Ethereum on Resource constrained devices. Running nodes, staking and The Merge

Transcript

foreign thank you very much for attending uh yeah we will be talking about running notes and uh particularly running notes in uh resource constraining devices so uh you know click

no it now I don't know what I'm doing um now uh thank you thank you uh yeah a decentralization starts by people running nodes at home so uh this is a decentralized technology and and this is a key absolutely key feature for for uh for a blockchain to be decentralized completely decentralized so for example

how many of you are running notes at home yeah Raspberry Pi yeah not much uh what kind of nodes uh if you don't want anything to ask someone validating are running be contained not much and I think that's a little problem I mean uh and that's why we are here I mean when I first run into into ethereum I was learning about the technology watching videos and uh uh you know getting myself educated with ethereum I was very

excited and and I thought how can I contribute uh to this the community well the answer was obvious I mean uh you you can run a note so I decided to set up a note and when I got the the notes up and running uh I thought wait a minute this was not easy and I have a business background I was working for a company for 15 years that this uh Linus Focus I mean we're in server side and I I have this kind this kind of skills and it wasn't easy for me

so I thought well will be able regular users to to run and if you know and the answer at that time was obviously not and another question that that I asked myself was um yeah does it make sense to to run a nose on my laptop for example or on my desktop because you know you have your daily job you have to do a lot of tasks and you are approaching the internet and I don't know I thought I can I cannot run a note on on my laptop for example

so we start to to looking for other Alternatives and that's why uh we find these little devices that you all know like the Raspberry Pi there are a lot of boards but raspberry pies and and I thought hey can a device like this run a note seeing the whole blockchain Etc so we try we set up the node and it worked everywhere so uh fernan is talking a little about what we provide okay I'm here to talk what is his

filling alarm okay that you can really we provide them blue gambling image for arm socks that automatically turns aboard into a fully serial node what does it mean right now this is an audience to 20 years for image it's based on Ubuntu and we provide a set of scripts and whole repository who transformed this Ubuntu images in automatic way you have to do nothing uh it's uh the only thing that you have to do is write down in an SCT card image plug it to the device and you are good to go you are running

so what do we think that is needed to to create this kind of message the first thing that you have to think is the configuration for regular research to run an image this pretty useful that you don't have to to change any configuration that everything works out of the box and in this image everything works out at works you have available all the on almost all the ethereum clients and already configured already all the um confusion files in his site the partitions the the parts everything is ready to go and you have to be another one it had to be easy this tradition is

the easy situation that you could imagine so you have to write one one imagine SD card and the upgrade is also easy because we provide an apt repository and you only need to update the whole system in with the whole system the new versions of the package of the ethereum clients it will be available for you and we will automatically update it and restart it we have to support as many devices as we can right now we have available the image for the raspberry pi4 this is the only one but if you use our GitHub repository you could use also for the right that you will talk about it later and this year probably one or two more devices are

coming and one there one thing is very promising um we have to make sure that this image is production ready and right now it's pretty sensory because we are staking from Day Zero in a Raspberry Pi 4. with almost no problem running um if you don't want anything to client in the same device why we choose arm devices okay like the other before first of all they are affordable most of these devices are cheaper than the regular ones using cheaper than an internal or another this small server or a small Home Server a cheaper are low power okay I think we can run another under 15

watts and in our message the Raspberry Pi 4 are syncing the whole network the whole blockchain running under nine nine or third ten volts yeah and then I don't have words and their performant right now these devices are able to sync the whole blue thing and are able to room all the clients in one only devices and with the rock 5 that's a board that we will talk later even the the harbor wasted one there are small form factors okay what does it mean is there are small devices you could run it at home because it's a very small devices

not very noisy sometimes it's it depends on the fund and the the finance fact that you buy to to tend to cool it and you could only with two small wires to cut the two small cables sorry and you can use one for the power another one for the network and you're ready to go and you'll need a big installation of your home you don't need to run a home server room and nothing like this you can run a note in a box like this side very very small and this is the the last point is for us very important is architecture diversity okay most of the nodes that are running right now the the ethereum blockchain are

based on Intel or AMD architecture if you found any problem like Specter a few years ago that could be a security problem in is related to the architecture is useful for the network to have another nodes that are running a different architecture in order to dislike the same thing with the variety of clients you need to protect yourself and if some kind has a book or some security problem it's the same for the architecture we are as well testing risk 5 not only arm and and it's a very interesting architecture because it's open and we

