Ethereum Developers Discuss Key Upgrades in Consensus Call #134

On May 30, 2024, Ethereum developers convened over Zoom for the All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call #134, according to Galaxy. The bi-weekly ACDC meetings are a platform for coordinating changes to Ethereum's consensus layer, also known as the Beacon Chain. This call, chaired by Ethereum Foundation (EF) Researcher Alex Stokes, focused on learnings and outstanding issues from the Pectra Devnet 0 launch.

Devnet 0 Recap

Following the Pectra launch on Devnet 0, client teams have opted to keep attestation behavior impacted by EIP 7549 unchanged during hard fork activation. This decision came after developers weighed multiple options to prevent invalid attestations during the fork. Developers also discussed EIP 7251, which involves staked ETH consolidations potentially being triggerable from the execution layer (EL), a feature beneficial for staking pools like Lido.

Further discussions included validator deposit finalization under EIP 6110 and a proposal to change the EIP 7549 implementation to ensure stability for generalized indexes. This change was suggested by Nimbus developer Etan Kissling and received no opposition.

EIP 7549 Changes

Kissling recommended moving a new field to the end of a container to avoid breaking proofs based on EIP 4788. Stokes advised developers to review Kissling’s proposed pull request on GitHub. Another suggested change was to design EL-triggered requests as a sidecar to EL blocks, which Kalinin praised as a simplification for the EL.

Pectra Scope Discussion

Several EIPs, including EIP 7688 and PeerDAS, were considered for inclusion in the Pectra upgrade. EIP 7688 ensures forward compatibility for changes introduced by EIP 7549, while PeerDAS enhances data availability sampling on Ethereum. This would significantly increase the number of blob transactions validators can attach to a block.

EF Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa mentioned that an early iteration of PeerDAS had been launched on a devnet. The discussion included whether to add PeerDAS to Pectra, even if it delays the upgrade. Developers also considered the feasibility of splitting Pectra into two hard forks to manage the scope of changes effectively.

Lighthouse developer “sean” noted that PeerDAS and Pectra EIPs could be developed separately and merged later. Busa suggested testing Pectra EIPs and PeerDAS together but activating PeerDAS on a different epoch if it’s not ready along with other Pectra EIPs.

The discussions on EIP 7688 inclusion in Pectra were tabled for the next ACDC call.

For more detailed information, visit the Galaxy website.