Prysm release v1.4.4 available

[Preston Van Loon]

(2021-09-01)

This release has a few features enabled and a few new features for testing. Updating to this release is encouraged, but not required for mainnet validators.

Notable changes

Enabled features

• Update head timely feature is now on by default. This beacon node feature updates the "head" of the chain in a more timely manner and may result in performance or profitability improvements. If any issues are observed, you may opt out with --disable-update-head-timely. See #8412 and #9224.
• Optimized balance updates feature is now on by default. This beacon node feature is an improved process of calculating validator balances. This feature improves performance of epoch processing, but may result in higher memory usage. If any issues are observed, you may opt out with --disable-optimized-balance-update. See #8743 and #9225.

New features (not enabled)

These new beacon node features are introduced behind "feature flags" as part of our normal feature testing. These flags are low risk to enable and can improve the overall health of the network. We encourage users to opt in to these features early, however, these features will be enabled by default in an upcoming release.

• --correctly-insert-orphaned-atts beacon node flag supports block construction with orphaned attestations. This feature may increase block profitability and general network attestation inclusion efficiency. See #9441 and #9442.
• --correctly-prune-canonical-atts beacon node flag reduces attestation pool removal when non-canonical blocks are received. This feature may increase block profitability and general network attestation inclusion efficiency. See #9443.

Other fixes / changes

• Increased cache size for seen attestations #9476
• Limit deposit proof construction to genesis construction only #9289
• Fix initial sync stall when chain experiences extremely long period of non-finalized epochs #9452

Full list of changes below.

1.4.4 (2021-08-31)

• p2p: Return error if no ChainState found for a peer (#9502) (29d48df), closes #9502
• Add Stategen Log (#9460) (ee13040), closes #9460
• Change to Proto Check For Blocks (#9372) (7ef1912), closes #9372
• Feature/UpdateHeadTimely: cache finalized checkpoint when initial sync (#9244) (73c3272), closes #9244
• Fix Spaced Arguments for Subcommands (#9292) (d5f6d94), closes #9292
• Increase seen attestation cache sizes (#9476) (3b31348), closes #9476
• Invert Optimized Balance Update Feature (#9225) (6f4d8a9), closes #9225
• Invert Update Head Timely Flag (#9224) (d6d09a1), closes #9224
• Only Create Deposit Proofs Pre-Genesis (#9289) (485dac0), closes #9289
• Patch Initial Sync For Non Finalized Blocks (#9452) (071e692), closes #9452
• Prevent Reinsertion of Orphaned Attestations Into Pool (#9442) (3d1c83b), closes #9442
• Remove Canonical Attestations From Pool Correctly (#9444) (4b9b55f), closes #9444
• Remove float64 usage for fork choice (#9438) (364d828), closes #9438
• Update Dependencies For Prysm (#9374) (f1bd5d7), closes #9374
• Use Only Checkpoint Cache for Processing Attestations (#9282) (4afa5a8), closes #9282