Ethereum developers gathered for their 106th All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call on April 6, 2023. The meeting was chaired by Danny Ryan, an Ethereum Foundation Researcher. The bi-weekly meeting series is a platform where Ethereum developers coordinate changes to the consensus layer (CL) of Ethereum. The developers discussed the Deneb upgrade and the open issues surrounding the recent MEV-Boost software releases that caused a high number of orphaned blocks.
On April 12, 2023, Ethereum CL will activate the Capella upgrade to enable staked ETH withdrawals. Given that staked ETH withdrawals require changes on both the EL and CL of Ethereum, the Capella upgrade will activate simultaneously with an upgrade on the EL called Shanghai.
To test the final client software versions that have been released for both upgrades, developers launched their third mainnet shadow fork on Wednesday, April 6. Mainnet Shadow Fork 3 (MSF3) for Shanghai and Capella, or Shapella, went smoothly according to Paritosh Jayanthi, a DevOps Engineer for the Ethereum Foundation.
Before moving on to Deneb progress updates, Marius van der Wijden, a developer for the Geth (EL) client, raised a housekeeping item around standardizing transaction types for mainnet. The developers agreed to coordinate with others outside of the call and schedule the change in an upcoming code release.
Then, developers went around the horn and gave updates on their status for the Deneb upgrade. Prysm is working on gossip features, blocks by range, and blocks by route. Lighthouse is working on single blob lookups and pre-processing functionality. Lodestar is ready to pair and interop with other clients on testnets, and Teku is in a building phase.
Chris Hager from the Flashbots team gave an update on the latest MEV-Boost releases. Due to the additional latencies around block production created by the first change, the number of orphaned blocks on Ethereum jumped from ten per day to four per hour.
Ryan questioned whether the blocks being rejected were ones produced by honest block proposers or dishonest ones trying to game the system. Hager responded that further investigation around this was still needed.
In conclusion, the Ethereum developers discussed the progress on the Capella upgrade, which will activate on April 12, 2023, and the open issues around recent MEV-Boost software releases. The developers also gave updates on their status for the Deneb upgrade, which is the name of the next CL upgrade after Capella. The Ethereum Foundation is taking all necessary steps to ensure the smooth operation of Ethereum’s blockchain network.
Read more:
- The Shapella Network Set To Upgrade On Ethereum Network At Epoch 194048 On April 12, 2023
- Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade Brings Exciting Changes For ETH Holders
- Ethereum Supply Shrinks At Record Pace As Burning Process Accelerates
- The Merge Upgrade Helps Ethereum Remove $4 Billion Worth Of ETH From Circulation