ACDT#49: Call Minutes + Insights

The call about what's blocking a 60 million block gas limit

Good evening,

Today, Ethereum developers discussed the outstanding blockers to Fusaka Devnet-5 launch and a 60 million block gas limit. The good news is there aren’t many.

For the former, developers affirmed that all blockers should be addressed for a hopeful devnet launch next Tuesday, August 26

For the latter, only two out of five execution layer clients expressed concerns about supporting higher limits in excess of the current 45 million block gas limit, and all developers agreed to continue investigating known issues in clients that may prevent an increase to 60 million before Fusaka mainnet activation.

See below for my full call summary and takeaways of All Core Developers Testing (ACDT) call #49.

Yours truly,

Christine D. Kim

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Fusaka Devnets

• Fusaka Devnet-4, the largest devnet yet in Ethereum’s history, has been deprecated.

• Fusaka Devnet-3 is still running for client teams to test their upgrade implementations.

• Fusaka Devnet-5 launch is planned for next Tuesday, August 26.

Gas Limit Testing

• Nethermind client developer Ben Adams raised the topic of a block gas limit increase from 45 million to 60 million gas before Fusaka mainnet activation.

• Besu client developer Justin Florentine raised concerns about this proposal due to performance degradation concerns in the Besu client at higher limits.

• Nethermind developer Kamil Chodala added that further investigation is needed in the Geth client, as well.

• Representatives from the Reth and Erigon client teams said their respective software is able to support the increase.

Outstanding Fusaka Pull Requests (PRs)

• Ethereum Foundation (EF) EthPandaOps Team Member Barnabas Busa said a decision still needs to be made on PR #4508 (update MAX_BLOB_COMMITMENTS_PER_BLOCK minimal preset to 4096), impacting the consensus specifications for the Fusaka upgrade.

• Developers on the call leaned towards finalizing and merging it.

Miscellaneous

• Minhyuk Kim from Sunnyside Labs highlighted a recent report on Fusaka devnet testing results, supporting high blob throughput levels of 48 target and 72 max, as well as a 100 million block gas limit, post-Fusaka.

• EF STEEL Team Lead Mario Vega raised the topic of the “safe” Engine API endpoint. This is a topic that was raised on last Thursday’s ACD Execution call and a topic Vega said he will raise again on the upcoming ACD Consensus call.

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🌻That’s all for my summary of ACDT #49. Continue reading for pointed takeaways from the call, featuring direct quotes and additional context on key topics. To read the rest of the newsletter, make sure you are signed up for a premium subscription:

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Editor’s note: Some quotes featured in this section have been edited slightly for grammar and clarity.

Takeaway #1:

The odds of Fusaka being shipped on mainnet in 2025 are unlikely (<30%).

Each week that passes without Fusaka specifications being finalized, the likelihood of developers shipping the upgrade before year-end decreases.

On ACDT #49, Busa highlighted one additional change to consensus specifications detailed in PR #4508. He said about this PR: