution clients?

Chatting with @AttestantIO about a vouch demo. Vouch lets you run multiple beacon chain nodes and it chooses the best data to submit in real time. It's not like fallback, it's like being a hydra. cc: @jgm

@zkcat_eth @AttestantIO @superphiz Consensus and execution clients are paired; if the execution client paired with consensus client A accepts a block and the execution client paired with consensus client B does not accept the block the consensus clients will have different heads.

@AttestantIO @superphiz this is super cool but help me understand Vouch can talk to multiple beacon nodes so it can prevent against a bug/error in a consenus client but how does it help in a case of bug/error in an execution client? cc @jgm

Home validators are flexible, nimble, and eager to serve our best interests. I'm not asking you to change clients. I AM asking everyone to be aware of the real source of majority client dominance: large providers who have refused to change and have hidden in the shadows.

@sir_yves @AttestantIO @brian_armstrong @dcinvestor @coinbase It's very similar to the consensus layer as per attestant.io/posts/helping-… because consensus and execution nodes are paired, with the execution node being driven by the consensus node for deciding on the chain head. Perhaps worth a new article...

@AttestantIO @brian_armstrong @dcinvestor @coinbase Hi @jgm @AttestantIO Thanks for your post. How does Attestant realize client diversity on the Execution Layer? Is there also a blog post on this (couldn't find it)

dear @coinbase today, i unstaked all of the ETH i had staked with you since the first day you offered it as a service. i kept it there to earn passive yield, but also to support your work for the crypto industry (which i greatly value) but i can't ignore the risks of what appears to be a single client staking setup (reliant on geth) at this time. if i have misinterpreted your architecture, please use this post as an opportunity to clarify it while i understand you are working to move towards a multi-client staking environment, i have not seen a timeline for this yet and in the event of an unforeseen geth consensus bug in the meantime, i could stand to lose a large percentage of my deposit. today, i've decided that this is not worth the risk i look forward to staking a portion of my funds with @coinbase again after you have updated your staking clients to a diversified client setup and disclose the details of your approach cc: @brian_armstrong

New article looking at validator returns post-merge, comparing with my previous modelling, and considering the growing role of third-party block builders. pintail.xyz/posts/since-th…

We're delighted and excited that our CTO, @jgm will be speaking at the '#London #Blockchain Finance Summit 2022' next month, hosted by @MetaLinkCapital and @NovumInsights.

New article on the impact of MEV relays in Ethereum: attestant.io/posts/explorin…

@TimBeiko Deprecate goerli. Point smart contract devs to sepolia. Start a new testnet with an initial 1MM validators and large total supply to allow validator testing. Bonus points for reducing ejection balance to 30 Ether.

Would you rather keep Goerli as is (current state but bad distribution), or reset it and give a large balance to every current Goerli address (and lose state)?

@mmrosum @foldfinance @0xdef1 @emilianobonassi @bertcmiller The list of relevant blocks can be found at #mine" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">etherscan.io/address/0x5caf…

Did someone figure out how to mess with the relay's reward calculation, thus winning every block? @foldfinance @bertcmiller

With the #Ethereum Merge expected next week, we're delighted to share our latest article: "Exploring Execution Block Rewards: September 2022" attestant.io/posts/explorin…

@EthOzark @EthereumPools I think the graph makes it pretty clear that this would be a rare occurrence, but it does happen.

@EthereumPools @jgm "last year some proposers got up to 10 Eth per block" That is something my state's lottery commission might say in their TV ads. For the solo validator, 'tips' sound tantamount to winning a lottery. 🫤

Many of you wonder, what will happen with #Ethereum REWARDS after The Merge, aka switch from PoW to PoS. An ELI5 thread on what % to expect and where it's coming from 🧵👇

@ajsutton Is this using the local execution node or a blinded block relay? I worry far more about the latter than the former.

It is something we’ll have to keep an eye on and there is still work to be done to reduce the number of late blocks (and penalise them more) but it’s very good news that the merge isn’t adding to our problems.

One really nice surprise in #testingthemerge - block production and import times aren’t a problem. 🧵