would not have only open software but uh open Hardware it will be ever interesting yeah um later we can talk about the image itself what does this image provide the first thing is an automatic installation setup that's mean the image take care of all the steps needed to to run on it format the disk create the partitions need a external disk SSD disk or an nbme disk and the image do deserve for you it also creates a ethereum user and all of the configuration for all the clients

it includes all the major clients using our own ipt repository in more Pastor you could EC style or easy update any of the mayor ethereum clients this package includes assistant services so you could start stop restart any of the ethereum clients they are running in background if the if the process has any problem or stops it will start automatically it will continue to to working and I think for us is very important it's including self-monitoring

those Wars using Prometheus and graphene we include the Primitive server that are already pre-configure it to read stats for all the clients and even a stats from the own device and with this graphene as well you could be able to see the progress of the syncing you could be able if to see the memory Network these problems you could be you could nobody know your hardware and know if you need anything else more disk more memory or whatever or even the the throughput of your network anything it's all ready to to see and there is going to talk to you a

little more about the device itself that we are working with yeah the Raspberry Pi this is our most proven device I mean who you all know it it's uh model it's capable of syncing the the maintenance in two three days I would say two with a new snap system uh you just need a USB 3 to SSD disk and SSD with a bridge and it's capable of running both if you don't want notes anything to I mean uh for example Geth and Lighthouse

at the same time and weaving weaving uh staking here with this device since day Zero but meaning both Notes One the big contain and one elevator in the same device just with this board and and USB through Cloud you USB 3 disk so it's very proof I mean it's rock solid we didn't have any major problem with it it was running 24 7 for two years or you know always there is a blackout or or maybe a problem with the micro SD but minor

problems I mean the device are very solid and ideal for this kind of tasks and it's been great it's been great this one will Reserve this one the Rocks uh rocked 5B uh I think two weeks ago well this is a game changer because um this have uh system a eight cores are powerful very powerful CPU but an nbme with four lanes and it's amazingly fast I mean this is another kind of device this is able to sync

magnet in 18 hours and currently we are testing it and running visual which in the Raspberry Pi Z was impossible to to run between not impossible but it couldn't sink the whole blockchain and this we are currently making a test with this because it's very recent I think it's it's not even available for the public but we contacted the the manufacturer directly and and we could buy them by the letter from directly from from them and it we were absolutely astonishing because it's it's uh it's an amazing

board and it has another interesting capability that this that it includes the crypto extensions and this will improve a very like we think very much the the hashing tasks for example uh we need to test this but for example the the Raspberry Pi didn't include this because of Licensing uh uh problems and this is another uh great feature of of this uh board we are maybe we are planning maybe some two or three weeks in producing an image for

this and and everyone will be able to to run this device as anything node and the last one that we're talking today is one this this one is more equivalent to to the raspberry P4 it's something the CPU is a less performant but it's okay but it has NBA me support that it's very cool then includes as well the the crypto extensions the hardware crypto stencils that it's very interesting now we are talking a little of the merge

well you know we are all very excited with the mates and we we've been uh we've been doing testing pretty much from the beginning uh you know the the big changes the switch from Pole to post and that mining mining will be able producing blocks will be able to uh you you will be able to produce blocks on consumer Hardware like this like these boards and that's well name changes of of the ethereum clients we have a pretty much all clients available as of today for everyone who wants to to play along

with with a match to to join the the to join the test Nets uh will have a specific image which you can download and and run uh you know that now you have to run two clients they will have one client and two clients at the same time you can pick whatever client you want and and test in your device uh we we join it uh as well uh many many cello folks you know that this this was uh organized by by the ethereum foundation team we we've been in contact with them and enjoying them I think

three three maintenance out of works it will right and well it they work perfectly and my four days ago we joined the Robson folk as well so so yeah it seems that uh ethereal in ethereum is going in the good in the right path I mean it will be you will be able to run north with consumer hardware and and this is great and if you compare it with other blockchains you realize that ethereum is taking this very seriously

very seriously because from the very beginning you were able to run a note and if you read other blockchain specifications you will see that you will need absolute server monster in some cases to run a blockchain node so will it be possible to run possible notes in these kinds of devices well uh two or three weeks ago I would say most probably with the new rock 5 board absolutely yes so yeah we will be there we'll be working on this and when the match comes I'm

sure that anyone anybody that wants to to run a note in these kinds of devices it will be quite easy so that's nice questions [Applause]