foreign
[Music]
good afternoon everyone my name is
koshal I am
from the Nimbus client team hopefully
you'll know what members client team is
but if not I'll talk to you about that I
support Nimbus client team with their
ecosystem development efforts which
means I get to go out and talk to end
users who use the Nimbus clients or
other clients for that matter and
understand what their experience is
today and what their expectations are of
the future so in this talk today I
should start to use the clicker as well
actually
foreign
there we go yeah so I just wanted to
share some of my thoughts and experience
talking to a lot of the validators right
whether they are centralized exchanges
whether they are the professional node
operators or individual users I just
want to share the feedback that you get
when you talk to these validators about
what's the future of the client
experience like what does the client
experience need to look like in the
future
as you can see I named I titled my talk
validating Made Simple light and simple
it may be light but it's definitely not
simple right now so that's something
that we definitely want to fix in the
future
let's talk about Nimbus a little bit so
Nimbus is a ethereum client it's a
consensus client that you can use right
now it's an easy efficient uh low
resource intensive or less very
efficient essentially
um stable consensus client so you can
use the Nimbus client with any other
execution client if you're running an
ethereum node
um the story behind Embassy is obviously
around lowering the barriers
to enable participation in the ethereum
network and we are very specific about
the words it's it's the ethereum network
not ethereum in general you want more
participation in the ethereum network
truly see it decentralized further the
reason behind that is also the next
slide which is it's part of the status
Network portfolio of projects you will
many of you will recognize the status
Network project or the status app for
example many of you will have that on
your app on your phones as well and
hopefully you're using it but the story
is status started back in 2017 with a
decent with the mission to create a
decentralized peer-to-peer censorship
resistant chat application but as we
started building it we realized that
there is a lot of work on the
infrastructure side that needs to be
done and that includes building the
infrastructure for enabling a completely
decentralized peer-to-peer messaging
storage and compute and that is where
some of these projects actually fit in
if you want to know more about some of
these projects please pop by the Nimbus
booth on the on Level 3 and we'll be
happy to talk through the details of
each of these projects
but there is a Common Thread that runs
across all these projects and that is to
enable true true decentralization right
and the focus on privacy and censorship
resistance
and that sort of theme flows through to
Nimbus as well so
when we talk about the future client
experience right it needs to be in the
context of who the users are and both
the current users as well as what we see
the composition of the you know valid
data set to to look like maybe a year or
two down the line or future in future in
general right and who are our current
and future users so
our current and future users can be
broadly classified into categories it's
the individuals or you can call them the
solo stakers right and the professional
node operators now there are some other
you know you might call them customers
or segments that are in between but
broadly speaking you can put them in
these two one of these two categories
and we can work through the details as
we walk through the presentation
so let's talk about each one of them we
will talk about the professional node
operators first and then we will talk
about the individual of individual users
and we'll see what the similarities and
differences are in terms of their
expectations of the of using a client to
run a valid data
so professional node operators like who
are these let's do a quick show of hands
for people who have staked their eats
with let's say a centralized exchange or
Lido or rocket not rocket pool but any
of the Lido or centralized exchanges for
example
all right a few few hands here that's
good that's good uh we'd hopefully see
more hands when we come to the
individual
sex segment but professional node
operators are an important part of the
part of the network right now like it's
not a segment we can ignore right
whether we like it or not they are here
they do offer an important service right
now and they are a large part of the
network that is that needs to be taken
seriously in terms of their expectations
as well so in my role I have had the
opportunity to speak with about 12 to 15
node operators in the last six to eight
months
and it's really interesting when we talk
to them about their setup the history as
to why and how they have set up the node
operations that we understand you know
why they've chosen certain clients and
why they've chosen to work with certain
clients and in that process we learned a
few things which is which is really
interesting
some of these node operators in fact
most of these node operators are quite
large right by ordinary means I mean in
terms of comparison they run anything
between two and a half
two seven eight thousand validators that
is a lot of validators right and these
These are individual node operators
maybe 20 30 of them I don't have the
exact count but I suppose that's
somewhere close to 30 35 node operators
total across some of these liquids
taking protocols in general
um they tend to operate from specific
regions they generally are a registered
entity in these regions which means they
are governed by the law of those
jurisdictions and they're likely that
they're trying to obviously
scale up through the liquid striking
protocols but also directly trying to
find customers who would like to stick
with them right and the other aspect
that is really interesting is that
they're trying to also serve the needs
of Institutions operating from the same
jurisdictions why because they
understand the jurisdiction they
understand the regulatory aspects and
the and the nature of business in that
in that jurisdiction and the
institutions in those jurisdictions seem
to have a a inclination to use and you
know work with node operators from that
region right so it kind of makes sense
that they are sort of becoming a channel
