ACDC #164: Call Minutes + Insights
The call about amending the Ethereum protocol upgrade process
Good evening,
Today’s All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call was another short call with few updates on the status of the Fusaka and Glamsterdam upgrades.
Short calls are not a bad thing, though, as they usually indicate that developers are still working through the same topics and issues they discussed on the last All Core Developers (ACD) call. In today’s case, developers shared that they are primarily still working on fixing syncing bugs on Fusaka Devnet-3.
They’ll work through them eventually.
In lieu of material updates on Ethereum development, I am doing something a bit different for the takeaways sections of today’s newsletter.
Instead of takeaways on the call, I’m sharing my takeaways on two news headlines that caught my attention this past week:
The majority of takes I’ve seen on these two pieces of news have been so completely wrong, I thought it was worth setting the record straight. ;)
Without further ado, here’s my full call summary of ACDC #164 and my takeaways of Ethereum-related news from the past week.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
(For background on the ACD process and jargon used on these calls, refer to the Ethereum Governance 101 document in the ACD Toolkit.)
Fusaka Devnets
There are a number of issues that client teams are resolving on Fusaka Devnet-3.
Ethereum Foundation (EF) EthPandaOps Team Member Barnabas Busa shared a document compiling all of the known bugs on Devnet-3.
Representatives from the Lighthouse, Prysm, and Grandine teams said fixes have been completed in their implementations. Enrico Del Fante, from the Teku team, reported they are “still working on some bugs on [the] RPC side.”
Busa said that once all fixes from client teams are in and the fixes have been tested on Devnet-3, developers can begin preparations for Devnet-5.
EF STEEL Team Lead Mario Vega asked client teams to review the latest batch of hive tests and alert his team of any issues.
Nethermind developer Marcin Sobczak flagged an issue with EIP 7883, the ModExp gas cost increase, which developers are currently resolving. He shared that discussions about the issue are happening in a Telegram group chat. He did not share much detail about the issue, other than noting that the concern is related to a potential for the EIP to break functionality for an existing smart contract.
Ethereum Protocol Upgrade Process
EF Protocol Coordination Co-Team Lead Tim Beiko has proposed amendments to the Ethereum protocol upgrade process document.
His amendments include shortening the period between client releases and the first testnet upgrade, shortening the period between testnet upgrades, and removing certain language, such as the language discouraging developers from setting an upgrade date for mainnet until all testnet upgrades have been completed.
EF Protocol Coordination Co-Team Lead Alex Stokes responded in the amendments pull request (PR) that he is supportive of the changes.
Others, such as Geth developer “lightclient” and EF Protocol Security Team Lead Fredrik Svantes, raised a few concerns, as did a representative from the Lido protocol.
Stokes requested more feedback on the proposed amendments from client teams and the broader Ethereum community.
Besu developer Justin Florentine also requested feedback on how developers should weigh the potential of breaking testnets, given that some ecosystem stakeholders rely on testnets as staging environments for their protocols.
🌻That’s all for my summary of ACDC #164. Continue reading for pointed takeaways on other Ethereum news that caught my attention over the past week. To read the rest of the newsletter, make sure you are signed up for a premium subscription:
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News item #1:
On Tuesday, September 2, Ethereum nodes running the Reth execution layer (EL) client stalled due to an unexpected bug impacting block validation.
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