Light Clients on Ethermint

This post is about how you can build very good light clients using Ethermint.

• Ethermint docs here: http://ethermint.readthedocs.io/en/develop/
• Ethermint GitHub repo here: https://github.com/tendermint/ethermint

It’s very hard to build light clients on Ethereum because a light client at least must have the ability to see every block header. This means that a light client must be able to receive new data of the network state every 12 seconds, be able to verify that data, go back to sleep, then run the same process again 12 seconds later. The problem is, if you have a light client running on your phone, this process becomes very expensive in terms of bandwidth and battery.

What we have built in Tendermint is a highly efficient light client protocol, which only requires a light client to keep track of the validator set. Since validator sets change less frequently than the state of a network changes, with Ethermint, your phone running a light client need only to verify 1 transaction every 30 days.

Tendermint’s light client protocol by proxy of Ethermint fully supports Ethereum functionality in the palm of your hands. Powerfully, Ethermint light clients will allow you to execute smart contracts from your mobile phone, all without zapping your battery. This use case is huge. And we are inviting you to try it.

Further Discussions

• Ethermint on Twitter: @ethermint
• Watercooler for developers on Matrix Chat Channel: #cosmos