Good evening,
A few weeks ago, I attended the Designing DeFi conference in NYC. It was a two-day gathering of researchers, developers, and builders to discuss the latest designs in decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain protocols. I learned a lot from the talks, but, as is the case with most conferences, more from the discussions with attendees and presenters outside of the curated programming.
During one of the conference happy hours, I got into a conversation about issuance reduction, and I found myself saying something along the lines of, “Lido helped Ethereum staking diversity and decentralization. If not for Lido, Ethereum would be more centralized.”
It hit me then that I was essentially arguing for the benefits of centrally coordinated decentralization.
Since that conversation, I’ve started to question my underlying assumptions and more deeply consider whether the decentralization created by the efforts of a small, centralized group is as meaningful as the decentralization that results from protocol rules and incentives.
Let’s get into it.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
🗒️ Call Minutes
First, a quick summary of the latest Ethereum developer call, All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) #179.
Glamsterdam Devnet Updates
Glamsterdam-Devnet-4 is broken. Developers are still investigating the root cause of the network issues.
The Lodestar and Prysm teams reported fixes actively underway for their clients.
General Glamsterdam Discussions
Ethereum Foundation (EF) Researcher Justin Traglia confirmed that the Prysm and Lighthouse clients can now handle validator deposits at a higher block gas limit of 190 million.
Developers agreed to revisit changes to the consensus layer (CL) specifications to allow clients to support validator deposits at even higher block gas limits, upwards of 350 million.
Lighthouse client developer Shane Moore flagged two open pull requests on the Beacon API, PR #580 and PR #10, and requested feedback from client teams.
Developers agreed to implement PR #793, a change to the Execution API for supporting SSZ data serialization formats. As the author of the PR, EF Geth client developer Marius van der Wijden said he would lead implementation efforts for this PR.
EF Developer Operations Engineer and Chair of the ACDC calls, Parithosh Jayanthi, said Builder API testing should be scheduled for the launch of Glamsterdam-Devnet-6, given that Glamsterdam-Devnet-5 is expected to be a re-launch of Glamsterdam-Devnet-4, focused primarily on fixing the issues from Devnet-4.
Jayanthi highlighted a new testing tool from the EF DevOps team, also called EthPandaOps, called disruptoor. It can test client behaviors under network duress, such as an extended chain reorganization.
Hegota Proposals
Lido developer “Greg k” presented Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 8148 for consideration in the Hegota upgrade.
EIP 8148 would allow validators to set a custom maximum effective balance (maxEB) threshold. This would allow validators to tailor automatic withdrawals of protocol rewards to their maxEB, instead of being forced to use the default threshold of 2,048 ETH.
Developers debated the feature’s anticipated adoption and use. Some argued that the complexity of implementing this EIP outweighs its benefits.
Glamsterdam Scoping
Developers reconfirmed that they are leaning towards removing EIP 8080 from the upgrade and keeping a simplified version of EIP 8061.
They also agreed to keep working towards scheduling EIP 8045 and EIP 7688 for a future devnet until further notice. Regarding EIP 7688 specifically, they agreed to reconsider its inclusion in the Glamsterdam upgrade once the next Glamsterdam devnet is up and running and stable.
Refer to this Google spreadsheet for an overview of the testing and inclusion status of all Glamsterdam EIPs.
Announcements
EF Coordinator Mario Havel announced that the next cohort of the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship will be starting in a few weeks. He asked that client teams share project ideas for the new cohort to work on or assist with.
Developers will be experimenting with a new time for the ACDC meetings to accommodate call participants in Australia. The new time for the next ACDC meeting on Thursday, June 11, will be three hours earlier at 11:00 UTC/7:00 EDT.
🌕 That’s all for my summary of ACDC #179. 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 term “decentralization” is thrown around a lot in discourse about public blockchain development and governance, and it usually means something different each time.
For today’s newsletter, I’m strictly speaking about the decentralization of actors responsible for operating and securing a public blockchain.
On Ethereum, those actors are called validators, and they each stake 32 ETH.
