For years, selecting which changes make it into an Ethereum network upgrade (“hard fork”) was a complex and often ad-hoc process. With nearly ten client teams coordinating implementations, the absence of formal inclusion stages led to duplicated effort, wasted development cycles, and coordination friction.

EIP-7723, authored by Tim Beiko and Alex Stokes, formalizes how Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) move through upgrade planning. It introduces clearer signaling, stronger prioritization, and more predictable coordination across the ecosystem.

At its core, EIP-7723 makes the upgrade process more legible for both contributors and the broader community.

The Problem: “Included” or “Unknown”

Historically, Ethereum governance lacked granular indicators of proposal maturity. There was effectively one meaningful state - “Included”.

Without intermediate stages:

• Developers reviewed dozens of proposals simultaneously.
• It was difficult to distinguish early ideas from implementation-ready work.
• Coordination across client teams became inefficient.

As Tim Beiko notes, deploying an EIP to mainnet is high-stakes because “the blockchain has to keep it forever.” Clear staging improves safety and decision quality.

The Solution: The EIP-7723 Inclusion Lifecycle

EIP-7723 defines five stages that apply to a single network upgrade. Together, they form a pipeline that progressively filters proposals from ideas into production-ready protocol changes.

Inclusion Stages Overview

The Role of Devnets

Upgrade devnets validate client interoperability before mainnet deployment.

The CFI → SFI transition aligns proposals with devnet readiness:

• Sequencing: SFI defines devnet priorities.
• Risk control: Only mature proposals should enter devnets to avoid churn and instability.

Broader Governance Improvements

Meeting structure now supports this lifecycle:

• ACDE / ACDC: Strategy and upgrade scope
• ACDT: Implementation, devnets, and testing

This separation improves signal quality and reduces coordination noise.

Conclusion

EIP-7723 represents a maturation of Ethereum governance. By clearly separating exploration from commitment, client teams can narrow hundreds of proposals into a safe, deployable set.

As Tim summarizes, the process emphasizes “the quality of the decision rather than the quantity.” The result is a more predictable, transparent, and resilient upgrade pipeline for the ecosystem.

Learn more with PEEPanEIP-7723.

Strengthening Ethereum standards, governance, and public-goods infrastructure

Overview

Happy New Year 2026! This is the first Protocol Post from ECH Institute. In this edition, we reflect on key moments from 2025 and bring together highlights from ECH Institute’s ongoing work across protocol coordination, governance support, and community initiatives. Our goal is to provide a clear, accessible view into the processes and discussions shaping Ethereum’s public infrastructure.

Ecosystem & Protocol Coordination

Over the past year, ECH has evolved its collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation. As EF now has an in-house dedicated Protocol Support team, ECH has stepped back from serving as the default operator for all breakout-room livestreaming. We have continued to support the livestreaming of core Ethereum protocol meetings - All Core Devs Execution (ACDE) and All Core Devs Consensus (ACDC) to ensure accessibility for the broader community.

While these activities remain valuable, they are no longer the highest-leverage use of ECH’s unique position. This transition helps avoid duplication of efforts and allows ECH to focus more deeply on protocol-centered governance processes, standards coordination infrastructure, and durable public-good artifacts, while expanding our work in education, community building, and increasing contributor diversity supporting Ethereum’s long-term growth as public infrastructure.

Ethereum Protocol Meetings

Typically, the All Core Devs – Testing (ACDT) meeting takes place on Mondays. However, to kick off the year, Ethereum core developers began with ACDE 227 on January 5, 2026, followed by ACDC 172 on Thursday, January 8, 2026. Livestreaming on YouTube and X was supported by Akash Kshirsagar, ensuring community access to both meetings. • ACDE 227 YouTube stream & X-Stream • ACDC 172 X-stream Pooja Ranjan from ECH Institute kicked off ACDE 227 by sharing proposals discussed in the previous EIPIP meeting with the All Core Devs Execution (ACDE) group.

• Introduce ACD-G (All Core Devs – Governance)
• Add Optional “Upgrade” Field to Standards Track Core EIPs
• https://github.com/ethcatherders/EIPIP/issues/397
• Update EIP-7723 for clarity, ref https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/11006 Community members with opinions on any of these proposals were encouraged to add their comments and feedback.

Weekly Podcasts

The ECH Institute Podcast released two audio versions of Protocol meetings Listen here:

• ACDE 227
• ACDC 172

EIP Governance and support

ECH hosted Ethereum Office Hours with EIP Editor SamWilsn, continuing efforts to improve clarity, participation, and process efficiency across the EIP and ERC workflows.

• Office Hours Recap

Community & Diversity Highlights

WiEP Brunch — Devconnect 2025

We shared a recap from the Women in Ethereum Protocol (WiEP) Brunch at Devconnect 2025. Many thanks to our multimedia contributor Akash Kshirsagar for capturing and sharing the moments. • Recap here

2025 Recap from ECH Institute

A look back at ECH Institute’s journey, milestones, and contributions throughout 2025. The recap highlights the key initiatives, collaborations, and moments that defined our work over the year, reflecting a continued commitment to strengthening Ethereum’s governance, coordination, and public-goods infrastructure.

Click here to watch Look back at 2025

Public Goods Funding

Octant Epoch 10

ECH Institute is excited to be featured as one of Octant’s “Best of the Best” projects in Epoch 10. The allocation window is now open, and community support helps sustain our public-goods-aligned work.

Support & Learn More:

By participating and allocating to ECH Institute, community members help sustain open coordination, shared infrastructure, and collaborative governance across the ecosystem.

• Octant Epoch 10 is Live: Empowering the Ethereum Ecosystem!
• Support ECH Institute at Octant 10

Perspectives from Contributors

ECH contributors continued sharing insights on Ethereum’s positioning, decentralization, and ecosystem dynamics. Founder Pooja Ranjan shared her perspective on Ethereum’s evolving role within the broader ecosystem.

• Ethereum Is Not Innovation, It’s Digital Infrastructure
• Ethereum Magicians post.
• Watch the proposal presentation

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who participated, tuned in, shared feedback, and supported ECH Institute’s work this week. Your engagement helps keep Ethereum’s standards and governance processes open, transparent and accessible. Follow us for more updates on Twitter: ECHInstitute

Support public goods. Strengthen Ethereum. Remember to visit our official website, blogs, YouTube, Podcast and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Farcaster for more updates.

With 2025 winding down, we at ECH Institute are looking back on a transformative year. It has been a journey marked with growth and is made even more special as we celebrated Ethereum’s 10th anniversary together with the community.

We have dedicated this milestone year to our mission - education, community and homesteading Ethereum, through producing PEEPanEIP videos and Ecosystem Project Demo videos, re-streaming core protocol calls, and maintaining key presence at Ethereum ecosystem events.

In this post, we’re sharing our favorite highlights from 2025. Thank you for being part of the ECH family and the first ten years of Ethereum history!

Let’s dive into the year that was! ✨

• Pectra and Fusaka Mainnet mainnet upgrades: ECH Institute was one of the featured hosts for the Pectra upgrade livestream with EthStaker, the Daily Gwei, Ethereum Foundation and Bankless and the Fusaka upgrade with EthStaker and Ethereum Foundation.

