Hello
Let’s start with some data
Data
Active Validators
405,229
Staked Ether
12,967,218 ETH = $13.5 Billion USD
Average Balance
33.61 ETH
“I told you so”, regarding the market bloodbath, the challenges of stable coins and how crypto in general will look like a tech stock when interest rates rise, is not an interesting insight. It is useful though when making my next prediction which is that this bear market has a long way to run.
The Chaos Monkey?
The short term looks ugly, high energy prices, geo-political risk and crucially food price inflation has a really ugly feedback mechanism back into geo-political risk which then further increases the likelihood of further fossil fuel energy price challenges.
It’s possible to summarise this with a slightly different narrative which is that Europe is at War with Russia and whilst many people acknowledge it already, the governments will get there formally (UK first with others to follow) by the end of the year. This is not a good thing but it will become politically important to explain why a packet of crisps and a cheese sandwich costs £10 and stop pretending that the root cause is not the weaponization of energy and grain by Russia.
These circumstances and narratives have released the chaos monkey or what is technically known as radical uncertainty. I don’t think crypto benefits in the short term from that radical uncertainty and nor should it. Rather it should look to be as useful a tool as possible in real meat space not the metaverse to help people and community through the tough times that are coming.
Gethy McGeth Face
Geth is really important in staking and explaining why it’s important should be useful to anybody looking to stake ETH. Launchnodes’ focus on Ethereum Staking and our desire for mass participation means we provide all the lego bricks involved in ETH staking for clients to build their own solutions using Launchnodes as a fully managed service or level 3 technical support. Gethy McGeth Face (I was not allowed to call the product that) is a critical new lego brick that we are excited about making available to the ecosystem. Both because we want to sell more “lemonade” but most importantly because it makes truly independent staking easier.
A good explanation has useful cognitive, real-world functions. It promotes learning and discovery. In this instance, the challenge of providing the useful cognitive real world functions is that they are embedded in a sales pitch on why I think using Launchnodes’ Geth for staking is a great idea because it lowers the cost and complexity of ETH staking. I believe both are very important.
What is Geth?
It’s the thing that connects computing infrastructure to the Ethereum network.
Geth is a software client that serves as a node for the Ethereum blockchain. It is used by the existing Proof of Work (PoW) Ethereum network, and is still needed and referred to as the execution layer client in the upgrade of Ethereum to a Proof of Stake network.
In the current PoW network it is used for mining Ether and creating software which runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. After the merge Geth will be used by the Beacon node. The Beacon node does the work of attesting and producing blocks.
The importance of Geth in ETH Staking
Today staking is done by running one of 4 major node clients to which 32 ETH is attached through the Ethereum launchpad.
Today the major consensus layer node clients are
- Lighthouse (Sigma Prime)
- Nimbus (Status)
- Prysm (Prysmatic Labs)
- Teku (PegaSys)
Details on the major 4 clients listed above can be found here.
To stake ETH on any consensus layer client requires an execution layer client. Today the most useful execution layer client is Geth, due to how extensively it is used, the developer community that supports it and the documentation around it.
We provide a pre-synced Geth client on AWS to allow customers to stake ETH using any of these 4 different clients. It also makes it much easier to do so, as our Geth for staking node allows you to sync your staking infrastructure much more quickly, reducing the time from days to a few hours.
You can use Launchnodes’ Geth node to build highly resilient staking architectures using public cloud and your own data centre infrastructure.
Pre-synced vs non synced
A pre-synced node saves you the syncing time, which is normally more than 2 days. Using Launchnodes’ pre-synced nodes, it will take you a few hours at most.
As Geth is mission critical in a staking operation, having a high availability instance that is synchronised in a short period of time to the network, empowers technical teams to keep staking validator nodes 100% effective.
Public Cloud or Your Own Infrastructure
Using a Launchnodes pre-synced Geth node allows you to stake ETH more easily and at a lower cost on your own infrastructure or using AWS, Azure or GCP.
It also enables clients to choose their consensus layer client or run a mix of different clients easily and with higher levels of resilience.
Geth Post Merge – Execution layer
After the merge, running your own execution layer client becomes essential in order to earn your Minimum Extracted Value (MEV). So if you are running validators pre-merge using a shared execution layer client then you need to start running your own.
This table is from the Ethereum Foundation website and it shows all the different execution layer clients and their popularity.
Providing a pre-synced Geth node is most useful in light of what people are using today. However Launchnodes will look at all clients and make them available when we think the clients are robust and do not constitute a risk to those staking ETH at scale or hyperscale.
Post merge a pre-synched Geth node allows you to get nodes up and running faster irrespective of the consensus layer client you are using, also irrespective of what or where your infrastructure is for running your consensus layer clients.
Geth is for the Ethereum eco-system not just ETH staking
Geth is important and used by all Ethereum Layer 2 solutions and so providing a high availability pre-synced node we feel helps all people and organisations building in the Ecosystem.
The Risks of Staking using APIs
Using APIs as a substitute for running your own Geth client is risky. The frequency of the calls that you need to make to ensure optimal staking returns can be expensive and potential latency issues means you might experience performance issues on your validator nodes. This is why the Ethereum Foundation does not recommend it and Infura also states that their super useful set of APIs are not suitable for staking.
If you have questions about Geth or any of the stuff mentioned in this blog please reach out, it would be great to hear from you.
Happy Staking.
Jaydeep
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