ACDE #223: Call Minutes + Insights

The call setting the deadline for Glamsterdam EIP submissions

Good evening,

Today, Ethereum developers outlined a timeline for the Glamsterdam scoping discussions. They aim to finalize what code changes will be included in the upgrade by the end of next month. To do so, developers agreed that the deadline for Glamsterdam proposals will be next Thursday, one week from today.

Next week’s proposal deadline is an important date to be aware of for anyone with a stake in Ethereum’s direction. In this post, I explain why and how the wider Ethereum community can meaningfully participate in this stage of the Ethereum governance process.

But first, see below my full call summary of today’s Ethereum developer call, All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) #223.

Yours truly,

Christine D. Kim

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(For background on the ACD process and jargon used on these calls, refer to the Ethereum Governance 101 document in the ACD Toolkit.)

Fusaka Testing

• Fusaka Devnet-3 continues to run smoothly, with no outstanding issues in clients.

• The Sepolia testnet will undergo its final blob-parameter only (BPO) hard fork next Monday, October 27. A day later, Fusaka will activate on the Hoodi testnet.

• Ethereum Foundation (EF) Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa reminded Hoodi node operators to upgrade their nodes for the testnet upgrade. He also reminded Holesky node operators that the Holesky testnet will be shut down by the end of next week.

Fusaka Timeline

• EF Protocol Coordination Co-Team Lead Alex Stokes shared a slightly updated proposal for Fusaka mainnet activation. To avoid any network-wide upgrades near the time of the Christmas holidays, Stokes proposed:

  • Fusaka mainnet activation: December 3, 2025

  • BPO #1: December 9, 2025

  • BPO #2: January 7, 2025

• All execution layer (EL) client teams, including Geth, Nethermind, Reth, Besu, and Erigon, affirmed that this timeline works for them. Consensus layer (CL) client teams had affirmed a similar timeline to the above on last Thursday’s ACD call.

• Busa said he has submitted a proposal to amend the Ethereum Protocol Upgrade Process document to state that developers can schedule a mainnet activation date after a single testnet upgrade, rather than after all testnet upgrades.

• Stokes recommended discussing the proposal asynchronously from the call, as the amendment, if accepted, would take effect starting with the Glamsterdam upgrade and would not impact the Fusaka timeline.

Glamsterdam

• Busa said developers are close to launching a multi-client developer-focused test network (devnet) for the implementation of block-level access lists (BALs)

• Stokes proposed the following timeline for scoping out the Glamsterdam upgrade:

  • Deadline for all Glamsterdam Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIPs) submissions: October 30

  • Deadline for client teams to share their written views on what EIPs should be included in Glamsterdam: November 6

  • Deadline for finalizing Glamsterdam scope: November 27

• Nethermind client developer Ben Adams raised concerns that the deadline for Glamsterdam EIP submissions was too short and did not give the community enough time. Developers agreed that next Thursday’s deadline does not require a full-fledged EIP proposal, but simply a clear signal of a proposal, even in draft mode, for consideration in Glamsterdam.

• Pooja Ranjan from the Ethereum Cat Herders noted that her team will host open office hours for EIP authors next Tuesday, October 28. She added that her team is looking to appoint new EIP editors to help review incoming submissions and asked for feedback on new editor appointments here.

• Stokes noted that there are significantly more EL-focused Glamsterdam EIPs than CL-focused ones. Developers agreed to use time on the ACD Consensus and ACD Testing calls, as needed, to discuss the EL-focused EIPs.

• Geth client developer Marius van der Wijden asked client teams to highlight the EIPs they strongly disapprove of, so they can be removed early in the scoping discussions.

• EF Researcher Ansgar Dietrichs asked that all Glamsterdam EIP champions, who are the dedicated points of contact for each proposal, make themselves available to answer questions about their proposals over the next two weeks as developers review the submissions.

• EF Researcher Maria Silva said she plans on scheduling two breakout calls to discuss the technical design and merits of all the gas repricing EIPs proposed for Glamsterdam. She has shared the proposed times for these meetings here.

• Silva also gave a presentation on two approaches to make gas units more divisible. As background, gas is a unit of account on Ethereum that estimates the computational work by nodes to execute on-chain operations. Silva said there are certain opcodes that take up so little work that even a single unit of gas overvalues the operation. Thus, she presented two ways for developers to introduce more granularity and precision to calculating gas costs.

  • Developers discussed the merits of both approaches. Silvia said that she would formalize both into EIPs for further discussion and consideration in Glamsterdam.

• Developers agreed to remove EIP 7667 and EIP 6873 from the list of EIPs considered for inclusion in Glamsterdam. Both are related to a data structure upgrade known as “Verkle,” which is no longer scheduled for activation in the Ethereum development roadmap; thus, the related EIPs are no longer timely.

• Carlos Pérez Baró, an engineer at the EF who focuses on zero-knowledge technology, presented EIP 8058 for consideration in Glamsterdam.

  • EIP 8058 offers smart contract developers a “deduplication discount” for contracts deployed multiple times to the blockchain. It seeks to reduce the growth of Ethereum’s state due to the storage of identical contract code, and make it cheaper for applications to rely on instances of identical contracts. Notably, this EIP leverages BALs to analyze contract contents and verify their similarity.

  • In response to a question about how this EIP may impact longer-term initiatives to address Ethereum’s growing state, EF Stateless Consensus Team Lead Guillaume Ballet said he would create a write-up on this EIP’s forward compatibility.

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(Quotes featured in this section may be edited slightly for grammar and clarity. For more information on the people quoted in this section, refer to the ACD Call Directory in the ACD Toolkit.)

The deadline for Glamsterdam EIPs submissions is next Thursday, October 30.

On ACDE #223, developers reconfirmed the Fusaka mainnet activation deadline and set a timeline for finalizing the scope for the Glamsterdam upgrade.

Developers are still confident in their plans to activate Fusaka on December 3. They only have one final testnet upgrade left—the Hoodi testnet upgrade—before their full attention can turn to preparing mainnet-ready client releases by a deadline of November 3.

Aside from the Fusaka timeline, developers have a new target date for finalizing the scope of Glamsterdam. As background, there are currently two EIPs that developers have started to work on for activation in Glamsterdam. The deadline for all other EIP upgrade proposals is next Thursday.

A week after that, client teams are expected to share their views on a shortlist of EIP candidates to add to Glamsterdam.

The goal, as Stokes stated, is to finalize the Glamsterdam scope by the end of November.

Stokes said:

“Core constraint is I would like just to have this settled by the end of next month. I think having written views as soon as possible will help people make progress throughout the next month. If we are twiddling our thumbs on the CL side, we can offer some time [on the ACD Consensus calls] to keep the discussion going. We’ll see how it goes. I mean, hopefully it’s pretty streamlined and we won’t need to make that many adjustments.”