• Celebrating International Women's Day with Ethereum builders and ecosystem leaders: We hosted our first ever Twitter Spaces featuring women who are building start-ups, leading communities and shaping the ecosystem from protocol to applications.

• Celebrating Ethereum's 10 years anniversary: We commemorated Ethereum's 10th anniversary through a short video and community quiz, raffling away EDCON tickets!

• ECH Institute presentation and WiEP networking dinner @ EDCON: ECH Insitute President Pooja Ranjan was one of the featured speakers at EDCON, presenting on the topic of diversity in Ethereum Protocol development. ECH Institute also help organised the WiEP networking dinner at Osaka (with special guest Hsiao-Wei Wang).

• EIP Summit at Devconnect: Hosted the EIP Summit at Devconnect, connecting with application builders, researchers and core developers.

• Rebranding to ECH Institute: Incorporated as a 501(c)(3) last year, Ethereum Cat Herders transitioned our branding to ECH Institute this year, with emphasis on Education, Community and Homesteading.

Mainnet upgrades: Pectra and Fusaka 🔥

As part of the Pectra and Fusaka mainnet upgrades, we have recorded a whooping 22 podcast episodes for our PEEPanEIP series, featuring Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPS) scheduled for inclusion. We invited EIP authors to explain why the EIPs were needed, how they impact Ethereum's ability to scale and what it meant for dApp builders. In addition, we also recorded an additional five-part series known as the Fusaka Files targeting network readiness for large institutions.

Some of the highlights of the PEEPanEIP series include:

• EIP-7702 Set Code for EOAs with Anders Kristiansen

• EIP-7691 Blob throughput increase with Parithosh, Toni and Sam

• PeerDAS - Peer Data Availability Sampling with Francesco D'Amato

and a special episode highlight, What’s Next for Ethereum After Fusaka? with Tomasz Stańczak.

The full Pectra mainnet upgrade playlist, the Fusaka mainnet upgrade playlist and the Fusaka Files can be viewed on Youtube.

One significant feature of Pectra upgrade was EIP-7702 which improved user onchain experience by enabling wallets to delegate control to smart contract accounts for batching transactions, gas sponsorships and much more. On the other hand, the Fusaka upgrade saw a dramatic decrease in gas fees as a result of PeerDAS (Data Availability Sampling) increases data capacity for Layer 2 networks.

We also partnered up with Octant for a fun-filled community call led by Vaelyn to quiz community members on the ins and outs of the Pectra Upgrade.

Education initatives: Women in Ethereum Protocol Study Groups, Ecosystem Project Demos and more 📚

Women in Ethereum Protocol (WiEP) Study Groups

2025 is the second year that ECH Institute is supporting WiEP. Each year, there are two study group cohorts that run over a ten-week period, led by our community contributors. Each cohort attracts a large number of women developers who are interested in core protocol development. Our study groups in 2025 are organized and coordinated by Katya (Cohort 3), Mercy and Arunima (Cohort 4). We are heartened to see so many participants eager to contribute to Ethereum's open-source ecosystem.

Some of the Cohort 3 key highlights are:

• 🎉 23 active participants
• 🎉 5 office hours, 5 stand ups, 10 assignments
• 🎉 15 issues tackled, 11 PRs opened, 4 PRs merged

Cohort 4 highlights are:

• 🎉 25 active participants
• 🎉 40 GitHub issues worked on
• 🎉 40 PRs created and 20 PRs merged

Watch the full Study Group Cohort 3 and Study Group Cohort 4 videos on Youtube!

Ecosystem Project Demo series

Ecosystem Project Demo is a podcast series to showcase & learn about various public goods projects, open-source infrastructure or toolings in the Ethereum ecosystem. Recording and publishing 12 videos, we featured some of the most popular protocols and tools, and covered topics on deep funding, privacy, and governance.

Some of our most viewed videos include:

• Privacy by Default: Privacy Pools with Nathaniel Fried

• The Future of ZK Tooling with Leo Alt

• Agora: Enabling great governance with Yitong Zhang

• DeepGov: Configurable AI Politicians for Capital Allocation and Governance

EIP Office Hours and Governance Meetings

To support EIP and ERC authors move along their proposals from draft to review and to last call, ECH has been organising weekly EIP Office Hours with EIP/ERC editors. Community members can also participate in the governance calls that take place every month, known as the EIP Improvement Process (EIPIP) meetings.

We hosted 34 EIP (and ERC) Office Hours and 10 EIPIP meetings this year! 🔥 We are grateful for our EIP Editors who provided invaluable support, lightclient, Sam, Victor, Gajinder and our newest edition to the team, Jochem.

Protocol calls streaming

Each week, there are multiple core protocol calls happening on Ethereum where core developers and protocol builders discuss important impact and consequences of Ethereum Improvement Proposals. We help publicise these calls by re-streaming them on Twitter (X) and also uploading them on Spotify.

Community building through events and X spaces 🫂

First-ever Twitter spaces celebrating International Women's Day!

We spotlighted women builders, entrepreneurs and key ecosystem players to celebrate International Women's Day! Joining us for the big day were Nixo (Protocol Coordinator at Ethereum Foundation), Katya (Core protocol developer), Sejal(ex Ecosystem Growth, Allo Capital), Yoyo (Co-initiator, ETHPanda), Laura(Co-founder, Jobstash), Alisha (Co-founder, FireflyPocket) and Ornella (Community, Ethereum Foundation).

Each of them shared incredible insights into the challenges and opportunities growing Ethereum communities, from onboarding new builders into the ecosystem, to producing open-source hardware and software (upholding trustless, decentralized ethos of Ethereum) and encouraging more builders to contribute to Ethereum's core protocol infrastructures.

Our speakers also highlighted the realities of working in a remote-first environment, the trade-offs experienced as women and mothers in this space.

ETHCluj #RoadtoEthCluj campaign

ECH Institute expanded our community partnershi outreach this year, starting out with EthCluj partnership at the start of the year. It was amazing to suppot the ETHCluj Romanian community, co-organising and co-hosting their #RoadtoEthCluj campaign.

As ETHCluj has a strong tight-knitted community of engineers and cryptography researchers, it was exciting to see lively participation of their community in our PEEPanEIP episodes and community calls.

Ethereum 10 year anniversary quiz and community call

We also hosted our own Ethereum 10-year anniversary quiz and community call, raffling away tickets for EDCON.

In addition, we also produced a video celebrating Ethereum's birthday!

Watch it here.

Community partnerships with EDCON

We were also proud to be a community partner of EDCON, with Pooja speaking on diversity in Ethereum core protocol development.

Devconnect: EIP Summit, WiEP networking brunch

We hosted ECH Institute's first EIP summit and WiEP networking brunch at Devconnect, with participation from core developers, core protocol researchers, dApp builders and EIP/ERC authors. Read more about our events at Devconnect here.

