Ethereum Sharding Implementers Call #0 Agenda

[djrtwo]

Ethereum Sharding Implementers Call #0 Agenda

Meeting Date/Time: Thursday 2018/08/02 at 14:00 GMT

Meeting Duration ~1 hour

Agenda

1. General Introduction of Sharding Meeting
2. Client Updates
3. Research Updates
4. Open Discussion
   • v2.1 spec
   • Conforming to p2p messages, prysmatic protocol buffers, and other p2p related discussion
   • BLS signature standard libraries
     • https://github.com/milagro-crypto/amcl/tree/master/version3
   • Current state of cross shard communication research
   • Actionable items for clients and research
   • Format/Timing of future meetings

[rauljordan]

Prysmatic Labs will be joining! Looking forward to discussing details. Currently, we have a bunch of open issues we are working on and creating design docs for around items such as fork choice rules, beacon chain sync, and more.

[prestonvanloon]

Can we discuss when/how we will conform to p2p messages?
For Prysmatic, we're using protocol buffers that we would like to share with other clients at some point.

Edit: also whether or not we can even use protobufs for sharding.

[Mikerah]

I will be joining on behalf of ChainSafe. We are still working on figuring out how to work in the quirks of Javascript to make this work. But, progress has been steady.

[paulhauner]

Sounds like a great idea. Myself and potentially another will join.

I'd be interested to talk about the state of libraries supporting BLS multi-sigs. Seems like there's not much out there and we'll need some trusted implementations eventually. Mainly I'd be keen to hear everyone else's experience with it.

Also keen to chat about p2p. Looking forward to hearing about Prysmatic's protocol buffers :)

[mratsim]

I will be joining on behalf on Status.

For those interested, I have been collecting my research notes/links/implementation in a JSON file as it's very easy to get completely lost.

Feel free to PR it.

@paulhauner, here are the BLS implementations that I found:

• https://github.com/lovesh/signature-schemes - Rust (based on Milagro-Crypto)
• https://github.com/zkcrypto/pairing - Rust, official from Zcash team. Also check their BLS12-381 curve announcement Switch from BN254 to BLS12-381 zcash/zcash#2502.
• https://github.com/dis2/bls12 - Go (based on Relic)
• https://github.com/milagro-crypto/amcl/tree/master/version3/
  and BLS12-381 specific request https://github.com/milagro-crypto/amcl/issues/29
  Multi-languages, constant-time(doubts here), Apache Foundation support (C, C++, Go, Java, JS, Rust, Swift, WASM)
• https://github.com/relic-toolkit/relic/blob/master/src/cp/relic_cp_bls.c - C, alpha, extensible toolkit with many curves
• https://github.com/blynn/pbc/blob/master/example/bls.c - C, by Stanford, uses GMP under the hood
• https://github.com/str4d/bls - Rust
• https://github.com/herumi/bls - C++, Go, WASM

[Mikerah]

Time permitting, I would also like to discuss cross-shard communication as this is still an ongoing research problem that the Ethereum Foundation has been working on.

[NikVolf]

Happy to join from Parity!

[cspannos]

I'd like to join, although mostly as an observer. I am researching developer practices for scaling, funded by the Ethereum Foundation May grants program, and would like to listen and take notes.