Author: Christine kim; Compiled by: Vernacular Blockchain

On January 16, 2025, Ethereum protocol developers held the 203rd All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) meeting via Zoom. This week’s session was moderated by Tim Beiko, head of protocol support at the Ethereum Foundation (EF). The ACDE meeting is a bi-weekly series of meetings where developers discuss and coordinate changes related to the Ethereum Execution Layer (EL).

At the 203rd ACDE meeting, developers discussed the launch of Pectra Devnet 5 and the unfinished Pectra specification update. They also discussed the next steps for testing the increased Gas limit on the Holesky test network, the progress of RPC standardization, and the specification of minimum hardware and bandwidth requirements for nodes.

1. Pectra Devnet 5 started

The developers started Pectra Devnet 5 half an hour before the meeting started. Parithosh Jayanthi, a developer operations engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, said that he found a Gas estimation problem in the development network and planned to collect relevant logs and share the problem to the Ethereum R&D Discord channel.

2. Pectra specification updates

Developers discussed five unfinished updates to the Pectra code specification:

1) EIP7623: Increased Calldata Costs The first update is a modification to EIP 7623 to clarify how gas refunds are handled. The update has been merged on GitHub and included in the testing of Pectra Devnet 5.

2) EIP7840: Add Blob scheduling to the execution client configuration file The second update involves the underlying cost fraction issue in EIP 7840. There was no objection at the meeting, and the developers agreed to merge the relevant changes into GitHub before the Pectra testing meeting next Monday, January 20.

3) Update of Blob basic fee The third update is also related to Blob basic fee, involving PHow to calculate excess gas during ectra activation. Alex Stokes, head of research at the Ethereum Foundation, explained that the calculation relies on information from the previous block header. If a change in blob capacity activates on a fork boundary (Pectra activated block), the excess gas calculation will be based on information from the previous block built using the old fork rules. Stokes believes that it is necessary to clarify whether the increase in blob capacity is activated at the fork boundary or a block after the fork boundary. "It doesn't matter which way you choose, but we need a unified approach," he said. Developers agreed to clarify EIP 7691 and set the effective time of the blob capacity increase to one block after the fork boundary, so that only Use new bifurcation rules for calculations. Ethereum test developer Mario Vega said the client is testing this logic. Geth developer "Lightclient" promised to update EIP 7691 ahead of next Monday's testing session.

4) EIP 2537: The fourth update of precompiled cost calculation for BLS12-381 curve operations is related to the multiplication cost calculation in EIP 2537. The developers agreed to explicitly specify the calculation as integer division in the EIP. Client teams tested with Pectra Devnet 5 should already have this logic implemented in their code, so only modifications to the specification will be required. Ethereum Virtual Machine developer Paweł Bylica said he will make changes to the EIP on GitHub and have it completed before next Monday’s testing session.

Through these updates, developers continue to promote the improvement and coordination of Pectra-related work, paving the way for future Ethereum mainnet upgrades.

5) Finally, the fifth update is related to EIP7702, which aims to add a new transaction type so that external accounts (EOA) can be permanently set code. Otim Labs COO Julian Rachman proposed a behavioral modification to this EIP, which is to enable code introspection. According to documentation written by the Otim Labs team, code introspection refers to the ability of legacy contracts to inspect their own bytecode or the bytecode of external contracts and adjust their behavior based on this information.

Although the Ethereum VM Object Format (EOF) development team plans to disable code introspection in future Ethereum upgrades, documents and meetings mentioned that Enabling code introspection to check the "delegate_address" of EOA does not hinder the development process of EOF. The benefit of allowing code introspection to check the delegation address for EIP 7702 type transactions is that,Supports safe use of relayers and other external accounts when enabling EIP 7702 features such as Gas Sponsorship.

Geth developer "Lightclient" supports adding this update to the Pectra specification. He said: "This update is very easy to implement. We are already determining whether the account is an EIP 7702 delegated account, and adding a designated return address is a very simple matter." Beiko, the moderator of the meeting, recommended that attendees take a few more days to review the changes. Then decide whether to include it in the final specification. He suggested revisiting the topic at next Monday's testing meeting.

Beiko also asked Rachman's team to formally submit a pull request containing all EIP 7702 modification suggestions on GitHub for developers to discuss on Monday. As for whether the update will require developers to launch a new Pectra development network for testing, Jayanthi said the change can be included in a shadow fork of the public testnet without launching a new development network. Beiko added that all other specification updates discussed at the meeting also do not require a new Pectra Devnet, so developers can move forward with updates to the public testnet after further testing of Pectra Devnet 5 is completed.

3. Pectra system contract audit update

Ethereum Foundation (EF) protocol security researcher Fredrik Svantes said that all third-party audits of Pectra system contracts have been completed. No major issues were found in the audit, and relevant reports will be uploaded to GitHub for review by the client team. Svantes recommends setting aside time at the next ACDE meeting for auditors to present their audit results and answer questions from client teams.

4. Pectra testnet upgrade plan

Tim Beiko proposed a preliminary timetable for the testnet upgrade. He suggested that the block height for upgrading the Sepolia and Holesky testnets be determined in the next two ACD meetings, and the client release version be prepared before February 3, 2025. The Sepolia fork is planned for the week of February 12th, followed by the Holesky fork the week of February 19th. If there are no major bugs or issues, the Pectra upgrade will likely hit the Ethereum mainnet in early to mid-March, which is roughly three to five weeks after the Holesky fork. No one at the meeting objected to this proposal, and Stokes also suggested that the client release be tied to Sepolia and Holesky testnet upgrades.

5. Holesky Gas limit

EF general engineer Sophia Gold proposed to set the default gas limit of the client in the Holesky upgrade release to 36 million (36m), and continue to increase the default gas limit of Holesky Upper limit so that it is always higher than the Gas limit of the Ethereum mainnet. This will ensure that any increase in the mainnet gas cap can be tested on Holesky, and no one at the meeting objected to this proposal. Representatives from the Teku, Besu, Prysm, and Nethermind teams stated that their Holesky client releases already have the default gas cap set at 36 million.

6. RPC standardization efforts

Geth developer Felix Lange is disappointed that the client team did not give enough feedback on the Ethereum JSON-RPC specification standardization efforts. During the meeting, one issue he mentioned was the lack of clear definition of the scope of RPC standardization and which ecosystem stakeholders should be included. Lange detailed his standardization efforts and suggested next steps in a blog post. Beiko suggested further discussing this issue on Discord and arranging a panel for this purpose. Besu developer Justin Florentine said he will be responsible for coordinating the timing of the symposium.

7. Node hardware and bandwidth requirements specification

EF application researcher Kevaundray Wedderburn requested feedback on his document on the minimum hardware and bandwidth requirements for Ethereum nodes. Beiko asked whether these requirements should be drafted in the form of an informational EIP for developers and the broader Ethereum community to reference. Prysm developer "Potuz" pointed out that validator nodes and full nodes have different hardware requirements, so the documentation should clearly distinguish between the two. Beiko agreed with Potuz and suggested further discussion on Discord about node hardware and bandwidth requirements and next steps for formalizing the Wedderburn documentation.

8. EIP Editing Seminar

Finally, the meeting mentioned a special seminar on the EIP editing process, but the specific content and time have not yet been determined, and may be discussed in subsequent meetings. Discussed in further detail.

The Ethereum Cat Herders team will hold an EIP editing seminar at 16:00 on January 17, 2025 (UTC). This meeting will provide an overview of the EIP editing process and welcomes all ethers interested in the EIP workflow and editing process.Community members participate. The recording of the meeting will be uploaded to YouTube for everyone to watch after the meeting.