Heartfelt Gratitude for Community Support 💕

As the year wraps up, we deeply appreciate the generous funding & support provided by the Octant & Gitcoin grant organization to ECHInstitute. This invaluable support is instrumental in advancing our mission to nurture and strengthen public goods within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Last but not least, we are grateful for the support of our core team and volunteers. A big thank you to Pooja, George, Akash, Vaelyn, Gajinder, Lightclient, Sam, Victor, Jochem, and Mercy and Jude.

Learn more about ECH Institute

• Website: https://www.ethereumcatherders.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECHInstitute
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ECHInstitute
• GitHub: https://github.com/EthCatHerders
• Discord: https://dsc.gg/ech

This year’s Devconnect was the largest yet, bringing over 20,000 participants from 130 countries, including more than 10,000 Argentinians and 5,000 developers, alongside 79 exhibitors and 200 volunteers, with hundreds of events spread across the city.

For ECH Institute, Devconnect is an important touchpoint in community building. With the upcoming Fusaka upgrade and our work supporting Ethereum’s EIP and ERC process, Devconnect is a valuable opportunity for us to connect with core developers, client teams, researchers and more importantly, builders.

At Devconnect, we hosted two events, a Women in Ethereum Protocol networking brunch and the EIP Summit. At the EIP Summit, many of the attendees were researchers (24%) and core developers (15%), followed by app builders (12%), students (11%) and others (38%). Each of these events connected us with different people in the ecosystem, enriching our community's perspective of the diverse work in the Ethereum ecosystem.

WiEP Networking Brunch

Kicking off Devconnect, ECH Institute helped host the Women in Ethereum Protocol (WiEP) networking brunch at La Rural.

The morning opened with a “Meet the Women behind the Protocol” session, giving attendees time to connect informally and learn what others are working on across client teams, contributors and coordination roles. It included sharing sessions from Katya, a core developer and former WiEP Study Group Coordinator, and Mercy, a current WiEP Study Group Coordinator. This sharing session was followed by a short opening remark from La Donna and Pooja, who shared an overview of WiEP as an initiative focused on supporting more women and non-binary folks in the Ethereum protocol.

Throughout the brunch, the conversations kept circling back to having peer support for contributors and having opportunities to be involved in making pull requests to protocol repositories on Github. It was exciting to meet women attendees who were part of previous Study Groups and interact with aspiring contributors, highlighting strong interest in protocol development and peer support amongst developers, mentors and mentees.

The brunch was a nice reunion for existing contributors and newcomers, bridging newcomers with contributors at the core protocol layer.

EIP Summit

Building on this focus of inclusion and learning, the EIP Summit at Devconnect brought together the people who shaped Ethereum from ideas to protocol improvements. The half-day event traced the lifecycle of an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), from early research, engaging feedback from the community and EIP/ERC editors, to writing specifications and ensuring mainnet upgrade readiness.

Many of the attendees who joined the EIP Summit had strong interests in the EIP Process and ERC Standards, followed by network upgrades and testing and specs. We were fortunate to have a wide range of speakers that covered different topics.

The Summit opened with a keynote on “EIPs in Motion: From Research to Reality” by Pooja, then moved through tightly scoped talks and lightning sessions with EIP authors, editors, and core developers on their personal journeys and specific proposals.

The first block of talks focused on how individuals can shape Ethereum. In “Don’t just use Ethereum: Help shape it!”, Jochem stressed that anyone, from everyday users to core developers, can participate in the EIP editing process, not just a small inner circle. The talk highlighted how much discussion is currently scattered across forums, calls and chats, and encouraged attendees to use Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians and to post summaries so feedback reaches authors instead of being lost in long threads or unrecorded calls. This is further echoed by EIP Editor, Sam, who emphasized that the EIP process is an author-driven process and individuals should take the initiative to coordinate and gather community feedback.

Jihoon’s “From Draft to Inclusion: A Proposal’s Journey” mapped the formal path an EIP follows once an idea is written up. Using practical discussion forums and platforms like HackMD, the Eth R&D Discord, EthResearch, Ethereum Magicians and the All Core Devs calls, he showed how proposals are communicated, refined and eventually considered for inclusion in a network upgrade. Extra emphasis was placed on large or contentious changes where authors are encouraged to surface concerns early, talk directly with different stakeholder groups and make sure specifications and client implementations are ready before asking for inclusion in a fork. These sentiments were also echoed by German who shared his experience as a first-time author, from proposing an idea to presenting and championing it in the community.

The next set of talks shifted to making sure that Ethereum Improvement Proposals are ready for inclusion. In “From Spec to Sync: Ensuring Upgrade Readiness”, Parithosh outlined how EIPs move from walls of text into executable consensus specifications and cross-client test suites. He described consensus specs and tests as living repositories that define “what Ethereum is” and stressed the importance of spinning up local devnets and catching interoperability bugs before mainnet forks.

That theme of turning specifications into running code continued in “Code is Law: Avoiding Spec-ulation for Faster Forks”, presented by Dan and Raxhvl. They examined pain points with traditional test-driven approaches, where tests can be hard to read and sometimes are out of sync with specs. They contrasted earlier eras of executable tests with the emerging era of executable specifications such as EELS, arguing that review should increasingly be grounded in these specs, treating “code as law” to reduce off-code debates and give clearer, faster feedback.

Turning on Glamsterdam upgrade, gas repricing economics formed another major talking point in scaling L1. In her presentation “Repricings: EIP-8007”, Maria introduced EIP-8007 as a meta EIP cataloguing proposed changes to the gas pricing model for the Glamsterdam fork. Rather than determining gas costs directly, EIP-8007 serves as an overview so client teams and the wider community can see the full set of repricing proposals in one place. Maria also discussed how some EVM operations appear overpriced, limiting throughput, while others are underpriced and risk becoming bottlenecks or attack vectors. With the upcoming changes to ePBS and BALs in Glamsterdam, there is a high need for gas repricing changes for better harmonisation and scaling.

The Summit also highlighted proposed standards in the ERC space. “ERCs in Focus – ERC-8028: AI Assets On-Chain with Data Anchoring Token (DAT)” by Thiru introduced an ERC standard that explained how DAT brings AI assets on-chain with clear proof of origin and usage. Public descriptions around the session emphasise enabling on-chain verification of off-chain AI artefacts, linking them to verifiable metadata and infrastructure for agent-to-agent interactions. The ERC-8028 is part of a broader effort among builders to make Ethereum a coordination layer for AI-native applications.

Last but not least, Victor Zhou shared virtually on ERC-1202: Voting Standard. ERC-1202 is a reusable, composable voting primitive replacing ad-hoc governance contracts. The ERC focuses on proposal lifecycle, ballot types and result interpretation, supporting multiple voting schemes. Victor encourages builders integrating ERC-1202 to reach out to him.

Taken together, the EIP Summit framed protocol work as a continuum: from individuals noticing problems, to drafting and refining proposals, to expressing them in executable specifications and shipping coherent network upgrades.

Missed the EIP Summit at Devconnect?

