The Ethereum Merge is expected on September 15 as Ethereum clients and developers prepare for the merger of Mainnet (execution layer) with the Beacon Chain (consensus layer). Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden on Tuesday warned that running multiple consensus layer nodes on one execution layer node such as Geth is unsafe and will cause execution issues.
Ethereum Developer Warns Community of Key Risks
Marius Van Der Wijden, an Ethereum developer working on Go Ethereum, in a tweet on August 30 said that running multiple consensus layer (CL) nodes on a single execution layer (EL) node is unsafe.
Users can run multiple validators on a single consensus layer node and execution layer node combination. However, running multiple consensus layer nodes on one execution layer will lead to errors. The combination might work for a while but will ultimately crash.
This is because different consensus layer nodes will share different state of details with execution layer nodes, resulting in execution conflicts. Therefore, it is critical to have a 1:1 relationship between the execution layer and consensus layer nodes.
“The CL sets the head of the EL. If you have two nodes telling it their (differing) world views, it will flip flop and re-execute a lot of blocks while doing so. You can see what happens in the picture, the node switches between the head and head -2k.”
