Ethereum light client Helios: Trustless blockchain access new solution

Recently, a new type of Ethereum light client, Helios, has been launched. It is developed based on the Rust programming language and aims to provide completely trustless access to Ethereum. The birth of this client stems from the pain point of balancing decentralization and convenience in blockchain.

The core advantage of Blockchain lies in its trustlessness, allowing users to have control over their own wealth and data. However, in pursuit of convenience, people often access Ethereum through centralized RPC servers. Although these service providers offer convenient access to on-chain data, users cannot verify the accuracy of the query results and are forced to trust these providers.

Helios has emerged as it utilizes the light client protocol facilitated by Ethereum's transition to PoS, transforming data from untrusted centralized RPC providers into verifiable local RPC. Combined with centralized RPC, Helios can verify data authenticity without the need to run a full node.

This light client has significant advantages: synchronization speed is fast, taking about two seconds to complete; no additional storage space is required; it is suitable for various devices, including mobile phones and browser plugins. Helios consists of a consensus layer and an execution layer, tightly coupled, allowing users to install and run a single software.

At the consensus layer, Helios utilizes the synchronization committee mechanism of the beacon chain to obtain the latest synchronization committee signatures by querying untrusted RPCs, tracking the chain head. The execution layer then combines the beacon block headers verified by the consensus layer with untrusted execution layer RPCs to validate on-chain state information.

The emergence of Helios provides more users with a trustless way to access Ethereum data, unhindered by hardware limitations. Users can use it as an RPC provider for MetaMask to achieve trustless access to various DApps. In addition, Rust's support for WebAssembly enables developers to easily embed Helios into JavaScript applications.

In the future, Helios is expected to develop further in several areas, such as supporting the retrieval of light client data directly from the P2P network, deploying missing RPC methods, building a WebAssembly version, and integrating into wallet software. These advancements will bring more security enhancements and application scenarios to the Ethereum ecosystem.