Catch the full recordings from Devconnect here:

• Full recording of EIP Summit
• From Research to Reality - An EIP’s Journey with Pooja Ranjan
• Don’t just use Ethereum: help shape it! with Jochem Brouwer
• From Draft to Inclusion: A proposal’s Journey with Jihoon Song
• From Spec to Sync: Ensuring Upgrade Readiness with Parithosh Jayanthi
• Code is Law: Avoiding Spec-ulation for Faster Forks - Revamping the EIP Review Process with Danceratopz & raxhvl
• EIP-8007: A major update to EVM gas prices with Maria Inês Silva
• From Idea to EIP: A First-Time Author’s Journey" with German Abal
• ERCs in Focus - ERC-8028: AI Assets On-Chain with Data Anchoring Token (DAT) with Thirumurugan S
• Meet EIP Editor Sam Wilson
• ERC-1202: Voting Interface with Victor Zhou

Podcasts at Devconnect

Apart from EIP Summit and the WiEP networking brunch, we also recorded several podcasts with builders and core developers in this space.

Protocol Pop-Ins with Mike McCabe | 0xbow | Privacy Pools | Devconnect Special 2025

Mike McCabe touched on the importance of enabling privacy on Ethereum, for both everyday users and institutions. Significantly, he addressed the challenges for building privacy projects such as 0xbow’s Privacy Pools, echoing cautionary tales from Tornado Cash and the opportunities in building a compliant-first privacy tool, unlocking privacy for everyday users and enterprises.

Protocol Pop-Ins with Lodestar Team | Devconnect Special Podcast with Matthew, Phil & Cayman

Matthew, Phil and Cayman shared real-world use cases such as zk-identity implementation in Bhutan and their excitement working in Ethereum, maintaining scale and security for trillions of dollars. They also highlighted the preparations the Lodestar team made for Fusaka upgrade and planning ahead for future forks.

Better EIP Reviews with Jochem Brouwer | Devconnect Special | ECH Institute

As an EIP Editor, Jochem highlighted the need for more feedback especially for ERC proposals, the importance of raising feedback as soon as possible rather than belatedly at ACD calls.

From Hackathon to Devconnect with Thiru ​​| Metis | Devconnect Special Podcast | ECH Institute

Winning nearly 30 hackathons, Thiru shared how hackathons shaped his career, get employed and travel around the world. He also touched briefly on DAT ERC standard and working at Metis.

Fusaka Files Spotlight: Special last episode with Tomasz Stańczak

On the final days at Devconnect, we recorded the last episode of the Fusaka Files, a short series that focused on Fusaka readiness for enterprises.

Tomasz, the Executive Director at Ethereum Foundation joined the podcast, touching on credible neutrality especially for institutions, the role of Layer 2 solutions and how the Ethereum Foundation through All Core Dev calls enable open and transparent EIP process.

Tomasz emphasized the ability for anyone to participate in building Ethereum.

Check out the special episode on Youtube!

Check out the rest of the Fusaka Files series here!

Thank you!

We would like to thank all community members, speakers and attendees for making Devconnect so special! We hope that everyone has enjoyed their time and made meaningful connections.

Special thanks to our team - Akash Kshirsagar, George Hervey, Vaelyn Luo & Pooja Ranja for bringing ECH Institute to Devconnect ARG.

Till next time!

The Ethereum community is expecting to activate Pectra on mainnet on May 07, 2025 at epoch 364032 (10:05:11 UTC). This is the 3rd upgrade on the post-Merge Ethereum blockchain. It is also the 19th network upgrade since the launch in 2015, probably the highest number of upgrades to an active blockchain.

Pectra is bringing a combination of execution and consensus layer changes. The upgrade will be activated in less than 24 hours. It will introduce features such as staking exits from the execution layer, code-enabled EOAs, calldata cost adjustments, and blob throughput increases, among many others. It intends to continue the protocol’s development toward scalability, security, and decentralization.

Alongside the technical upgrades, Ethereum Cat Herders and the broader community have collaborated on educational content, including PEEPanEIP recordings, testing call summaries, NFT for Author’s Recognition and a Shapella- Dencun-style watch party to mark the occasion.

✨ Why is it called “Pectra”?

Ethereum upgrades are named using a simple pattern: the execution layer is named after a Devcon city, and the consensus layer is named after a star. “Pectra” is a mix of Prague (the city where Devcon IV was held) and Electra (a bright star in the Taurus constellation). This name shows that both layers of Ethereum are being upgraded at the same time.

🔧 What’s Included: Meta EIP & Core EIPs

Preparing for Pectra: A Paw-some Video by EthCatHerders

To help the community understand what’s changing, the Ethereum Cat Herders have recorded several PEEPanEIP episodes with EIP authors and implementers, offering deep dives into individual proposals and their rationale. Catch the full Pectra Playlist.

Meta EIP-7600 documents the upgrade scope.

Core EIPs

• EIP-2537: Precompile for BLS12-381 curve operations | Video | Audio
• EIP-2935: Save historical block hashes in state | Video
• EIP-6110: Supply validator deposits on chain | Video
• EIP-7002: Execution layer-triggerable exits | Video | Audio
• EIP-7251: Increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE | Video | Audio
• EIP-7549: Move committee index outside Attestation | Video | Audio
• EIP-7623: Increase calldata cost | Video | Audio
• EIP-7685: General purpose execution layer requests | Video | Audio
• EIP-7691: Blob throughput increase | Video
• EIP-7702: Set EOA account code | Video | Audio

Other EIPs

• EIP-7840: Add blob schedule to EL config files
• EIP-7642: eth/69 – Drop pre-merge fields

🚀 Testnet Deployments & Incident Reports

The Pectra upgrade underwent a rigorous multi-phase testing process across Ethereum’s public testnets to ensure network readiness and client stability over several Devnets. Initial deployment on Holesky (Feb 24, 2025) revealed sync issues and client incompatibilities, which were promptly addressed and documented in the Holesky Post-Mortem. These early findings informed critical improvements ahead of the Sepolia deployment (Mar 5, 2025), which encountered a known bug that was swiftly fixed—also captured in the Sepolia Post-Mortem.

A final pre-mainnet run on the Hoodi testnet (Mar 26, 2025) served as the final staging ground, confirming system readiness for mainnet. Each testnet phase contributed valuable insights, reinforcing the reliability of the client releases and validator configurations.

The upgrade is scheduled for mainnet activation on May 7, 2025 at 10:05:11 UTC, following the activation plan outlined in the Mainnet Upgrade & Incident Response Team Plan. This phased rollout has exemplified Ethereum’s commitment to secure and transparent upgrade coordination.

Activation Plan & Client Requirements

The Pectra upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2025. To remain compatible and continue participating in Ethereum’s consensus, node operators and validators must upgrade both their Execution Layer (EL) and Consensus Layer (CL) clients to a Pectra-ready version.

One notable development in this upgrade cycle is the participation of Reth, the latest addition to Ethereum’s Execution Layer clients, and Grandine, as an open-source Consensus Layer client now included in the upgrade process.

Upgrading is essential—nodes that do not upgrade will fork from the main network and be left on an incompatible chain.