for the institutions to come on board
so that's another Point another reason
why node operations and node operators
in general as a segment are an important
segment of the network and they need to
be looked at in in that regard
um
let's look at what the node operators
actually look at in terms of performance
or what they prioritize as the
characteristics that are important
the first is the uptime right now when
you're running 7000 or 8000 validators
uptime is really important you can't be
down for hours it needs to be up and
running there needs to be fair degree of
failover redundancy in the system it's
like a it's a it's a significantly
professional or sophisticated operation
that the node operators actually run
the second being reward performance
which is extremely important so the
choice of client is also based on you
know is the reward performance good
enough
um and finally operating efficiency like
you don't want to hire too many people
to run the operations as well because
that impacts the profitability of their
of their operation in a way so these are
some other the fact
the fact node operators think about when
they think about their business in a way
and this is important because this feeds
down to what they look as in the client
when they select a client
right so
things like stability of the client is
extremely important things like reward
performance how does the reward
performance of a client a compare to
client B these are factors that are
extremely important uh to node operators
factors like fit with the current setup
this is something that is extremely
important why because each client is
slightly different and this goes back to
Danny Ryan's presentation on day one
where he talked about diversity of
perspectives and each client team takes
a slightly different perspective on how
they would like to architect the client
now when it comes to node operations
node operations like similarity
homogeneity in the client architecture
so that it fits with the way they have
started to operate right so it's really
interesting that the uh there's a huge
push to try and figure out how to make
the clients actually fit and work with
the with the current architecture of the
node operator and the future and in the
direction that the direction in which
this architecture is actually evolving
other factors are are really important
such as release communication and the
Rhythm so how good can the quality of
release communication the rhythm of the
release communication and the ability to
contact the team the ability for the
team to turn around when there are
issues and challenges and of course the
testing rigor and the variety of testing
that the team actually conducts before
the release scores are
so these are all very important factors
from a node operator point of view right
and as a client team we have to take
these into account as expectations of a
potential large set of customers right
who use these clients essentially
now what does desired client Evolution
look like for from a node operator point
of view
it's basically much more flexibility in
how they would want to use the client to
make it work with their current setup
and much more interoperability
interoperability because it's not just
the client software that is used there
are other other pieces of components of
software that are actually used in
running a sophisticated node operation
right so interoperability with all of
these components becomes really
important when it comes to selecting a
client and working with a client
all of these factors on all these
discussions are really important because
if we want client diversity in the
network then we have to somehow make
sure that we meet these requirements we
meet these challenges so that we can see
greater diversity in this segment of of
validators which is primarily the node
operators which we are talking about
here
so a little bit about what Nimbus is
trying to do to address these issues
right so nimba started when it went into
production in 2021 it's it was
constructed as a very simple easy client
to use
it had a single process a beacon node
setup it had validated duties that are
performed by the beacon mode itself
which means you don't need to go and set
up a separate validator client so this
is really easy for anybody sticking from
home
however as we've talked about it
previously a lot of node operators
actually started using some of the other
clients which are architected slightly
differently which means a separate
Beacon node separate validated process
and the ability to mix and match between
these components so it is an expectation
that Nimbus also offers something
similar if if Nimbus is to be used
um equally well in this segment of
validators in this segment of customers
right
so there are a few things that Nimbus
has done over the last I'd say six to
eight months things like supporting the
Nimbus Beacon node with support for
Welch and the lighthouse client which we
have now in place and the Nimbus web3
sign or remote interface remote standard
interface as well which is in place so
these are things that are really
important for node operators not as much
for somebody who runs let's say a single
validator from the home but these are
expectations from from a node operator
perspective the one big requirement that
was missing the missing piece I suppose
was the Nimbus validator client or the
ability to split the client so having
the ability to use a separate Beacon
node and the validators separately and
use them into you know use them with
other mix mixing and matching it with
other client components essentially
Nimbus did not have that so far but we
have it now and it's available in beta
it's going out of beta into production
into and ready for mainnet very soon so
these are all the all the components
that have been built over the last few
months last few last six to eight months
to enable nimbers to be better suited
for this large segment which is the node
operator segment
um
that is not it though there are some
Advanced features which are which Nimbus
is working on some of the validator
client features that are really
interesting for node operators and I'm
talking about these because these are
factors that are important to node
operator segment which need to be taken
into account when we think about the
future client experience as it evolves
because the client is the one client
that is used by both individual users
and the node operators at a professional
