-When Ethereum started using a proof-of-stake based consensus mechanism, new infrastructure was introduced specifically to support light clients. The way it works is by randomly selecting a subset of 512 validators every 1.1 days to act as a **sync committee**. The sync committee signs the header of recent blocks. Each block header contains the the aggregated signature of the validators in the sync committee and a "bitfield" that shows which validators signed and which did not. Each header also includes a list of validators expected to participate in signing the next block. This means a light client can quickly see that the sync committee has signed off on the data they receive, and they can also check that the sync committee is the genuine one by comparing the one they receive from the one they were told to expect in the previous block. In this way, the light client can keep updating its knowledge of the latest Ethereum block without actually downloading the block itself, just the header which contains summary information.
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