v6.1.0

[prestonvanloon]

v6.1.0 - 2025-09-26

This release has support for Fusaka testnets as well as many mainnet improvements. Testnet operators are required to updated prior to the testnet fork date. See PR #15721.

Mainnet operators are encouraged to update per their regular update cadence.

Noteworthy improvements, changes and bugfixes:

• The --disable-experimental-state beacon-node flag has been removed, marking the full graduation of the Copy-on-write design for BeaconState fields, which reduces the memory overhead of keeping multiple BeaconStates in RAM for block processing. Congrats @rkapka!
• The behavior set by the --attest_timely flag is now on by default, with the flag itself deprecated.
• GetDutiesV2 introduced, lowering duty request latency and beacon-node load. Multiple other improvements and bugfixes have been made to harden the validator run loop.
• New validator flag --max-health-checks configures a validator to switch to a fallback beacon node after the given number of health check failures.
• Improvements to rest-mode validator, defaulting to SSZ where available and adding SSZ support to more Beacon API endpoints.
• Beacon API now honors the gzip content-encoding header.
• Log timestamps now include milliseconds.
• Full fusaka support for testnets!

Special thanks to external contributors!: @Alleysira, @KaloyanTanev, @rose2221

[1] To override this limit, use the validator flag --suggested-gas-limit or set the builder.gas_limit setting in your proposer settings file.