level
so
the advanced validator features are
things like they are inspired by the
secret shared secret validator research
and IT addresses risks like Rogue
employees malicious actors or
infrastructure failures
even in the current setup where you have
validators running through web
remote signers infrastructure failures
can still bring down the operation in a
way so that is one area of or risk
potential risk that the the node
operators are still exposed to
there's always the risk of Rogue
employees because if an employee has
access to all the key keys they can
actually you know hold the company to
Ransom right and you don't want that
when you're running 7000 validators so
these are some of the factors that are
really important for for to address from
a risk management point of view
there are some features that Nimbus is
working on in terms of what the advanced
validator feature set would look like
that would address some of these some of
these issues and part of this is about
splitting the sysadmin teams into
multiple teams that have only access to
part of the keys like no but no one
person has access to all of the the
entire key set I suppose
and distributing that the portions of
those keys across several different
infrastructure providers potentially
the challenge also here is that this is
extremely complex I mean node operations
itself is complex and then on top of
that we are we are overlaying
organizational changes that you need to
bring about
so this creates an additional layer of
complexity but it's a trade-off right
it's a trade-off around do we want to
actively manage that risk versus
sort of live with this risk as a node
operator
and in this regard the there are a few
possible solutions that Nimbus is
exploring including kind of a new remote
key store where you know each item is
sent to multiple web3 signer instances
instead of just one so there are some of
these things that Nimbus is exploring
which will add much more capability
to the validator client which is what
the node operators have been looking for
for a long time
all you can see where the expectations
of node operators
have the expectations of node operators
are changing with regards to the use of
the client right and how they see
the evolution of the client experience
now this is definitely not what
individual customers want right like as
an individual if you want to run the
node you're looking for Simplicity and
so it's almost like pulling the
um pulling the direction in which the
client should evolve in a different
direction totally right compared to
where the node operators are seeking for
the client to evolve
question before I I can't go back
unfortunately but I I just quick show of
hands for those who are running a note
from their own homes
wow that's that's definitely more than
people who are staking through liquids
taking protocols or or exchanges so
that's that's really good to see
um
Hester and Kiel from the team ran some
research very recently and the feedback
is quite interesting from individuals
there's a lot of potential there's a lot
of interest but they're all held back by
a number of challenges particularly
around
lack of easy access to documentation
lack of you know uniform documentation
multiple clients have multiple guides
you need to shuffle across these things
it is not easy multiple Discord channels
for example
so
there are a few requests that came out
when when there are in this this
research right one of the first is is
there a no command line option please
setting up a valid data right
believe it or not they all the
validators you set up right now no
matter which client it is it's all still
command line right so
a lot of users end users who are
interested in running validators were
not very tech savvy are still looking
for a non-command line interface to set
up the validators a fair ask right
um the Second Challenge obviously is
don't have the 32 or 16 age so how do I
participate
right so this is huge
idea in the in the in the in this
segment of individual users which is
around
that you need 16 to 32 weeks to
participate in the network but there
could be other ways to participate in
the network when you're not validating
and we'd like to explore a few of those
in this talk as well
and finally as I said earlier the
information is scattered across forums
across across different guides across
guides that are created by champions in
the community and then Discord channels
so it becomes difficult if not you know
impossible to coordinate and to be
across all of this especially when there
are multiple releases going out for the
client
um professional node operators have the
bandwidth the capacity to be able to
deal with this individuals don't right
so there's an absolute need and I know
the community has been asking for
individuals to step up and take on uh
the responsibility to run more nodes run
it run them at home
but there are real challenges and we
from a client team perspective we
definitely acknowledge that these are
challenges that need to be addressed
like let's give credit where it's due
right so credit to Rocket pool to uh to
uh stereium to DAP node who have all
stepped up in a way to offer some
solutions while there is a gap
tap node Stadium offer ability for you
to spin up your own nodes right on your
own Hardware
with a UI so you know you don't don't
need to necessarily use a command line
interface so these are these are
absolutely positives and there's an
option to use Nimbus across all of these
uh all of these operators rocket pool of
course very popular amongst people who
want to run a node from their own homes
whether that's a full node whether
that's a mini pool and again Nimbus is
extremely popular as a client of choice
in amongst the rocket pool users
uh limbus is doing its own bit to
contribute to this effort right so we
completely acknowledge that our
challenges here that need to be
addressed and we have some views on how
this can be addressed
the first thing is abstracting the
complexity away from the end user Right
End users like to be taken on a journey
if you can give them a wizard and follow
the journey follow the wizard to get to
set up a validator successfully easily
and be able to monitor that in a
simplistic fashion then that is what the
end user would like as an individual so
one of the key tenets here from a client
Evolution point of view for individuals
is abstracting complexity away from the
individual
and this takes the form as far as status