Refer to the Ethereum Foundation blog post for complete client upgrade instructions and FAQ. Be sure to update your clients to the minimum compatible versions to remain part of Ethereum’s mainnet consensus.

🙌 Education, Community Engagement & Author Recognition

Ethereum Cat Herders championed a series of community-driven initiatives to ensure the Pectra upgrade was not only technically successful but also widely understood, celebrated, and accessible to all.

🎙️ PEEPanEIP Series

To deepen public understanding of the EIPs included in Pectra , we recorded detailed walkthroughs with EIP authors and client implementers. These educational discussions are part of the ongoing PEEPanEIP series, designed to make Ethereum protocol changes transparent and approachable.

📜 Ethereum Protocol Progress

Ethereum Cat Herders has launched a new series titled “Ethereum Protocol Progress” — a curated collection of tweet threads that document each major Ethereum network upgrade. This initiative aims to make Ethereum’s evolution more accessible and understandable to the broader community. Each thread breaks down an upgrade’s Introduction, Core Features, Benefits, Community Impact, Challenges, and a Fun Fact, offering a concise yet informative snapshot of how the protocol has progressed over time. Browse the full series below and follow along to revisit Ethereum’s most important milestones leading to Pectra:

Here’s a look back at Ethereum’s upgrade history, leading to Pectra:

1. Frontier
2. Frontier Thawing
3. Homestead
4. The DAO Fork
5. Byzantium (Metropolis)
6. Constantinople (Metropolis 2)
7. St. Petersburg (Constantinople 2)
8. Istanbul
9. Muir Glacier
10. Beaconchain (Phase 0)
11. Berlin
12. London
13. Altair
14. Arrow Glacier
15. Gray Glacier
16. The Merge (Bellatrix + Paris)
17. Shapella (Shanghai + Capella)
18. Dencun (Deneb + Cancun)
19. Pectra (Prague + Electra)

Each step brought Ethereum closer to a more efficient, scalable, and secure decentralized future.

🏅 Author Recognition: Pectra Commemorative NFTs

To recognize the invaluable contributions of EIP authors, Ethereum Cat Herders have launched a special edition commemorative NFT for those who contributed to the Pectra upgrade. Read more here.

If you’ve authored one or more EIPs included in Pectra, you can claim your NFT here.

To claim:

• Verify your GitHub username (as cited in the EIP)
• Submit your ENS or Base-compatible wallet address
• The NFT will be airdropped gas-free to your wallet

This limited-edition NFT is a symbol of gratitude from the Ethereum Cat Herders and the broader Ethereum community. Thank you for helping shape the protocol’s future.

🐉 Octant’s Dragon Den Raffle & Quiz

In collaboration with the Octant community, Ethereum Cat Herders organized a Pectra-themed quiz and raffle, rewarding winners with free or discounted tickets to Ethereum events. This initiative helped grow awareness of protocol upgrades in a fun and inclusive way.

🏛️ Onsite Engagement at ETH Cluj

We also partnered with ETH Cluj to promote Pectra-related education on the ground, bringing conversations about Ethereum’s evolving architecture directly to the builder and staker communities.

🎉 Join the Watch Party!

We’re celebrating the Pectra mainnet upgrade with a fun livestream watch party — and you’re invited! Hosted by Ethereum Cat Herders, EthStaker, along with The Daily Gwei & Bankless, this event brings together developers, researchers, validators, and the community to walk through the upgrade as it happens live.

📺 Watch on YouTube

🧵 Watch on X

Bring your snacks, questions, and good vibes! 🧃🎉

This isn’t just an upgrade — it’s a moment for the whole Ethereum community. Let’s enjoy it together!

🫶 Thank You, Ethereum Community!

Pectra happened because of the amazing work from so many people — client teams, researchers, testers, node operators, educators, and community contributors from all over the world. Let’s take a moment to celebrate this big step in Ethereum’s journey — and look forward to what’s coming next! Special thanks to Akash Kshirsagar for beautiful designs, Vaelyn Luo for leading community events George Hervey for the NFT distribution.

Looking forward to a Pawsome future! 🐾

Support & Follow on X | Warpcast | YouTube | LinkedIn | Website

Welcome to the seventh edition. Catch up on the latest updates since our last edition and explore all past newsletters here. This week, we bring you the latest on the Ethereum Foundation Leadership, Pectra and Fusaka upgrades and a roundup of upcoming Ethereum events and ecosystem developments. Stay informed, get involved, and continue contributing to the Ethereum community!

Summary

• New Ethereum Foundation Leadership - Hsiao-Wei Wang & Tomasz Stanczak appointed as co-Executive Directors. Danny Ryan returns as co-founder of Etherealize.
• Pectra Upgrade: Holesky Validator Incident Post-Mortem & Debrief released. Grants & NFT rewards for EIP authors of Pectra Upgrade.
• Ethereum Core Development & EIPs: Read EIPsInsight, watch PEEPanEIP Playlist, join Ethereum Magicians Discussions.
• Public Goods & Community Initiatives: A special talk with Sejal on Deep Funding.

Welcoming a new EF leadership structure

• Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stanczak as co-Executive Directors at EF. Blogpost announcement & ConsenSys support.
  • Thank you Hsiao-Wei Wang for your kind words for ECH and WiEP. We sincerely appreciate your support 🙏
• A new chapter in the infinite garden - A letter to the community by Aya Miyaguchi, The President at Ethereum Foundation.
• Danny Ryan is back!
  • Joining as a cofounder of @etherealize_io
  • Austin Griffith and Danny Ryan in Denver Full video (must watch)
  • The song

Pectra (Prague+Electra) Upgrade

• Holesky Pectra Incident Post-Mortem
  • Holesky Validator Incident Response - Feb 28, 2025
  • Holesky Debrief - Feb 26, 2025
• Pectra Audit
  • Pectra Audit Competition Launches on Cantina
  • Audit Results for the Pectra System Contracts
• Educational Resources - PEEPanEIP - Pectra
• Commemorative NFT for EIP Authors of Pectra Upgrade
• Pectra Proactive Grant Round by ESP
• Holesky Pectra Upgrade Testnet Testnet countdown & Livestream

Execution Layer Meeting 206

• Recording & Next Steps
• Audio only on EthCatHerders's Podcast. Check ACD Playlist and RSS Feed can be obtained from here.
• Highlights of Ethereum's All Core Devs Meeting (ACDE) #206 by @yashkamalchaturvedi

Client testing call #26, February 24, 2025

• Mario's Notes & ECH Notes

Fusaka (Fulu + Osaka) Upgrade

• EIP-7607: Hardfork Meta - Fusaka

Breakout & Implementers’ Meeting

Beam Call

• #2: Recording (unaavailable at the time of writing)

EIP-7732 Breakout Room

• #17: Rcording and Terence's Notes (unavailable at the time of writing)

L2 Interop Working Group Call

• #4: Recording

FOCIL Breakout

• #5 : Recording & Notes
• PEEPanEIP-7805: Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) with Thomas and Julian