Added

• PeerDAS: Add CustodyInfo in BeaconNode. [PR]
• GetDutiesV2 gRPC function, removes committee list from duties, replaced with committee length, validator committee index. [PR]
• Add SSZ support for two attestation APIs: /eth/v1/validator/attestation_data and. [PR]
• Added feature flag for validator client to use get duties v2. [PR]
• PeerDAS: Implement DAS. [PR]
• verifyBlobCommitmentCount: Print max allowed blob count in error message. [PR]
• Data column support for beacon api event end point. [PR]
• Implement EIP-7917: Stable proposer lookahead. [PR]
• Implement dataColumnSidecarByRootRPCHandler. [PR]
• New ssz-only flag for validator client to enable calling rest apis in SSZ, starting with get block endpoint. [PR]
• Implement dataColumnSidecarsByRangeRPCHandler. [PR]
• Add SSZ support for submitPoolAttestationsV2 beacon API. [PR]
• New StatusV2 proto message. [PR]
• Implement SendDataColumnSidecarsByRangeRequest. [PR]
• Implement SendDataColumnSidecarsByRootRequest. [PR]
• Implement beacon API blob sidecar enpoint for Fulu. [PR]
• PeerDAS: Implement the new Fulu Metadata. [PR]
• PeerDAS: Implement reconstruction. [PR]
• Implement engine method GetBlobsV2. [PR]
• Implement execution ReconstructDataColumnSidecars, which reconstruct data column sidecars from data fetched from the execution layer. [PR]
• new --batch-verifier-limit flag to configure max number of signatures to batch verify on gossip. [PR]
• disable-attest-timely flag to disable attest timely. [PR]
• Added max-health-checks flag that sets the maximum times the validator tries to check the health of the beacon node before timing out. 0 or a negative number is indefinite. (the default is 0). [PR]
• Add method VersionToForkEpochMap() to the BeaconChainConfig in the params package. [PR]
• Add log capitalization analyzer and apply changes across codebase. [PR]
• Slot aware cache for seen data column gossip p2p to reduce memory usages. [PR]
• Gzip Compression for Beacon API:. [PR]
• Implement data column sidecars reconstruction with data retrieved from the execution client when receiving a block via gossip. [PR]
• Add support for parsing and handling ExecutionPayloadAndBlobsBundleV2. [PR]
• Added new PRYSM_API_OVERRIDE_ACCEPT environment variable to override ssz accept header as a replacement to flag. [PR]
• Implements the /eth/v1/beacon/states/{state_id}/proposer_lookahead beacon api endpoint. [PR]
• Added new metadata fields (attnets,syncnets,custody_group_count) to /eth/v1/node/identity. [PR]
• Add BLOB_SCHEDULE field to /eth/v1/config/spec endpoint response to expose blob scheduling configuration for networks. [PR]
• Add timing metric publish_block_v2_duration_milliseconds to measure processing duration of the PublishBlockV2 beacon API endpoint. [PR]
• Add Fulu case for saveStatesEfficientInternal. [PR]
• Support for fusaka nfd enr field, and changes to the semantics of the eth2 field. [PR]
• Implement post-Fulu MEV-boost protocol changes where relays only return status codes for blinded block submissions. [PR]
• Added fulu block support to StreamBlocksAltair. [PR]
• All outbound HTTP requests from the validator client now include a custom User-Agent header in the format Prysm/<name>/<version>. This enhances observability and enables upstream systems to correctly identify Prysm validator clients by their name and version. [PR]
• Fixes #15435. [PR]
• Data columns syncing for Fusaka. [PR]
• Added specification references which map spec to implementation. [PR]
• Warm data columns storage cache at start. [PR]
• Add --data-column-path flag. [PR]
• Initialize package for SSZ Query Language. [PR]
• In FetchDataColumnSidecars, after retrieving sidecars from peers, if still some sidecars are missing for a given root and if a reconstruction is possible (combining sidecars already retrieved from peers and sidecars in the storage), then reconstruct missing sidecars instead of trying to fetch the missing ones from peers. [PR]
• Fulu block proposal changes for beacon api and gRPC. [PR]
• Retry to fetch origin data column sidecars when starting from a checkpoint. [PR]
• Aggregate and pack sync committee messages into blocks. [PR]
• Support List type for SSZ-QL. [PR]
• Configured the beacon node to seek peers when we have validator custody requirements. If one or more validators are connected to the beacon node, then the beacon node should seek a diverse set of peers such that broadcasting to all data column subnets for a block proposal is more efficient. [PR]
• SSZ-QL: Add element information for Vector type. [PR]
• SSZ-QL: Support multi-dimensional tag parsing. [PR]
• Added more metadata for debug logs when initial sync requests fail for "invalid data returned from peer" errors. [PR]
• Adding Fulu types for web3signer. [PR]
• Added erigon/caplin to known p2p agent strings. [PR]
• Add Fulu fork transition tests for mainnet and minimal configurations. [PR]
• Fulu proposer lookahead epoch processing tests for mainnet and minimal configurations. [PR]
• Populate sszInfo of variable-length fields in AnalyzeObjects. [PR]
• KZG proof batch verification for data column gossip validation. [PR]
• Added flag --p2p-colocation-whitelist to accept CIDRs which will bypass the p2p colocation restrictions. [PR]
• Fulu spec tests coverage for covering the general package. [PR]
• Implemented syncing in a disjoint network with respect to data column sidecars subscribed by peers. [PR]
• Add retry logic when GetBlobsV2 is called. [PR]
• Call GetBlobsV2 as soon as we receive the first data column sidecar or block. [PR]
• Added new post fulu /eth/v1/beacon/blobs/{block_id} endpoint. [PR]
• SSZ-QL: Handle Bitlist and Bitvector types. [PR]
• Adding /eth/v1/debug/beacon/data_column_sidecars/{block_id} endpoint. [PR]
• Support Fulu genesis block. [PR]
• Update spectests to 1.6.0-beta.0. [PR]

Changed

• parseIndices: Return []int instead of []uint64. [PR]
• Reclaim memory manually in some tests that fuzz the beacon state. [PR]
• when REST api is enabled the get Block api defaults to requesting and receiving SSZ instead of JSON, JSON is the fallback. [PR]
• Remove "invalid" from logs for incoming blob sidecar that is missing parent or out of range slot. [PR]
• In TopicFromMessage: Do not assume anymore that all Fulu specific topic are V3 only. [PR]
• readChunkedDataColumnSidecar: Add validationFunctions parameter and add tests. [PR]
• Put the initiation of LC Store behind the enable-light-client flag. [PR]
• default batch signature verification limit increased from 50 to 1000. [PR]
• Increase mainnet DefaultBuilderGasLimit from 36M to 45M. [PR]
• Attest timely is now default. attest-timely flag is now deprecated. [PR]
• Move data col reconstruction log to a more accurate place in the code. [PR]
• Makes the multivalue slice permanent in the state and removes old paths. [PR]
• Previously, we optimistically believed the beacon node was healthy and tried to get chain start, but now we do a health check at the start. [PR]
• Optimize proposer inclusion proof calcuation by pre caching subtries. [PR]
• Move setter/getter functions for LC Bootstrap into LcStore for a unified interface. [PR]
• Changed enable-duties-v2 to disable-duties-v2 to default to using duties v2. [PR]
• Changed uint64 genesis time to use time.Time. Also did some refactoring and cleanup that was enabled by these changes. [PR]
• Add milliseconds to log timestamps. [PR]
• Move setter/getter functions for LC Updates into LcStore for a unified interface. [PR]
• Change LC Bootstrap logic to only save bootstraps on finalized checkpoints instead of every block. [PR]
• Update links to consensus-specs to point to master branch. [PR]
• changed from in-memory to persistent discv5 db to keep local node information persistent for the key to keep the ENR sequence number deterministic when restarting. [PR]
• Fix some nits associated with data column sidecar verification. [PR]
• Include state root in StateNotFoundError for better debugging of consensus validation failures. [PR]
• when shutting down the sync service we now send p2p goodbye messages in parallel to maxmimize changes of propogating goodbyes to all peers before an unsafe shutdown. [PR]
• Do not compare liveness response with LH in e2e Beacon API evaluator. [PR]
• Moved the broadcast and event notifier logic for saving LC updates to the store function. [PR]
• Fixed the issue with broadcasting more than twice per LC Finality update, and the if-case bug. [PR]
• Separated the finality update validation rules for saving and broadcasting. [PR]
• Update validator custody to the latest specification, including the new status message. [PR]
• Beacon api optimize validator lookup for large batch request size. [PR]
• Check pending block is in forkchoice before importing pending attestation. [PR]
• Redesign the pending attestation queue. [PR]
• Replaced hardcoded grpc-gateway-port with flags.HTTPServerPort.Name in testing/endtoend/components/validator.go, resolving an inline TODO for improved flag consistency. [PR]
• Refactor htrutil.go by removing redundant codes. [PR]
• Improved sync unaggregated attestation cache key outside of lock path. [PR]
• Move aggregated attestation cache key generation outside of critical locks to improve performance. [PR]
• Renamed various variables/functions to be more clear. [PR]
• Update consensus spec to v1.6.0-alpha.4 and implement data column support for forkchoice spectests. [PR]
• Reject incoming connections when the fork schedule of the connecting peer (parsed from their ENR) has a matching next_fork_epoch, but mismatched next_fork_version or nfd (next fork digest). [PR]
• Update gohashtree to v0.0.5-beta. [PR]
• Updated consensus spec from v1.6.0-alpha.4 to v1.6.0-alpha.5 with adjusted minimal config parameters. [PR]
• Changed old atomic functions to new atomic.Int for safer and clearer code. [PR]
• Start from justified checkpoint by default. [PR]
• Updated consensus spec from v1.6.0-alpha.5 to v1.6.0-alpha.6. [PR]
• Updated outdated documentation links for Web3Signer and Why Bazel. [PR]
• changed validatorpb.SignRequest_AggregateAttestationAndProof signing type to use AggregateAttestationAndProofV2 on web3signer. [PR]
• Pre-calculate exit epoch, churn and active balance before processing slashings to reduce CPU load. [PR]
• Switching default of validator client rest call for submit block from JSON to SSZ. Fallback json will be attempted. [PR]
• Deprecated and added error to /prysm/v1/beacon/blobs endpoint for post Fulu fork. [PR]
• Upgraded gossipsub to v0.14.2 and libp2p to v0.39.1. [PR]
• Prysm will now downscore peers that return invalid block_by_range responses. [PR]
• Filtering peers for data column subnets: Added a one-epoch slack to the peer’s head slot view. [PR]
• Fetching data column sidecars: If not all requested sidecars are available for a given root, return the successfully retrieved ones along with a map indicating which could not be fetched. [PR]
• Fetching origin data column sidecars: If only some sidecars are fetched, save the retrieved ones and retry fetching the missing ones on the next attempt. [PR]
• Renamed the --enable-experimental-backfill flag to --enable-backfill to signal that it is more mature. [PR]
• Restrict best LC update collection to canonical blocks. [PR]
• PeerDAS: Wait for a random delay, then reconstruct data column sidecars and immediately reseed instead of immediately reconstructing, waiting and then reseeding. [PR]
• Clarified misleading log messages in beacon-chain/rpc/service gRPC module. [PR]
• Broadcast block then sidecars, instead block and sidecars concurrently. [PR]
• Broadcast and receive sidecars in concurrently, instead sequentially. [PR]
• Changed blst dependency from http_archive to go_repository so that gazelle can keep it in sync with go.mod. [PR]
• Updated go to v1.25.1. [PR]
• Updated rules_go to v0.57.0. [PR]
• Updated protobuf to 28.3. [PR]
• Set Fulu fork epochs for Holesky, Hoodi, and Sepolia testnets. [PR]
• Improve logging of data column sidecars. [PR]
• Updated go.mod to v1.25.1. [PR]