is concerned we've talked about let's
say theorem and death node but status is
heading in the similar Direction
the status Network team is actually
planning to integrate the Nimbus client
inside the status desktop which will
give users the ability to spin up a node
manage it through the status desktop
application so this is one of the things
that Nimbus and the status team are
working on to address
second one let's talk about the elephant
in the room who's recently set up a note
quick show of hand
all right
um You had to set up one execution
client
consensus client
or probably even Beacon node and a
validator client let's talk about the
two components individually and then
possibly an Mev setup right
that is like four steps
it's too complex right for individuals
when we're talking about no command line
options and presenting a simpler UI
walking through setting up four
different clients with four different
guides but potentially all components at
least is complex
and this could get even more complex if
it's not checked right now so we need to
do something about this and from a
nimbus point of view one of the things
we would like to do and we are
working on is a unified execution plus
consensus client or
actually an execution client that works
really well with the consensus client
from Nimbus so a nimbus execution client
and a numbers consensus client together
um there will be ability to use these
clients independently and
interchangeably with other clients as
well but I think there is real benefits
if we can simplify the setup of our of a
validator and take the user on a journey
where you set up your execution client
and consensus client simply in the same
process rather having to switch between
things
there are other ways to participate in
the network so
the light proxy this is something I want
to spend a bit of time on and I think
I'm running out of time but I have
enough time to cover this as well
so the light web proxy is something that
Nimbus has recently released and this is
another way to participate in the
network
um
participating in the network doesn't
only mean a testing and validating and
creating blocks right participating in
the network also means taking
responsibility and checking verifying
you know where you're getting your data
from can you trust that data should you
trust that data if if you should if you
should not trust the data you should at
least verify it right and so lightweb
proxy gives you the ability to do that
it's a it's a lot it's a
you can basically set up the lightweight
proxy on your phone right and instead of
trusting the endpoint that let's say the
wallet trusts the endpoint that's set up
for the wallet instead of trusting the
data that's provided by the endpoint the
light web proxy can actually intercept
that call to give you an example if you
make a call you want to check your
balance on the on the wallet the wallet
makes a call you know get balanced get
it balanced the lightweight proxy can
actually intercept that and the light
web proxy connects to the light client
Network to keep track of the head of the
chained right now or the state right and
then it and then then it requests a get
proof separately from any of your not
providers API providers
to check the state route against the
balance that is supplied so now if let's
say infuria you use metamask within fura
and if inferior comes back with a
balance your light web proxy can
actually verify whether it is true or
not whether whether that balance is
correct or not so there are all these
things that that can be done to improve
the security and health of the network
that don't only mean validating and
staking there are things that
individuals can do on their own to
improve the the secure their own
security the security and and Trust in
the in the balance that they see in the
metamask wallet and these are things
that are possible now right now so on
that note I would also like to say my
colleague Eaton is going to present
about the like Clans tomorrow so if you
are interested in in the like client and
the like client proxy please do make
sure you you attend his talk it's quite
fascinating to see the actual
demo as well if you can show that
and finally in conclusion I'd say the
client experience or evolution of the
client experience is being pulled in
different directions right more
modularity when it comes to node
operators and simplicity when it comes
to individuals so it's the task for
client teams in general isn't easy to
balance these priorities but I think I
can speak on behalf of nimbus that I
think for from a nimbus point of view
there are certain things that we have
planned which should hopefully address a
number of these things for both these
major segments of validators because
both of them are equally important at
this stage
on that note I'll conclude I'm happy to
stay in touch my Twitter is lift lines
and you can also reach out to me
via Telegram and other other channels
using the same handle thank you
[Applause]
any questions
second row oh
today
you know you're close enough you could
probably yell if you want hello hello
thanks for the sharing
um I'm just curious um
for the better user experience were you
like thinking about
provide infrastructure skull to set up
the
the infra like telephone or
Hampshire this kind of thing
so if I understand correctly I think are
you asking whether or not
um
numbers would Supply infrastructure is
that is that what you're asking sorry
infrastructure is code
right I think
the primary goal for us at the moment is
to make sure that we can take the boxes
that we have planned on the roadmap
right so these are these are things that
we must address over the next six to
eight months
um
um it could be one of the things we
could consider absolutely but uh yeah I
wouldn't say more about that than that
at the moment I think for us it's
important that um
the users who end up using Nimbus
whether that's directly using Nimbus as
a validator that they set up on their
own home environment whatever that looks
like or use rocket pool Stadium dap node
or any other Hardware providers to set
up the client or have
you know all used as part of
professional node operations at scale
that they have the flexibility to run it
the way they like it right so I don't
think we'd like to mandate anything in
particular but the guide does cover
different scenarios
um depending on who who wants to set up
in different ways
great thank you let's uh
[Applause]