ACDT#50: Call Minutes + Insights

The call about Fusaka Devnet-3 non-finality issues

Good evening,

Today’s All Core Developers (ACD) call was another short one, where developers primarily shared updates about their progress on shipping Fusaka, Glamsterdam, and raising the block gas limit.

I know it won’t be long before developers need to start engaging in lengthy debates about the timeline for Fusaka, the rest of the scope of Glamsterdam, and other contentious topics again, but for now, I’m relishing this period of relative quiet and alignment.

It’s like the calm before a storm.

See below for my full call summary and takeaways of All Core Developers Testing (ACDT) call #50.

Yours truly,

Christine D. Kim

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Fusaka Devnets

• Fusaka Devnet-3 is unstable. Over the weekend, developers tested the performance of nodes during a non-finality event, where 1/3 of validating nodes were purposefully turned off. Despite the non-finality period having ended, the majority of nodes were unable to resync to the network. Developers are investigating the causes.

• Fusaka Devnet-5 launch is planned for next Wednesday, September 3. Ethereum Foundation (EF) EthPandaOps Team Lead Parithosh Jayanthi said that Devnet-5 will be a large test network of over 1,000 nodes. As these types of testnets take significant time and resources to launch, he stressed that if any client teams are unable to prepare releases by next Wednesday, they should notify his team as soon as possible.

• EF Protocol Coordination Co-Team Lead Alex Stokes proposed the idea of bundling Hoodi testnet client releases with mainnet client releases for the Fusaka upgrade. He added that he expects roughly two to three weeks in between the Hoodi upgrade and mainnet upgrade.

• Stokes said that he would specify a new upgrade timeline for Fusaka based on his proposal and present it for discussion on this Thursday’s ACD call.

Gas Limit Testing

• Besu client developer Luis Pinto reported that his team is working on various optimizations to their client to support a 60m block gas limit before the Fusaka fork.

• Geth client developer Marius van der Wijden also reported a similar update, highlighting that the MODEXP precompile is the biggest issue left for his team to resolve before another block gas limit increase.

Glamsterdam

• On implementation work for enshrined proposer builder separation (ePBS), Prysm developer Terence Tsao said there will be a breakout call this Friday to coordinate work on ePBS. Tsao said he is focused on building ePBS consensus specifications test and consensus updates.

• On implementation work for block-level access lists (BALs), Toni Wahrstatter, EF Protocol Prototyping Team Lead, said there will be a breakout call this Wednesday to coordinate work on BALs.

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🌻That’s all for my summary of ACDT #50. 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:

Despite delays in devnet and public testnet timelines, developers are still aiming for a mainnet upgrade in the first week of November.

On ACDT #50, Ethereum Foundation (EF) Protocol Coordination Co-Team Lead Alex Stokes proposed bundling Fusaka Hoodi testnet release with mainnet client releases. He said:

“One thing we could do here is couple the Hoodi release with the mainnet release, and I just wanted to make sure that was okay with everyone, rather than have like a distinct mainnet release. It would just help us pipeline things a bit.”