Deprecated

• Deprecated p2p-metadata flag. [PR]

Removed

• Removed //tools/eth1voting tool. This is no longer needed as the beacon chain no longer uses eth1data voting since Electra. [PR]
• Remove deposit count from sync new block log. [PR]
• Unused DataColumnIdentifier proto message. [PR]
• Validator client will no longer need to call the canonical head api. [PR]
• Partially reverting pr adding ssz for get block endpoint #15390 removing the ssz-only debug flag until there is a real usecase for the flag. [PR]

Fixed

• Added regression test for PR 15369. [PR]
• Added missing meta field to the response of the endpoint /eth/v1/node/peers to align with the Beacon API spec (Missing field meta in response of endpoint /eth/v1/node/peers #15370). [PR]
• Fix blob metric name for peer count. [PR]
• Non deterministic output order of dataColumnSidecarByRootRPCHandler. [PR]
• Fixed the versioning bug for light client data types in the Beacon API. [PR]
• --chain-config-file: Do not use any more mainnet boot nodes. [PR]
• Fix panic on dutiesv2 when there is no committee assignment on the epoch. [PR]
• Allow SSZ requests for pending deposits, partial withdrawals and consolidations. [PR]
• Validator client shuts down cleanly on error instead of fatal error. [PR]
• Fixes edge case starting validator client with new validator keys starts the slot ticker too early resulting in replayed slots in the main runner loop. Fixes edge case of replayed slots when waiting for account acivations. [PR]
• DV aggregations failing first slot of the epoch. [PR]
• Skip genesis block retrieval when EIP-6110 deposit requests have started to prevent "pruned history unavailable" errors with execution clients that have pruned pre-merge data. [PR]
• Fixed lookahead initialization at the fulu fork. [PR]
• Write Content-Encoding header in the response properly when gzip encoding is requested. [PR]
• Subnets subscription: Avoid dynamic subscribing blocking in case not enough peers per subnets are found. [PR]
• Do not apply the gzip middleware to the event stream API. [PR]
• Fixed various reasons why a node is banned by its peers when it stops. [PR]
• Use MinEpochsForDataColumnSidecarsRequest in WithinDAPeriod when in Fulu. [PR]
• Return zero value for Eth-Consensus-Block-Value on error to avoid missed block proposals. [PR]
• Moved reconstruction lock to prevent unnecessary work. [PR]
• Fixed variable names, links, and typos in das core code. [PR]
• Fix builder bid version compatibility to support Electra bids with Fulu blocks. [PR]
• Fixed align submitPoolSyncCommitteeSignatures response with Beacon API specification. [PR]
• Trigger payload attribute event as soon as an early block is processed. [PR]
• Beacon-api proposer duty fulu computation. [PR]
• Fixed the max proofs in BlobsBundleV2. [PR]
• Prevent a race on double ReceiveBlock. [PR]
• Fixed #15544: Persist metadata sequence number if it is needed (e.g., use static peer ID option or Fulu enabled). [PR]
• Fix the validateConsensus endpoint handler. [PR]
• builder version check was using head block version instead of current fork's version based on slot, fixes e2e from 57e2719. [PR]
• Don't submit duplicate SignedContributionAndProof messages. [PR]
• Genesis state, timestamp and validators root now ubiquitously available at node startup, supporting tech debt cleanup. [PR]
• Fixed a condition where the blob cache could panic when there were less than or no sidecars in the cache entry. [PR]