PeerDAS Breakout Room

• #19: Recording & Notes

Portal Implementers Call

• #46: Recording (Unavailable at the time of writing) & Notes

Stateless Implementers Call

• #31: Recording & [Recap]

eth_simulate Implementers' Meeting

• Feb 24, 2025: Recording & Notes

Mev-boost community call

• #12

EIPs Update

EIPsInsight

• March 2025
• February 2025

New EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals)

• Uncouple execution payload from beacon block
• Standardized On-Chain Return Type Encoding for Solidity Functions
• Block-level Warming with fair cost savings
• ABI attachment in wallet_sendCalls

Twitter spaces with Stacks Foundation

• EIPs with Pooja Ranjan
  • EIP x AI

PEEPanEIP & Ecosystem Project Demo

Released episodes

• PEEPanEIP 143: EIP 7691 Blob throughput increase with Parithosh, Toni and Sam
• PEEPanEIP-7706: Separate gas type for calldata with Vitalik Buterin
  • Follow playlists - PEEPanEIP & Pectra

Upcoming releases

• ERC-7527: Token Bound Function Oracle AMM with Elaine Zhang

Ecosystem Project Demo

Recording released

• EPD: OSObserve with Rohit Malekar and Carl Cervone

Upcoming releases

• Octant v2 with James K

Public Goods Funding

• Sejal is joining EthCatherdrs to talk about Deep Funding on March 4th
• EthCatHerders participating in Giveth's upcoming round

Events

• Ethereum SFO 10-16 March 2025
• International Women's Day Celebration with ECH Wednesday, March 5, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST
  • Ethereum’s Hidden Gems: Women Leading Development, Coordination and Support with Nixo, Sejal & Katya
  • Forged in Ethereum: Women Leading Innovation and Communities with Yoyo, Laura, Alisha and Ornella
• Staking Summit, Dubai: April 28 - 29, 2025
• ETHPrague 2025 - 27-29 May 2025
• EthCC[8]: June 30 -July 3, 2025
• Devconnect 2025: Expected in Q4-2025. Exact date - TBD. Should you have improvement suggestions, share with the team - Improving Devconnect 2025
• Follow the list of upcoming events by Nathan Sexer

Community Resources

• WiEP - Study Group (Cohort 3) Week 2
• PRIVACY POOLS TESTNET IS LIVE
• UNISWAP WALLET LAUNCHES FIAT OFFRAMP—CONVERT CRYPTO TO CASH EASILY!
• MetaMask x Mastercard – spend your crypto, anywhere.
• Ethereum adoption timeline
• $5M everyone onchain fund

Upcoming Research

• Sealed transactions
• Decentralized Random Block Proposal: Eliminating MEV and Fully Democratizing Ethereum
• Dynamic Blob Sizing: Reducing Zero-Padding Overhead in Small Rollups
• Smart Account Encrypted Mempools
• Native Rollups: Promise vs. Reality
• The Robust Incentives Group Homepage, Casper's Tweet thread

Share your project updates with us

To add updates, visit our GitHub repository. If you wish to contact the team, join ECH's Discord. Alternatively, you can email us at team@ethcatherders.com by Friday to be added to the next edition of the newsletter scheduled for release on the following Monday.

Remember to visit our official website, blogs, YouTube, Podcast and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Farcaster for more updates.

Stay Curious, Stay Connected and Keep Purring 🐾

📜 Pectra EIPs

As per EIP-7600: Hardfork Meta - Pectra, the following EIPs are Scheduled for Inclusion:

• EIP-2537: Precompile for BLS12-381 curve operations
• EIP-2935: Save historical block hashes in state
• EIP-6110: Supply validator deposits on chain
• EIP-7002: Execution layer triggerable exits
• EIP-7251: Increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE
• EIP-7549: Move committee index outside Attestation
• EIP-7623: Increase calldata cost
• EIP-7685: General purpose execution layer requests
• EIP-7691: Blob throughput increase
• EIP-7702: Set EOA account code
• EIP-7840: Add blob schedule to EL config files

🎁 Claim Your NFT Now!

If you are an EIP author of any of the above proposals, you’re eligible to claim your commemorative NFT at:

🔗 Claim your NFT here

To claim your commemorative NFT, simply follow these steps:

1. Verify your Github profile: It must be the same Github username cited in the EIP(s) authored.
2. Enter your ENS or wallet address: The NFT is on Base so ensure you have ownership of that address on that chain.
3. Claim: The gas fees are covered by us! Your NFT will be airdropped to your wallet.

This limited-edition NFT is a small way to celebrate your efforts and recognize your contributions to Ethereum. We deeply appreciate your hard work and look forward to your continued contributions to our community.

🐱 With Love,

Ethereum Cat Herders

📺 Watch A Paw-some Video - Preparing for Pectra

🔗 Follow Ethereum Cat Herders on:
🌐 Website | 🐙 GitHub | 🐦 Twitter | ✍️ Medium | 📺 YouTube

Summary

This week's Ethereum updates cover key protocol advancements, proposal reviews, and community initiatives since the last newsletter. Highlights include:

• Pectra Upgrade Progress: Client teams prepare for Holesky & Sepolia forks on Feb 13, with Pectra EIPs moving to Last Call status.
• Devnet 6 Testing: Deployment announced, focusing on EOF, PeerDAS, ePBS & IL refinements.
• EIP Reviews & Implementation Discussions: Multiple proposals reviewed, with debates on GitHub handle requirements and EIP-7702 documentation needs.
• PEEPanEIP Podcast: Recent episodes cover Fast Confirmation Rules and EIP-7623.
• EIP-7706 & Gas Market Changes: Vitalik Buterin discusses multi-dimensional gas pricing and the potential impact of calldata gas separation.
• Public Goods & Community Updates: Deep Funding’s Level 2 juror applications open, Octant Epoch 7 Climate Round ongoing, and new EF leadership in AI & Public Goods.
• Upcoming Ethereum Events: ETHDenver, ETHPrague, and Devconnect 2025.

Pectra (Prague+Electra) Upgrade

• Pectra Proactive Grant Round by ESP
• Pectra Retrospective
  • Lodestar’s Pectra Retrospective and Future Fork Ideas
  • Other Client teams & individual responses have been added to the thread.

All Core Dev Consensus #150

• Video recording, ECH's Podcast Version, FEM

Action Items

• Prepare client releases for 13 February to enable Holesky and Sepolia Pectra forks.
• [EL clients] Take a look at 7702 mempool implementation to surface test cases.
• Add your client team’s Pectra retrospective by next week’s ACD: Pectra Retrospective
• PSA: Move all Pectra EIPs to Last Call status!

Pectra Interop Testing Call

• ECH's notes

Key Decisions & Next Steps

• Devnet 6 Deployment: Announcement in Interop channel; client teams should prepare for testing.
• EIP-7702 Implementation: More documentation needed; community contributions welcome.
• Tx Pool Tests: Address specific cases, integrate with EEST and Hive testing, review test list.
• PeerDAS: Continue edge case syncing; prioritize after Pectra completion.
• EOF Testing: Prepare for Kurtosis-based testing after Pectra Devnet 6.
• ePBS & IL Testing: Proceeding with standalone domain testing before considering mainnet inclusion.

