Ethereum Developers Discuss Key Updates And Challenges In Latest Meeting

According to Odaily, Christine Kim, Vice President of Research at Galaxy, summarized the main points from the 144th Ethereum Core Developers Consensus Meeting (ACDC #144). Developers agreed to include a new code change, EIP 7742, in Pectra, which allows the beacon chain to dynamically set the network's target and maximum blob gas limits. The inclusion of EIP 7742 suggests that developers may also add target and maximum blob gas limits in Pectra. However, some developers expressed concerns during the call that adding additional EIPs, particularly EIP 7742, could delay the activation of other Pectra code changes on the mainnet. Developers also discussed the testing progress of Pectra and PeerDAS development. Specifically, EF Development Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa stated his intention to shut down Pectra Devnet 3 immediately and inquired if any client teams still needed the Devnet for testing. Busa noted an issue with block proposals in the Grandine client that had not been resolved in Devnet 3. He mentioned that he would work with Grandine developer Saulius Grigaitis to resolve this issue before shutting down the development network. Regarding the release of Pectra Devnet 4, Busa expressed a desire to see more execution layer (EL) clients launch the new testnet through local Kurtosis testing. So far, Busa said that the Geth and Ethereum JS clients are ready, as are the Lighthouse, Teku, and Nimbus clients on the consensus layer (CL) side. Stokes suggested that client teams release Devnet 4 by October 18. Developers then continued to discuss several open issues related to the Pectra code specification, including PR#3900, PR#3767, PR#3979, PR#104, and the repricing of BLS precompiles. Additionally, CL client teams are implementing a new engine API specification aimed at helping users who propose blocks locally (i.e., without using third-party builders and MEV relays) to include blob transactions in their blocks. Developers discussed the issue of rebuilding the PeerDAS specification on top of the Pectra specification. Representatives from the Lighthouse, Nimbus, and Teku client teams expressed their support for this change. L2 rollup Base developer Francis Li introduced the urgency and rationale for increasing blob capacity in Pectra. Li suggested increasing the blob gas target to 5 and the maximum to 8, along with additional work at the network layer, such as implementing engine_getBlobsV1. Busa pointed out that the increase in blob capacity should be combined with the deployment of EIP 7742, which introduces a mechanism to dynamically set blob gas targets and maximum limits through the CL. Busa stated that the current mechanism for setting these parameters is difficult to change, and introducing EIP 7742 would ensure that developers can easily adjust these settings in the future, for upgrades like PeerDAS. However, Busa also noted that EIP 7742 requires additional work from both EL and CL client teams to deploy and could delay Pectra's timeline by 1 to 2 months. He urged developers to consider starting the deployment of EIP 7742 early to avoid unnecessary delays in the Pectra upgrade. Finally, developers agreed to cancel the ACDC call scheduled for Thursday, November 14, as most developers will be attending the annual Ethereum conference Devcon in Bangkok, Thailand.