• Fixed endpoint response to return 404 or 400 after isOptimistic check. [PR]
• Safeguard against accidental out of bounds array access in dataColumnSidecars method. [PR]
• Fixed NewSignedBeaconBlock calls to use Block field for proper equivocation handling. [PR]
• Fixed regression in find peer functions introduced in PR#15471, where nodes with equal sequence numbers were incorrectly skipped and the peer count was incorrectly reduced when replacing nodes with higher sequence numbers. [PR]
• Fix bug where stale computed value in closure excludes newly required (eg attestation) subscriptions. [PR]
• Fix bug where arguments of fillInForkChoiceMissingBlocks were incorrectly placed. [PR]
• Fix next epoch proposer duties in Fulu by advancing the state to the beginning of the current epoch. [PR]
• Fix getBlockAttestationsV2 to return [] instead of null when data is empty. [PR]
• Fixed the issue of empty dirs not being deleted when using –blob-storage-layout=by-epoch. [PR]
• Start topic-based peer discovery before initial sync completes so that we have coverage of needed columns when range syncing. [PR]
• Fixed an off-by-one in forkchoice startup. [PR]
• mitigate potential supernode clustering due to libp2p ConnManager pruning of non-supernodes, see Potential node clustering when the peer count is greater than 192 #15607. [PR]
• Initial sync: Do not request data column sidecars for blocks before the retention period. [PR]
• Fixed incorrect attestation data request where the assigned committee index was used after Electra, instead of 0. [PR]
• Use v2 endpoint for blinded block submission post-Fulu. [PR]
• Fixed 'justified' block support missing on blocker.Block and optimized logic between blocker.Block and blocker.Blob. [PR]
• Fix prysmctl panic when baseFee is not set in genesis.json. [PR]
• Fix getStateRandao not returning historic RANDAO mix values. [PR]
• fix race in PriorityQueue.Pop by checking emptiness under write lock. (fix: race in PriorityQueue.Pop by checking emptiness under write lock #15726). [PR]
• In P2P service start, wait for the custody info to be correctly initialized. [PR]
• createLocalNode: Wait before retrying to retrieve the custody group count if not present. [PR]
• Replace fmt.Printf with proper test error handling in web3signer keymanager tests, using require.NoError(t, err) instead of t.Fatalf for better error handling and debugging. [PR]
• fixed regression introduced in PR adding justified support to blocker and optimizing logic #15715 , blocker now returns an error for not found, and error handling correctly handles error and returns 404 instead of 500. [PR]
• da metric was not writing correctly because if statement on err was accidently flipped. [PR]

Security

• Updated go to version 1.24.5. [PR]
• Updated distroless/cc-debian11 to latest to resolve CVE-2024-2961. [PR]
• Updated go to version 1.24.6. [PR]
• Updated quic-go to latest version. [PR]

---

This discussion was created from the release v6.1.0.

[leshaaa]

Hi everyone,

I'm unable to run beacon-chain-v6.1.0-windows-amd64.exe on my Windows 10 machine. I get the following message:

"This app can't run on your PC. To find a version for your PC, check with the software publisher."

The previous versions, beacon-chain-v6.0.4-windows-amd64.exe and beacon-chain-v6.0.5-windows-amd64.exe, work as expected. Has anyone else encountered a similar problem?

[prestonvanloon]

@leshaaa #15760

This is fixed in v6.1.1