Breakout & Implementers’ Meeting

eth_simulate Implementers' Meeting Feb 03, 2025

• Recording & ECH's Notes
• The next meeting is scheduled for February 10, 2025 at 12:00 UTC. Recording.

RPC Standards Call #0

• Recording & Justin's notes
• The next call is scheduled for February 17th, 2025 at 15:00 UTC.

Portal Network Implementation #43

• Notes

PeerDAS Breakout Room #16

• Notes & Recording

RollCall #9.1 Breakout - L2 Execution Common Core: V1 Scope

• Awaited
• RollCall #10 planned for Febuary 12, 2025 at 14:00-15:30 UTC

EOF Implementers Call #66

• Recording & Notes
• The next call is planned for February 19th, 2025, 15:00 UTC

EIPs Update

• Unifying Ethereum together: ERC-7683 adopters

EIPsInsight

EIP Editing Office Hour Meeting 51

Proposal Review & Implementation Discussion

Sam Wilson reviewed the status of various proposals, moving some to review while others required further development. Full recording here.

• Sam & Pooja agreed to extend a proposal’s deadline once the author addressed feedback.
• Pooja emphasized the benefit of having at least one implementation for final status, but Sam wasn't in favor of making it mandatory.
• They discussed a proposal’s viability, with Sam expressing concerns about its substance and potential use, yet agreeing to move it forward.
• Github Handles: Regarding GitHub handles,Pooja proposed making adding GitHub handle of all co-authors mandatory, however Sam maintained that having at least one is sufficient for approval.
• They also assessed several proposals, approving some while identifying necessary revisions, and agreed to continue reviews in future meetings.

PEEPanEIP

Released episodes

• PEEPanEIP #139 - A Fast Confirmation Rule for Ethereum Also, shared on Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Farcaster.
• PEEPanEIP 140: EIP-7623: Increase calldata with Toni Wahrstätte

Recording scheduled

• PEEPanEIP-7691: Blob Throughput Increase with Sam C Mason, Tony W. & Parithosh J. on Feb 11, 2025 at 21:00 UTC.

Upcoming releases

• PEEPanEIP-7805: Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) In this PEEPanEIP recording, Pooja Ranjan, discussed EIP-7805, also known as FOCIL with co-authors Thomas, Francesco, Julian Barnabe who are part of the Ethereum Foundation's Robust Consensus Group. The proposal aims to allow a committee of validators to enforce included transactions in every block. The proposal is currently in draft status and is an active discussion for the future upgrade. The main goal of FOCIL is to increase the credible neutrality of Ethereum.
• PEEPanEIP-7706: Separate gas type for calldata with Vitalik Buterin Vitalik discussed the concept of multi-dimensional gas pricing as a scaling strategy for Ethereum, proposing a separate gas limit for call data in EIP-7706. He also compared EIP-7623 and EIP-7706, highlighting the potential complexities and risks of implementing the latter. The conversation ended with discussions on the future of Ethereum, the importance of openness and decentralization, and the potential for user experience improvements.

EIP updates

• Unifying Ethereum together: ERC-7683 adopters

Call For Input (Open)

(No change since the last week.)

• Define "Meta"
• Forcibly withdraw EIP-7675
• Allow Links to Blockchain Commons

Ecosystem Project Demo

• EPD: OSObserve Rohit Malekar and Carl Cervone, from the Open Source Observer (OSO) team joined with EthCatHerders. They shared his background, the transition and involvement with the OSO team. The discussion then shifted to the role of OSO in tracking, analyzing, and supporting open source projects by offering real-time insights into their contribution and impact. The guests also discussed the global nature of open source and the need for better funding models, with crypto networks offering a new model for funding open source projects. Stay tuned for the recording coming out soon.

Upcoming Protocol Calls

Public Goods Funding

• Devansh Mehta joined Ethereum Foundation as AI x Public Goods/Governance lead.
  • Become a juror in Deep Funding's Level 2
• Octant Epoch 7 Climate Round

Events

• ETHDenver 2025: February 23 - March 2, 2025
• Staking Summit, Dubai: April 28 - 29, 2025
• ETHPrague 2025 announced - 27-29 May 2025
• EthCC[8]: June 30 -July 3, 2025
• Devconnect 2025: Expected in Q4-2025. Exact date - TBD. Should you have improvement suggestions, share with the team - Improving Devconnect 2025
• Follow the list of upcoming events by Nathan Sexer

Community Resources

• Tomasz K. Stańczak introduces ChaosChain
• Based and Native Rollups - X Spaces
• Proposal to deploy Aave on Sony's chain
• Ethereum Protocol Studies 2025 announced
• ESP Allocation Update - Q4 2024
• William Mougayar "advice" to Vitalik Buterin
• Debate: Coinbase took lead on the Ethereum roadmap
• The Arbitrum DAO has collected nearly 20,000 ETH in profit

Upcoming Reasearch

• peerDAS by Emmanuel Nalepa (@manunalepa)
• Delayed Execution And Skipped Transactions by Toni Wahrstätter
• zkFOCIL: Inclusion List Privacy using Linkable Ring Signatures
• The Case for Programmatically accelerating Ethereum's Network Capacity by Giulio Rebuffo

Share your projects with us

To add updates, visit our GitHub repository. If you wish to contact the team, join ECH's Discord. Alternatively, you can email us at team@ethcatherders.com by Friday to be added in the next edition of the newsletter scheduled for release on the following Monday.

Remember to visit our official website and follow us on Twitter for more updates.

Stay Curious, Stay Connected and Keep Purring 🐾

Summary

Welcome to the sixth edition of the Purr-suit of Ethereum! If you missed our last edition, you can catch up here. This week, we bring you the latest on the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades, ongoing client testing & research efforts, updates on public goods funding, and a roundup of upcoming Ethereum events and ecosystem developments. Stay informed, get involved, and continue contributing to the Ethereum community!

Summary

• ACDbot is coming in soon!
• Pectra Upgrade: Devnet-6 is running smoothly; testnet upgrades on Holesky (Feb 24) and Sepolia (Mar 5) before mainnet activation.
• Fusaka Upgrade: Proposal deadline March 13, review by March 27, final scope by April 10.
• Testing & Breakouts: PeerDAS-devnet-4 live, EOF & ePBS testing progressing, multiple breakout calls scheduled.
• EIPs & Grants: 3 new drafts, 13 EIPs in Last Call, ESP’s Pectra Proactive Grant Round open.

Pectra (Prague+Electra) Upgrade

• Devnet-6 is running smoothly, with the MEV workflow being tested end to end.
• PEEPanEIP - Pectra
• Holesky Pectra Upgrade Testnet Livestream
• Testnet countdown
• Pectra Proactive Grant Round by ESP

Pectra testnet announcement

It will go live on

• Holesky at epoch 115968 (Feb. 24, 21:55 UTC) and
• Sepolia at epoch 222464 (Mar. 5, 7:29 UTC). Once both testnets have successfully upgraded, a mainnet activation epoch will be chosen.

