Original title: 《Ethereum All Core Developers Execution Call#194Writeup》

By Christine Kim

Compiled by: Ladyfinger, BlockBeats

 

Editor’s Note:

The Ethereum All Core Developers Executive Call (ACDE) is held every two weeks to discuss and coordinate changes to the Ethereum Execution Layer (EL). This is the 194th ACDE call, which focused on EIP7732, an updated analysis of the gas cost of EIP 2537 operations, and PeerDAS.

During the meeting, Geth developer Marius van der Wijden proposed a method to remove the pre-merge field from the Ethereum wire protocol to reduce node bandwidth during synchronization. Christine Kim, vice president of research at Galaxy Digital, took detailed notes on the key points of this meeting, and BlockBeasts compiled the original text as follows:

On August 15, 2024, the 194th Ethereum Core Developers Executive (ACDE) conference call was chaired by Alex Stokes, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. The meeting mainly discussed changes and coordination issues of the execution layer (EL).

This week, developers updated on the progress of testing on the Pectra upgrade. This was followed by a discussion of the preparation of EOF code changes that are planned to be incorporated into the Pectra development network, and an updated gas cost analysis for EIP 2537 operations. Prysm developer "Potuz" introduced EIP 7732, a formal proposal to establish proposer-builder separation in the Ethereum protocol. Erigon developer Giulio Rebuffo proposed removing the "totalDifficulty" field from the execution API to reduce technical debt on Ethereum clients. Geth developer Marius van der Wijden proposed removing some pre-merge fields and messages from the Ethereum Wire protocol to reduce bandwidth consumption during node synchronization. Developers also briefly discussed re-setting the PeerDAS specification on top of Pectra instead of Dencun, and shared an update on their progress in implementing EIP 4444.

Pectra Devnets

Pectra Devnet 2 is stable. There appears to be an open issue on the Devnet 2 info page related to merging the block builder specs and testing them on devnet. EF DevOps Engineer Parithosh Jayanthi said there are also issues with Teku/Erigon nodes and Prysm clients.

The developers aim to launch Pectra Devnet 3 with updated specifications for EIP 7702 within two weeks. If all goes according to plan, the developers plan to add EOF to the development network, Pectra Devnet 4, thereafter.

Geth developer Marius van der Wijden shared his latest analysis of gas costs for EIP 2537. As background, the EIP creates new precompiles for BLS12-381 curve operations. It enables smart contract developers to perform operations like signature aggregation on the BLS12-381 curve in a cost-effective manner. Van der Wijden proposed to reprice precompiles based on benchmarks he and Geth team colleague Jared Wasinger developed for BLS operations and their gas usage on various machines. Van der Wijden encouraged other developers to run their own benchmarks on EIP 2537 gas usage to verify the results.

EIP 7732

Prysm developer "Potuz" shared an update on EIP 7732, an in-protocol solution that connects validators directly with third-party block builders. Since the merger, validators have relied on intermediary participants called relays to receive blocks containing MEV rewards. EIP 7732 eliminates the need for relays, enabling validators to earn MEV in a more trustless manner. Potuz emphasized that the current design of EIP 7732 does not require changes to the Execution Layer (EL) or Engine APIs. He added that EIP 7732 is also compatible with inclusion lists, a proposal that enables validators to force transactions to be included in blocks. More information on EIP 7732 can be found in this Google Slides presentation.

Reduce technical debt before merging

Since Ethereum transitioned to proof-of-stake, some parts of the Ethereum codebase are no longer useful or necessary. For example, the difficulty bomb, a mechanism that forces development work to be based on proof-of-stake, makes it impossible to create blocks through proof-of-work mining after a period of time. The following two proposals aim to remove such parts of the codebase in order to improve node performance and reduce protocol complexity.

  • Erigon developer Giulio Rebuffo proposed removing the "totalDifficulty" field from the execution API.

  • Geth developer Marius van der Wijden proposed removing some pre-merged fields and messages from the Ethereum wire protocol.

Other developers gave positive feedback on both proposals during the call. Developers agreed to review both in more detail asynchronously after the call.

PeerDAS

Regarding PeerDAS, a Nimbus developer who goes by the username "Dustin" suggested speeding up the rebase of PeerDAS on top of the Pectra EIPs instead of continuing to develop PeerDAS on Deneb. He said that there are some EIPs in Pectra that are unstable and subject to change, such as EIP 7702 and EOF. Dustin suggested rebasing PeerDAS on a stable subset of Pectra EIPs and excluding EIP 7702 and EOF transactions on the PeerDAS development network. Developers discussed other ways to start rebasing PeerDAS on Pectra. There was general support and they began moving in this direction.

Stokes reminded call participants that regular Pectra testing calls will be held starting next Monday at 2pm UTC to further coordinate devnet specifications and timings.

EIP 4444

There are no major updates to EIP 4444. Representatives from the Nethermind and Nimbus teams said they are building a collaboration with the Portal Network, an alternative network protocol for users to access expired historical data.