Ethereum Developers Discuss Pectra Upgrade and Resource Constraints in ACDC Call #141

On
September
5,
2024,
Ethereum
developers
gathered
over
Zoom
for
All
Core
Developers
Consensus
(ACDC)
call
#141,
a
biweekly
meeting
series
where
developers
discuss
and
coordinate
changes
to
the
consensus
layer
(CL)
of
Ethereum,
also
known
as
the
Beacon
Chain.
The
call
was
chaired
by
Ethereum
Foundation
(EF)
Researcher
Alex
Stokes.

Pectra
Devnet
2

Debugging
efforts
on
Pectra
Devnet
2
are
nearing
completion.
Prysm
developer
Terence
Tsao
reported
that
his
team
resolved
a
non-finality
bug
identified
on
the
devnet
and
has
not
encountered
further
issues.
EF
Developer
Operations
Engineer
Parithosh
Jayanthi
confirmed
that
with
the
Prysm
bug
fixed,
Pectra
Devnet
2
can
be
deprecated.

Jayanthi
also
mentioned
that
not
all
client
teams
need
to
be
ready
to
launch
Pectra
Devnet
3.
The
devnet
can
go
live
with
a
few
implementations,
and
others
can
be
added
later.
Stokes
noted
that
issues
with
EIP
7702
may
need
to
be
addressed
in
execution
layer
(EL)
clients
before
they
can
be
added
to
the
devnet.

Pectra
Specification
Updates

Several
updates
to
the
Pectra
implementation
on
the
CL
side
were
discussed.
The
first
was
an
update
to
EIP
7251,
resolving
an
edge
case
where
the
correlation
penalty
applied
to
validators
with
a
high
amount
of
staked
ETH
was
incorrectly
computed.
This
fix
is
in
its
final
review
phase
and
will
be
merged
into
Pectra
CL
specifications
soon.

Another
update
involved
improving
the
efficiency
of
accessing
and
storing
certain
components
of
the
EL
payload
in
the
Beacon
block
body.
This
change
is
also
nearing
finalization.

Geth
developer
Felix
Lange
proposed
a
new
strategy
for
improving
the
communication
of
validator
withdrawals
and
consolidation
requests
from
the
EL
to
the
CL.
This
proposal
aims
to
reduce
unnecessary
overhead
for
EL
and
CL
clients.

Teku
developer
Mikhail
Kalinin
discussed
the
creation
of
a
deposit
requests
queue
to
avoid
unnecessary
load
on
CL
clients
during
spikes
in
deposit
activity.
This
queue
is
also
designed
to
prevent
frontrunning
attacks
on
withdrawals.
Nimbus
developer
Jacek
Sieka
supported
this
idea,
noting
that
it
would
make
deposit
caching
less
error-prone.

Various
refinements
of
Ethereum’s
networking
layer
based
on
EIP
7549
were
also
discussed.
These
changes
aim
to
improve
CL
clients’
hash
computation
and
bandwidth.

PeerDAS
Devnet
2

The
latest
implementation
of
PeerDAS
is
being
tested
locally
by
clients.
Both
the
Lodestar
and
Nimbus
teams
are
running
a
new
Kurtosis
configuration
that
spins
up
a
private
testnet.
PeerDAS
Devnet
2
is
expected
to
be
based
on
the
Pectra
upgrade.

Stokes
recommended
reutilizing
the
stress
tests
used
for
the
Deneb
upgrade
on
PeerDAS
testnets
and
increasing
the
blob
count
based
on
EIP
7742.

PeerDAS
Proof
Computations

Developers
discussed
how
to
handle
proof
computation
for
validators
running
on
resource-constrained
devices.
EF
Researcher
Dankrad
Feist
suggested
expediting
research
into
distributed
block
building
to
allow
home
stakers
to
avoid
proof
computation
and
rely
on
more
powerful
nodes.

Stokes
recommended
moving
ahead
with
a
solution
that
prepares
blobs
on
the
CL
to
reduce
computational
load.
He
asked
Feist
to
create
a
group
or
Discord
channel
to
start
work
on
this
asynchronously
from
the
call.

Research
Discussion

Nimbus
developer
“Dustin”
proposed
removing
all
mentions
of
SSZ
unions
from
CL
specifications
since
they
are
not
used
in
CL
clients.
This
proposal
aims
to
better
align
CL
specifications
with
existing
client
implementations.
The
Portal
team,
which
uses
SSZ
unions
in
some
way,
will
be
consulted
before
finalizing
the
removal.

Developers
reaffirmed
the
importance
of
the
Portal
network
to
the
Ethereum
protocol,
emphasizing
that
it
is
heavily
funded
and
supported
by
the
EF.

For
more
details,
the
full
write-up
can
be
found
on

galaxy.com.

Image
source:
Shutterstock