Resource Analysis of Ethereum 2.0 Clients
This work is significant for Ethereum 2.0 client developers and network operators, providing data on client performance and stability under network stress, which is crucial for the successful rollout of the new protocol.
This paper analyzes the resource usage of different Ethereum 2.0 clients running as nodes, comparing their performance and observing their reactions to network perturbations. The study provides insights into the operational characteristics of these clients under varying network conditions.
Scalability is a common issue among the most used permissionless blockchains, and several approaches have been proposed accordingly. As Ethereum is set to be a solid foundation for a decentralized Internet web, the need for tackling scalability issues while preserving the security of the network is an important challenge. In order to successfully deliver effective scaling solutions, Ethereum is on the path of a major protocol improvement called Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2), which implements sharding. As the change of consensus mechanism is an extremely delicate matter, this improvement will be achieved through different phases, the first of which is the implementation of the Beacon Chain. For this, a specification has been developed and multiple groups have implemented clients to run the new protocol. In this work, we analyse the resource usage behaviour of different clients running as Eth2 nodes, comparing their performance and analysing differences. Our results show multiple network perturbations and how different clients react to it.