The fork for the third validator period

Earlier, we announced that the third validator period would kick off on block 6259269, which would be happening around the 22nd of March, 2021.

There was an update released last week for the node operators, mostly being the validators, that included a smart contract-based setup for the new validator list.

After block 6259269 was reached on the Trustlines Blockchain, we noticed that there was a problem with the new validator set being adopted. Too many validators from the second period had gone offline, and we couldn’t reach finality for the new set.

Today, as a temporary solution, another update to the chain specification was released. Instead of being a smart contract including the list of addresses for the validators, this update hardcodes the new validator set into the chain specification.

This new spec is ready, it will activate the validator set for the third period. We ask all the validators to upgrade their nodes as soon as possible. Currently there is still a majority of node operators running the old version, blocking the change.

As there is no smart contract involved in this setup, another fork will be needed to switch to that. The smart contract is needed for the full operability of the Trustlines Blockchain. It will enable the slashing conditions for the validators and allow people to convert their TLN to TLC via the bridge.

We will update you once we know when the next fork is planned to take place.

A fork has happened, but numerous validators are now on the old chain with the past validator set. The new validator period and set has been activated on the new chain and all validators should migrate to that.

For those currently on the old chain, some extra steps are needed to purge the old database, even if you are already using the latest chain specification.

If you are unsure of which chain you are on, you should perform the following steps.

These steps assume you are logged in on the machine running the node, and you are in the ~ folder.

From there, run

docker stop $(docker ps -q)

This will stop all your docker containers. Next, you need to remove the OpenEthereum database.

rm -rf tlbc/databases/home-node

Now, restart the quickstart script.

bash <(curl -L quickstart.tlbc.trustlines.foundation)

At the time of writing, an updated DAppNode package has not been released yet. Until they release an update, people running a validator node on a DAppNode will need to wait for the new package.

If you need additional help or have questions, feel free to join the Trustlines Technical Chat in Gitter.

For those running validator nodes with DAppNodes, the updated package has been released!

The correct package is Trustlines, the Trustlines Validator package has been deprecated.

To make sure there are no compatibility issues, please delete the volume with the old chain.

Thank you to the DAppNode team in working on this with us.

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