111th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus Meeting: Plans to merge proposals like EIP-7044 into the Deneb specification in the coming weeks

Christine Kim, Vice President of Galaxy Research, published a post summarizing the 111th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus Meeting. The consensus layer team discussed the final scope of the Deneb upgrade, potential changes to validator proofs and aggregation deadlines, and changing the maximum valid validator balance from 32 to 32. Proposal to increase ETH to 2048 ETH. First, the developers discussed which CL-centric EIPs to include in Deneb, Teku developer Mikhail Kalinin updated around EIP-6988, a proposal that proposes a code change to prevent slashed validators being forcibly ejected from the network The protocol is elected as the block proposer. The developers also discussed three proposals, EIP-7044, EIP-7045 and EIP-4788. Among them, EIP-7044 proposes a code change to improve the staker experience, ensuring that signed validator exits are permanently valid. EIP-7045 proposes code changes to strengthen the security of the network and expand the inclusion of proof slots. EIP-4788 proposes a code change to improve the staker experience that will expose the root of the beacon chain block, which contains EVM internal chain state information, for trust-minimized access by DApp developers. Alex Stokes, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said that it is planned to merge the above three EIPs into the Deneb specification in the next few weeks, and encourages the CL client team to review them as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the CL client team has agreed to test the increased number of blobs on Devnet 6, the next EIP-4844 testnet, and will make a final decision on the matter within two weeks. Related to the discussion around the maximum blob count, Nimbus developer "arnetheduck" raised the issue of adding block reorganizations to mainnet after the Shanghai upgrade. arnetheduck proposed considering changing the 4 second deadline for aggregating validator proofs and sending them over the network, and decided to investigate further. Ethereum Foundation researcher Michael Neuder has proposed removing the 32 ETH staking cap to help reduce the growth of the active validator set. The developers discussed the potential pitfalls of this change, as well as the possibility of combining the proposal with smart contract initiated partial and full withdrawals initiated directly from EL. The developers agreed to continue discussing the implementation details of asynchronously changing the effective balance of Ethereum validators on ETHMagicians and Discord. Additionally, Ethereum core developers had their first coordination call regarding the launch of the Holesky testnet, which is expected to replace the existing Goerli testnet by the end of the year.