Good evening,
Tonight, I’m discussing what went down on the latest Ethereum developer call, All Core Developers Execution #233, and why I think it suggests major problems about how the headliner selection process is being used in practice in Ethereum governance.
Rather than making the process of scoping upgrades on Ethereum easier, the “headliners” status label for upgrade features has made scoping upgrades harder and more confusing for participants.
Further, what started as an effort to improve the process for scoping upgrades has now been co-opted as a way to engineer specific outcomes in decision-making about the evolution of the Ethereum protocol.
Let’s get into it.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
P.S. My two cents on the Ethereum Foundation forced-signature debacle is that the whole controversy is overblown. If there were an organizational policy worth public scrutiny, it would have been the gross underpayment of one of its top former employees, not a rumored requirement for employees to sign off on a document as inconsequential and uninspiring as the EF mandate.
🗒️ Call Minutes
First, a quick summary of the latest Ethereum developer call, All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) #233.
Bals-Devnet-3
Developers are preparing to launch another multi-client devnet, Bals-Devnet-3, to test the execution-layer (EL) code changes in the Glamsterdam upgrade.
Ethereum Foundation (EF) Developer Operations Engineer Stefan Starflinger said that local testing of EL client codebases is ongoing, and he optimistically anticipates readiness for a new devnet launch early next week.
Epbs-Devnet-0
EF Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa reported that staked ETH withdrawals functionality has broken Epbs-Devnet-0, the first multi-client testnet for consensus-layer (CL) code change in the Glamsterdam upgrade.
Developers are now implementing fixes and improvements to CL clients in preparation for the Epbs-Devnet-1 launch. No timeline was shared on the call for this devnet launch.
Barnabas highlighted that he is still looking for additional EL client teams to join the Epbs devnets and assist with testing Glamsterdam CL features.
Benchmarkoor
EF Geth Client Developer Marius van der Wijden presented a new tool called “Benchmarkoor” for benchmarking the performance of different Ethereum EL-CL client configurations. The tool was created by Rafael Matias on the EthPandaOps team. It is a gated tool for client developers. To request access to the tool, developers are encouraged to reach out to Marius or Rafael on the Ethereum R&D Discord channel.
Based on benchmarking, Marius highlighted that EL clients are seeing roughly a 3x improvement in CPU usage with the implementation of EIP-7928 block-level access lists (BALs).
Marius also noted that EIP-8037 (State creation), EIP-7976 (Calldata floor increase), and EIP-7981 (Increase access list cost) can all be safely scheduled for testing on Glamsterdam devnets.
EIP-8070, Sparse Blobpool
Another representative of the Geth client team, Bosul Mun, requested feedback from other client teams on EIP-8070, a non-consensus-breaking, network-level change that reduces bandwidth usage for non-proposer nodes. Bosul shared an initial prototype of the EIP in this HackMD document.
EIP-8141, Frame Transaction
For background on EIP-8141, listen to this week’s Ready for Merge podcast episode.
Developers agreed to consider for inclusion (CFI) EIP-8141 in the Hegota upgrade.
Developers also expressed strong support for working on proposals like EIP-8141 and others that enable native account abstraction in the lead-up to Hegota.
🌕 That’s all for my summary of ACDE #233. Continue reading for my insights on Ethereum development and governance. To read the rest of the newsletter, make sure you are signed up for a premium subscription:
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🔎 Insights
The Ethereum headliner process is broken.
What was designed to focus Ethereum upgrades on major features and make timelines more predictable is now being used to obscure community consensus and force it towards a particular direction.
