Open Source contributions: Ethereum staking
Background
From 2021 to 2023 I ran Ethereum validator nodes, starting on the Prater testnet before the Merge and continuing on mainnet. Running the tooling closely meant finding a few rough edges worth fixing.
Prysm: Debian packages
Prysm is a Go implementation of the Ethereum consensus layer. At the time the standard installation method was a custom shell script (prysm.sh), which made managing the node as a system service somewhat awkward compared to native package tooling.
This contribution added Bazel build targets for generating Debian .deb packages for both the beacon-chain and validator binaries. Each package includes the binary, a default YAML configuration file, and a hardened systemd unit file, making it straightforward to install through apt or manage via a PPA.
eth-docker
eth-docker is a Docker Compose-based toolkit for running full Ethereum validator setups. Three patches landed here:
- docker-compose version check - added a startup check validating that the installed docker-compose version meets the minimum required by the configuration. A follow-up fixed the version comparison logic to correctly handle zeros in version numbers.
- Prometheus metric collection - popular community Grafana dashboards were showing "No Data" because they expected metrics at a 15-second scrape interval, while eth-docker defaulted to 1 minute. The patch increased the default interval to 15 seconds to match community standards, and added Docker label support for per-container job name and polling interval overrides without needing to edit the compose files directly.