We are thrilled to announce the release of Erigon 3.1.0, a major update packed with new features and optimizations. For users, validators and node operators, this release brings significant improvements to stability, performance, and overall efficiency, ensuring a smoother and more reliable experience.
Faster, Smoother, and More Reliable
Receipts and Predictable Latency: Erigon 3 was designed to be lean by regenerating transaction receipts on demand, but this could cause latency spikes for high-demand applications. With Erigon 3.1.0, we’re introducing the –persist.receipts flag, which is now enabled by default for full and minimal nodes. This downloads pre-calculated receipts, ensuring a consistent and predictable latency, meaning a more reliable system when interacting with the network, especially during high-traffic periods, and a blazing 10x faster RPC.
Upgrades and Maintenance Made Easy
Managing a validator or RPC node shouldn’t be a chore. We’ve introduced new tools to simplify the upgrade process and reduce downtime.
- Upgrading Data Without a Full Re-sync: The new Erigon snapshot reset command upgrades your data and triggers a resync without throwing away snapshots files that haven’t changed. This drastically cuts down on the time and resources needed to get a node back online after an update.
- Efficient Disk Usage: We’ve managed to cut the size of our .ef files by 50%. This means less disk space is needed to run a node, making it more cost-effective and easier to manage. The storage size of Ethereum mainnet archive nodes has decreased from 2.05TB to 1.77TB, and Polygon nodes have seen a reduction from 5.78TB to 4.85TB. More details on how the Erigon team achieved it here.
- Disk I/O during file merges has been notably reduced, thanks to a more efficient data writing process that minimizes redundant writes and improves overall merge speed.
- Smarter Snapshot data Downloader: A new webseeding algorithm reduces network overhead and load on nodes. P2P uploading has been improved to allow higher speeds.
- Snapshot Downloader Reliability and Data Management: A common issue in Erigon 3.0 where nodes would halt if a snapshot set became inaccessible has been resolved. The new downloader allows nodes to automatically find the latest snapshot set upon restart, preventing them from getting stuck. The file system state has been simplified for better visibility and debugging. Read-only flags are now applied to files once downloaded to help prevent accidental corruption.
- Improved Logging and Control: Logging and status output have been significantly improved to provide better visibility into sync speed, estimated completion time, and reasons for any stalls. There’s also a new flag that allows users to control web seeding and peer-to-peer download speeds separately, offering more granular control over data sources. These combined improvements should lead to less downtime for central services and a more consistent syncing experience for users.
Shutter Network Enhancements
A key highlight of this release is the official support for the Shutter’s encrypted mempool on Gnosis Chain. The Shutter Network offers a solution for an encrypted transaction pool through the use of threshold encryption, known as an encrypted mempool. This technology safeguards users from harmful MEV attacks (front-running and sandwich attacks) and real-time censorship.
This is a significant step forward for validators on Gnosis. It allows them to participate in a network designed to prevent malicious MEV attacks, censorship, and provides them with access to extra transactions. These shielded transactions are not available in the public transaction pool, potentially leading validators to higher block rewards.
You can read more about Shutter’s integration on Gnosis Chain at https://blog.shutter.network/shutterized-gnosis-chain-is-now-live. For instructions on how to run a Shutterized validator using Erigon head to our docs website.
Polygon support
Pebble Paws will be the last Erigon release series to officially support Polygon.
See also GitHub Release Notes.
