Summary of the latest Ethereum core developer meeting

Original title: 《 Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call #136 Writeup》

Original author: Christine Kim

Original translation: Lucy, BlockBeats

Editor's note:

The Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call (ACDC) is held every two weeks to discuss and coordinate changes to the Ethereum Consensus Layer (CL). This is the 136th ACDC call, which covered multiple topics such as new research such as client diversity data collection, multi-client block verification, and progress on the Pectra upgrade.

During the meeting, developers reviewed the readiness of the Pectra upgrade and discussed some unresolved issues and proposals on the PeerDAS implementation. In addition, Nimbus developer Etan Kissling also shared the progress of the implementation of EIP 7688 and EIP 6493, emphasizing the importance of these proposals to upgrade Ethereum's data serialization method.

Christine Kim, vice president of research at Galaxy Digital, took detailed notes on the key points of this meeting, and BlockBeasts compiled the original text as follows:

On June 27, 2024, Ethereum developers gathered on Zoom for the All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call #136 meeting. The ACDC call is a biweekly series of meetings hosted by Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes, where developers discuss and coordinate changes to the Ethereum consensus layer (CL, also known as the beacon chain). Developers discussed new research on client diversity data collection and multi-client block verification.

They also shared an update on the Pectra upgrade. Pectra Devnet 1 is close to being ready for release. The Ethereum Foundation’s Development and Operations (DevOps) team is awaiting the readiness of the Execution Layer (EL) clients. Teku developer Mikhail Kalinin shared an update on the EIP 6110 specification. PeerDAS Devnet 1 is live and has three different consensus layer client implementations. Work is ongoing on SSZ code changes, EIP 7688, and EIP 6493, although the developers have not yet decided whether to include these two additional EIPs in Pectra.

New Research

Nethermind researcher Jorge Arce-Garro shared his team’s recent research on improving the way node operators report client diversity data. The research was funded by the Ethereum Foundation. The research proposed three different methods to facilitate validator node operators to communicate client types, and evaluated them based on complexity, security, and ability to protect node operators’ anonymity. Arce-Garro requested feedback on his team’s research, which has been published on Ethresearch .

Next, Geth developer Péter Szilágyi shared an update on his team’s work to support cross-validation in the Execution Layer (EL). The idea was first proposed by Szilágyi in November 2023 to improve Ethereum's resilience in the event of major errors in major clients. EL cross-validation aims to enable multiple clients to validate blocks. If one client's block validation result is different from another, node operators can refuse to accept or attest to the block, thus preventing a chain split that could be caused by a client failure.

Since November last year, the Geth team has explored this idea in detail and implemented a version in their software. While the implementation of this feature in all clients does not require a hard fork, Szilágyi highlighted that in order to implement EL cross-validation, major changes to the Engine API are required. He also shared benchmark data on the increase in block import latency. “The performance impact of block import is about 20%. So if the import takes about 100 milliseconds, creating the witness might add an extra 20 milliseconds. I think it’s a very, very small overhead, and this is the only component that we have highly optimized,” Szilágyi said, adding that further testing and benchmarking is still needed.

Due to the complexity of the proposed changes, developers at the meeting such as Guillaume Ballet, Lukasz Rozmej, and Ahmad Mazen Bitar raised questions about their priority, especially relative to the upcoming Pectra upgrade and subsequent Verkle code changes. Developers discussed starting with smaller parts rather than committing to entire projects, such as updating the JSON and binary encoding of the Engine API, which Szilágyi stressed is a long-term effort for the software. No specific decisions have been made about the project. Szilagyi reiterated that full details about it have been shared on GitHub and welcomes feedback.

Electra Updates

Parithosh Jayanthi, DevOps Engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, said his team is waiting for the Execution Layer (EL) client team to launch Pectra Devnet 1. Teku developer Mikhail Kalinin said he has completed the specification changes for EIP 6110, which adds a queue mechanism on the Consensus Layer (CL) for handling new validator deposit requests from the Execution Layer. Kalinin requested developer feedback on his proposed changes.

Barnabas Busa, DevOps Engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, shared an update on the development of PeerDAS. He mentioned that the second devnet of PeerDAS is live and there are three different consensus layer client implementations. Busa added that his team has begun stress testing the devnet and has already found issues in some client implementations, which the client teams are working to fix.

Stokes noted that there are still some unanswered questions about the PeerDAS implementation, including how the blob gas limit should be passed between the execution layer (EL) and the consensus layer (CL), and how the calculation of the blob base fee should be handled. Developers are weighing multiple proposals to address these issues. Stokes asked developers to review these proposals more carefully in the coming weeks so that consensus can be reached at future meetings.

Then, Nimbus developer Etan Kissling shared progress on the implementation of EIP 7688 and EIP 6493. The two code changes involve upgrading Ethereum's data serialization method, and although they have not yet been officially included in the Pectra upgrade, some developers are eager to include them as soon as possible. Kissling said he hopes to include EIP 7688 in Pectra Devnet 2, which has attracted the attention of some client team representatives and the Ethereum Foundation DevOps team. Stokes suggested that developers re-evaluate the readiness of EIP 7688 in the Pectra development network later.

Regarding the progress of EIP 6493, Kissling shared that the EthereumJS execution layer client already has a working implementation and he is working on making a client demo for the proposal.