2022 Q1 Hyperledger Besu

Created by Danno Ferrin, last modified by Bobbi Muscara on Apr 07, 2022

Project Health

Hyperledger Besu remains a strong project with a growing community network of contributors. This quarter the team has passed a major milestone for the Ethereum Mainnet “merge” update as well as supporting the Ethereum Classic Mystique Hard Fork.

Required Information

Have you switched from master to main in all your repos ? - Yes
Have you implemented the Common Repository Structure in all your repos ? - Yes
Has your project implemented these inclusive language changes listed below to your repo? - Yes
Have you added an Inclusive Language Statement to your project’s documentation and/or Wiki pages? - Yes ( Point 5 )

Questions/Issues for the TSC

None at this time

Releases

21.10.5 - 19 Dec 2021
21.10.6 - 4 Jan 2022
22.1.0-RC2 - 6 Jan 2022
21.0.7 - 13 Jan 2022
21.0.8 - 16 Jan 2022
21.0.9 - 19 Jan 2022
22.1.0-RC3 - 25 Jan 2022
22.1.0-RC4 - 30 Jan 2022
22.1.0 - 16 Feb 2022
22.1.1 - 24 Feb 2022
22.1.2 - 15 Mar 2022

More releases occurred than typical for the 22.10.x cycle because an ETC hard fork occurred during the 22.1.x release cycle, some fixes related to merge testing, and one regression.

Overall Activity in the Past Quarter

**Mainnet Paris Upgrade **Previously known as “the merge” a critical test event known as “kiln testnet” successfully occurred, with Besu fully participating. Key areas include synchronization and consensus layer communication APIs.
**QBFT **Marked as production ready
**EVM Library **Investigated removing the “Gas” object to reduce short lived object garbage collection.
Tracing Exposed new tracing methods and added revert reason to traces.

Current Plans

Migration to Java 17 In the 22.7.x cycle Besu will move to Java 17 as the required JVM.
**Paris Upgrade **Paris will ship when it’s ready, but final preparations are at hand.
Shanghai Fork The first fork after The Merge is expected to add some long overdue EVM improvements, such as the Ethereum Object Format.
**Developer experience **Planning to add a work stream to specifically focus on developer experience, allowing prioritization of issues alongside feature work.

Maintainer Diversity

One maintainer was moved to Emeritus status this quarter (Vijay Michalik), reducing the non-consensys maintainer share to 17.8% (5 of 28).

Corporate distribution is unchanged from the last quarters report (ConsenSys, Splunk, Hedera, ETC Co-operative)

Contributor Diversity

LFX Insights Report

Additional Information

Hyperledger, the Ethereum Foundation, and ConsenSys are still working through the final agreements and documentation for the Client Incentive Program. But, in this quarter, the community agreed on following Proposal #4 for setting up the program.

Reviewed By

Submission date

23-Mar-2022

Comments:

Hyperledger, the Ethereum Foundation, and ConsenSys are still working through the final agreements and documentation for the Client Incentive Program. But, in this quarter, the community agreed on following Proposal #4 for setting up the program.

What is proposal #4?

Posted by tkuhrt at Mar 28, 2022 20:56

One maintainer was moved to Emeritus status this quarter (Vijay Michalik), reducing the non-consensys maintainer share to 17.8% (5 of 28).

Are there plans to turn this metric around? What can be done to reduce the Consensys maintainer share and increase the non-Consensys maintainer share?

Posted by tkuhrt at Mar 28, 2022 20:57

It'd be beneficial to clarify in the section about that the big merge, that it is mainly involving the public side of things, for Teku and Besu to run together in order to support PoS on the mainnet, as I'm not sure this is clear to someone who may not be following the "Eth2" project closely.

Posted by jimthematrix at Mar 28, 2022 22:09

Here's the wiki page - [WIP] Proposal #4

Posted by shemnon at Mar 29, 2022 14:41

Teku is not the only beacon chain client that works with Besu. There are 5 different Consensus Layer (CL) clients: Nimbus, Lighthouse, Teku, Prysm, and Loadstar. The Kiln merge has a page listing how people could participate in that event ( https://notes.ethereum.org/@launchpad/kiln#Which-versionbranch-do-I-use ). I expect similar documentation from the EF for the next testnet merges and the mainnet merge.

Posted by shemnon at Mar 29, 2022 14:46

need more clarity on this incentive program, it looks like some transaction fees in Eth will be shared among Hyperledger, Consenys and other maintainers.

Posted by knagware9 at Mar 31, 2022 13:44

Posted by jimthematrix at Mar 31, 2022 14:04