Ethereum Developers Discuss Pectra Upgrade and EIP 7732 in Latest Core Call

On August 15, 2024, Ethereum protocol developers gathered virtually for All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) Call #194, chaired by Ethereum Foundation (EF) researcher Alex Stokes. The ACDE meeting, which takes place every two weeks, focuses on coordinating changes to Ethereum’s execution layer (EL).

Pectra Upgrade and Devnets

The call began with an update on the testing progress for the Pectra upgrade. The readiness of the EOF code change to be included in Pectra Devnet and an updated breakdown of the gas costs for the EIP 2537 operation were the main topics of discussion. EF Developer Operations Engineer Paritosh Jayanti noted that there were issues with Teku/Erigon nodes and Prysm clients in Pectra Devnet 2. The developers plan to release Pectra Devnet 3 with an updated specification for EIP 7702 in two weeks, followed by adding EOF in Pectra Devnet 4.

Geth developer Marius van der Wijden has published an updated analysis of the gas costs of EIP 2537, which creates a new pre-compiler for BLS12-381 curve operations. This will allow smart contract developers to perform cost-effective operations like signature aggregation on BLS12-381 curves. Van der Wijden encourages other developers to run their own benchmarks of EIP 2537 gas usage to confirm the results.

EIP 7732 (English)

Prysm developer “Potuz” shared an update on EIP 7732, the official proposal to establish proposer-builder separation on Ethereum. Since the merge, validators have relied on relays to receive blocks containing MEV rewards. EIP 7732 aims to remove the need for relays, allowing validators to earn MEV more reliably. Potuz emphasized that the current design does not require any changes to the execution layer (EL) or engine APIs, and is compatible with inclusion lists, which allow validators to force transactions to be included in blocks.

Reduce technical debt before the merger

Developers have discussed proposals to remove old parts of the Ethereum codebase after the merge. Erigon developer Giulio Rebuffo proposed removing the “totalDifficulty” field from the Execution API to reduce technical debt. Geth developer Marius van der Wijden proposed removing the pre-merge field and message from the Ethereum Wire Protocol to improve node performance and reduce bandwidth during sync. Both proposals have received positive feedback and will be reviewed asynchronously in more detail.

PeerDAS

Nimbus developer “Dustin” suggested that instead of continuing development on Deneb, we should hurry up and rebase PeerDAS on top of the Pectra EIPs. He suggested rebasing PeerDAS on the stable Pectra EIPs, excluding unstable ones like EIP 7702 and EOF. There was general support for this direction.

Stokes reminded attendees that further coordination on the DevNet specifications and schedule will be done during a Pectra test conference call starting at 2pm UTC next Monday.

EIP 4444

EIP 4444 did not have any major updates, including history expiration. Representatives from Nethermind and the Nimbus team are building integration with Portal Network, an alternative protocol for accessing expired history data.

For more details, please refer to the original text on galaxy.com.

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