So one of the questions at 1x Berlin related to the preferred cadence of 1.x network upgrades. 6 month vs 4 month was the point where consensus broke down. As an advocate of 6 month the big advantage I see for client developer is that it will keep the clients focused to one upgrade at a time. With a 4 or 3 month cadence there will start to be some overlap between the upgrades before they are “done.”
Here’s a chart I put together with some cheesy placeholder names for future upgrades that illustrates the overlap. EIPs is the deadline for EIPs to be considered. Clients is the client development soft deadline. Testnet and Mainnet are respective hard fork dates. These landmarks are presuming we keep the same Istanbul landmarks for future network upgrades.
6 month Cadence
| Date | Istanbul | ‘Asiago’ | ‘Brie’ | ‘Cheddar’ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2019 | EIPs | |||
| Jun 2019 | ||||
| Jul 2019 | Clients | Kickoff | ||
| Aug 2019 | Testnet | |||
| Sep 2019 | ||||
| Oct 2019 | Mainnet | |||
| Nov 2019 | EIPs | |||
| Dec 2019 | ||||
| Jan 2020 | Clients | Kickoff | ||
| Feb 2020 | Testnet | |||
| Mar 2020 | ||||
| Apr 2020 | Mainnet | |||
| May 2020 | EIPs | |||
| Jun 2020 | ||||
| Jul 2020 | Clients | Kickoff | ||
| Aug 2020 | Testnet | |||
| Sep 2020 | ||||
| Oct 2020 | Mainnet | |||
| Nov 2020 | EIPs | |||
| Dec 2020 | ||||
| Jan 2021 | Clients | |||
| Feb 2021 | Testnet | |||
| Mar 2021 | ||||
| Apr 2021 | Mainnet |
4 month Cadence
| Date | Istanbul | ‘Asiago’ | ‘Brie’ | ‘Cheddar’ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2019 | EIPs | Kickoff | ||
| Jun 2019 | ||||
| Jul 2019 | Clients | |||
| Aug 2019 | Testnet | |||
| Sep 2019 | EIPs | Kickoff | ||
| Oct 2019 | Mainnet | |||
| Nov 2019 | Clients | |||
| Dec 2020 | Testnet | |||
| Jan 2020 | EIPs | Kickoff | ||
| Feb 2020 | Mainnet | |||
| Mar 2020 | Clients | |||
| Apr 2020 | Testnet | |||
| May 2020 | EIPs | |||
| Jun 2020 | Mainnet | |||
| Jul 2020 | Clients | |||
| Aug 2020 | Testnet | |||
| Sep 2020 | ||||
| Oct 2020 | Mainnet | |||
| Nov 2020 |
With a 4 month cadence we need to lock in EIPs prior to a successful launch of the previous upgrade. And the hard fork window is the same time period where devs would need to work on client implementation for the next version. If something goes bad on the pending upgrade the next upgrade will be severely impacted as well.
Because of this mainnet launch and next upgrade overlap that I think anything less than 6 months is a higher risk cadence than we should be looking to take on.