Paloma Weekly Wings: August 31, 2022: The Marriage

COO! COO, Pigeons! Welcome back to another week of fast flights for the Paloma flock. We continue to test and establish continuous validator-relayer message support on the Ethereum mainnet and today introduce our new Paloma Marriage between paloma and pigeon relayer software.

What’s New in Paloma 0.8.1?

Below are the latest features that fly palomad upgrade from v0.7.0 to v0.8.1 and pigeon v0.7.0.

1. Ethereum Gas Refunds to Validators

   1. Paloma launches its first semi-automated gas-refunds to validators for spending on validator set updates on Ethereum mainnet. Validators now receive refunds for gas spent on securing the Logic Call Message system to Ethereum.

2. Pigeon Upgrades:

   1. Welcome to the Marriage of Pigeon Relayer and Palomad node software: In order for paloma to start, the pigeon relayer must be detected as running. Although an external account is not required, paloma has a new port to detect messages from the pigeon relayer software.

   2. Keep alive logging was improved for pigeon to determine any possible failure conditions and enhance validator debugging.

   3. Logic calls are fully re-enabled and pigeons are only refunded for up to 0.1 ETH in gas costs.

3. Paloma Upgrades

   1. Pigeons, without external accounts to fund gas for supported chains, are jailed

   2. The palomad staking module requires running pigeon

   3. Pigeons are now jailed for ETH minimums of 0.05 ETH instead of 0.1 ETH

The One Key Feature of Pigeon 0.8.1: A Happy Marriage between Paloma and Pigeon

Our goal: To marry the pigeon relayer and the palomad node client for all validators further together. Paloma is a successful blockchain when validators ensure that messages are routed to the appropriate chain in the lowest possible time. As such, we want validators to have clear incentives to run pigeon relayers and come to consensus on cross-chain attestation of observed events. You can observe the validator set updates of the most recently deployed contract here: https://etherscan.io/address/0x6D727250bd150A9dC006b65b6C7a0D817B02bB2e

The Cumulet Pigeon:

The Cumulet is also a very popular pigeon breed and is known as the ancestor of Racing Homer, a medium-sized pigeon. They have a well proportionate body and a full chest with long wings and short legs. The normal color is white but some of them have a red fleck on the neck. They originate from France.

Source: https://tailandfur.com/popular-pigeon-breeds/

Lessons Learned from the Paloma and Pigeon Marriage and Testnest 10

1. Cosmovisor upgrades caused problems in our upgrade to paloma-testnest-9. Due to a misplacement of the v0.8.0 binary. This resulted in a split network state where the old binary was running on the new chain-id. Going forward, we will continue to follow upgrades via governance so that we can maintain smooth and chain-height halt upgrades for all pigeons.

2. Validator Pigeons need to be compensated in target denomination token for message delivery. However, there may be new risks in pigeon wallet drainage that we have yet to discover.

3. Paloma needs further improvements in validator experience to ensure that the costs of running a Paloma node are not too onerous.

Conclusion:

COO! COO! We have successful and persistent validator set updates on a new Ethereum mainnet contract . Now, our next phase is gas management and improved marriage between Paloma and Pigeon Relayers.