Sharding

Roadmap

3 months. Alpha release: Beacon chain

• 2 weeks. Main chain validator contract with RANDAO

  Initial stage. Addresses Main chain changes section of the spec omitting prioritize(block_hash, value) method. RANDAO seeding is being implemented here. There is a deposit contract published here, it might need to be improved.

• 4 weeks. Block proposers

  Block production part of the Beacon chain, see details under Beacon chain processing section. Obviously, this step also introduces block processing part with fork choice rule and RANDAO seed update.

• 3 weeks. Attesters with primitive signature aggregation

  Introduce attesters. Update block production and processing with aggregated signature, see details. With high probability XOR'ed signatures are going to be used as a primitive aggregation scheme.

• 3 weeks. Prototype of network layer

  This stage aims to get a network layer for beacon chain in as short and determined time as it's possible, having no fallback into sharding network R&D. We would like to use gossipsub protocol as a transport layer solution but if there is a risk of falling in development with unpredicted time resources we will go with plan B. The plan B is to implement a modified version of ETH subprotocol which will be suitable for beacon chain data structures. The time will show us the way.

2 months. Beta release: Shards

• 1 month. Shards with cross-links

  It's time to add shards and stick them to the Beacon chain. Notaries and cross-links are introduced on this stage. Notaries signature is implemented with a primitive way decribed previously. Look for details in the spec.

• 3 weeks. Full signature aggregation scheme

  Replace primitive signature scheme with BLS one. The description is here.

• 1 week. Testing altogether

  • Test whole implementation in private network
  • Create docker rig for sharding demo purposes

1 month. Casper release

• Introduce Casper FFG running on the beacon chain. Details are in the spec.