Good evening,
This past week, I attended the Designing DeFi conference in NYC, formerly known as TLDR. Itās an annual gathering of researchers, developers, and builders focused on decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain protocols.
It was a phenomenal event. The quality of both the research presented and the attendees was exceptionally high. I left the conference with several takeaways, one of which was about the utility of centrally coordinated decentralization.
Iāll have to share my takeaways from the event another week, however, as Iām aware that I should probably first address the elephant in the room. No, not the Ethereum Foundation. The bigger one. Ethereum.
Tonight, Iām sharing a sober reflection on Ethereum, its waning relevance and value, and where I see its future heading.
Letās get into it.
Yours truly,
Christine D. Kim
šļø Call Minutes
First, a quick summary of the latest Ethereum developer call, All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) #237.
Glamsterdam Devnet Updates
Ethereum Foundation (EF) Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa said that Glamsterdam-Devnet-4 will launch today, with new execution layer (EL) clients, Nethermind and Ethrex, as well as three consensus layer (CL) clients, Prysm, Lodestar, and Lighthouse.
Testing is underway for the Geth (EL) and Nimbus (CL) clients for inclusion in the Glamsterdam-Devnet-4 launch.
Glamsterdam Code Changes
Developers have finalized a clarification in Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7928 to address an edge case involving insufficient gas.
EF Researcher Maria Silva, who has been leading the gas repricing efforts in Glamsterdam, said it is likely the EIP 7904 will no longer be needed. Silva raised the high likelihood that this EIP will be removed after further client benchmarking so that client teams and the broader Ethereum community do not spend additional resources preparing for this change.
Refer to this Google spreadsheet for an overview of the testing and inclusion status of all Glamsterdam EIPs.
Hegota Proposals
EF Researcher Wei Han proposed EIP 8188, state tiering by write age, for inclusion in Hegota. The EIP seeks to address the problem of state growth in the short term without significantly impacting the user experience, before longer-term solutions, such as state expiry, become ready.
Facet Layer-2 Co-founder Tom Lehman proposed EIP 8182, private ETH and ERC-20 transfers, for inclusion in Hegota. This EIP would enshrine a privacy pool application into the core protocol of Ethereum.
EF Researcher Peter Miller proposed EIP 4758, deactivate SELFDESTRUCT, for inclusion in Hegota. Although developers have deemed the SELFDESTRUCT opcode deprecated for several years, there are still a handful of applications on Ethereum that use the opcode. This EIP seeks to create a pathway to wholly deactivate the opcode and prevent its use.
Execution API Feedback
Independent Ethereum developer Mercy Boma Naps-Nkari requested client feedback on an open pull request for changing the
fillTransactionfield in the execution API.She also requested feedback on her analysis of the JSON-RPC methods exposed by all EL clients based on the current execution API specifications.
Announcements
ACDE Call Chair Nixo Rokish said there is no closing date for Hegota proposals yet. The date will be announced a few weeks to a month in advance.
She also shared that as May 25 is a public holiday in several countries, the All Core Developers Testing (ACDT) call scheduled on that day may be cancelled. Developers can check Discord for the discussion and final decision on this.
š Thatās all for my summary of ACDE #237. 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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š Insights
This week, more individuals announced their departure from the Ethereum Foundation (EF).
Researchers Julian Ma and Carl Beekhuizen both shared on X that they were leaving the organization and seeking new opportunities.
The EF itself has offered little explanation for the recent string of departures, fueling speculation and concerns not only about the Foundation, but about Ethereum more broadly.
On X, some have argued that the recent departures are a healthy sign of new talent and innovation replacing old within the EF. Others see it as evidence of organizational instability, burnout, and weakening leadership at one of Ethereumās most influential institutions.
Is the EF restructuring good for Ethereum?
Good or bad for the EF, thereās a broader debate about whether the EF restructuring is positive for Ethereum.