Once both testnets have successfully upgraded, a mainnet activation epoch will be chosen.

Pectra has already been activated on Ephemery, a staking testnet which resets every 28 days. Read more about Ephemery testnet here.

Client releases for the Pectra upgrade on both Holesky and Sepolia.

Fusaka (Fulu + Osaka) Upgrade

Fusaka Fork scoping timeline:

• March 13: Fusaka Proposed for Inclusion deadline
  • To do so, open a PR against EIP-7607
• March 27: Deadline for core devs & researchers to review PFI’d EIPs and share their preferences async
  • Any format is OK, but please link write ups in the EIP-7607 EthMagicians thread
• April 10: Tentative deadline to finalize Fusaka’s scope.

Execution Layer Meeting 205

• Recording
• Audio only on EthCatHerders's Podcast. Check ACD Playlist and RSS Feed can be obtained from here.
• Ethereum All Core Developers Execution Call #205 Writeup by @Christine_dkim
• Highlights of Ethereum's All Core Devs Meeting (ACDE) #205 by @yashkamalchaturvedi

Client testing call #24, February 10, 2025

Key Decisions & Next Steps

• Going ahead with testnet Pectra forks: Announcement in ACD channel; client teams should prepare for releases. Dates can be found here 7.
• Tx Pool Tests: Testing team is currently working on them.
• PeerDAS: PeerDAS-devnet-4 is now live, planning for future devnets has started.
• EOF Testing: Kurtosis-based testing now works, EEST is going to be used to trigger bugs at the start.
• ePBS & IL Testing: Proceed with standalone domain testing before considering mainnet inclusion. Kurtosis integration is complete.

Breakout & Implementers’ Meeting

Beam Call #1

• Recording
• Beam chain

EIP-7732 Breakout Room #16

• Recording and Terence's Notes

L2 Interop Working Group Call #3

• Recording

FOCIL Breakout # 4

• Recording & Notes
• PEEPanEIP-7805: Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) with Thomas and Julian

PeerDAS Breakout Room #17

• Recording
• Next meeting on Feb 18, 2025 at 10:00 UTC Agenda

RollCall #10 [2025-02-12]

• Recording

Portal Implementers Call #44

• Notes
• Next meeting Agenda

Stateless Implementers Call #30

• Stateless Ethereum Information Page is a new website of public explanation about Ethereum's stateless benefits.
• Follow the Stateless team on X to get updates about Ethereum's stateless efforts.
• Recording & Recap

eth_simulate Implementers' Meeting Feb 10, 2025

• Recording & ECH's Notes
• The next meeting is scheduled for February 17, 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

EIPs Update

EIPsInsight

EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals)

• 3 Draft added
• 2 moved to Stagnant
  • EIP-7727: EVM Transaction Bundles
  • EIP-3540: EOF - EVM Object Format v1
• 1 moved to Review
• 13 advanced to Last Call: All Pectra upgrade EIPs included.

ERCs (Ethereum Request for Comments)

• 2 Draft added
• 2 moved to Review
• 1 advanced to Last Call:
  • ERC-7627: Secure Messaging Protocol (Deadline: February 18, 2025)
• 1 finalized:
  • ERC-7751: Wrapping of Bubbled Up Reverts

RIPs (Rollup Improvement Proposals)

• 1 Draft added:
  • RIP-7875: Canonical ERC-7802 Token Bridge Address

PEEPanEIP & Ecosystem Project Demo

Released episodes

• PEEPanEIP 141: EIP-7805: Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) with Thomas and Julian
  • Follow playlists - PEEPanEIP & Pectra

Recording scheduled

• ERC-7527: Token Bound Function Oracle AMM with Elaine Zhang on Tuesday Feb 18, 2025 at 19:30 UTC

Upcoming releases

• PEEPanEIP-7706: Separate gas type for calldata with Vitalik Buterin

Ecosystem Project Demo

Recording scheduled

• EPD: Octant v2 with James on Thursday Feb 20, 2025 at 19:30 UTC

Upcoming releases

• EPD: OSObserve with Rohit Malekar and Carl Cervone

Upcoming Protocol Calls

• Mev-boost community call #12 on 19 Feb 2025 at 16:00 UTC

Public Goods Funding

• EthCatHerders participating in Giveth's upcoming round.
  • Currently we're not eligible for GIVbacks or to be boosted with GIVpower. Please signal your support using DeVouch and help verify our legitimacy.
• Holonym Foundation Acquires Gitcoin Passport and Launches human.tech
• Octant Sweepstake & Climate Round

Events

• ETHDenver 2025: February 23 - March 2, 2025
• Staking Summit, Dubai: April 28 - 29, 2025
• ETHPrague 2025 - 27-29 May 2025
• EthCC[8]: June 30 -July 3, 2025
• Devconnect 2025: Expected in Q4-2025. Exact date - TBD. Should you have improvement suggestions, share with the team - Improving Devconnect 2025
• Follow the list of upcoming events by Nathan Sexer

Community Resources

• WiEP - Study Group (Cohort 3) Launch
• EF Ecosystem Support Program
• The 2025 Academic Grants Round is still open, with $2M in funding available for innovative research across a wide range of domains. Submit your applications by March 16!
• EF Treasury has deployed on Ethereum DeFi.
• Unichain mainnet is live
• Introducing Lido V3

Upcoming Research

• Reasons to have higher L1 gas limits even in an L2-heavy Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin
• The Road Towards a Distributed Encrypted Mempool on Ethereum by Frederik Lührs, Luis Bezzenberger, Francesco Mosterts, Sebastian Faust, Andreas Erwig

Share your project updates with us

To add updates, visit our GitHub repository. If you wish to contact the team, join ECH's Discord. Alternatively, you can email us at pooja@ethcatherders.com by Friday to be added to the next edition of the newsletter scheduled for release on the following Monday.

Remember to visit our official website, blogs and follow us on Twitter & Farcaster for more updates.

Stay Curious, Stay Connected and Keep Purring 🐾

The Ethereum ecosystem continues to push forward with major protocol upgrades, client testing, and ecosystem-wide discussions. This week's update covers the latest Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade developments, including security updates, testnet timelines, and system contract audits. Additionally, we dive into the latest discussions from All Core Devs, EVMMAX Implementers, and EIP Editing Office Hours, alongside new insights on validator hardware requirements, pre-confirmation mechanisms, and public goods funding initiatives and more updates since the last newsletter. If you’re tracking Ethereum’s Protocol meetings, this edition is packed with critical updates!

TL;DR

• Urgent Geth Update – Users must update to v1.14.13 to patch security vulnerabilities.
• Pectra Upgrade – Devnet-6 is progressing; testnet forks for Holesky and Sepolia could happen by Feb 6, with client releases expected by Feb 10.
• System Contract Audits – Security reviews of EIPs 2935, 7002, and 7251 reveal concerns around fee updates.
• EVMMAX Testing – Poseidon hash tests show a 10x efficiency gain using EVM Max over Solidity, with more benchmarking on the way.
• Validator Hardware Debates – No final agreement yet on bandwidth requirements for Ethereum validators; discussions continue in the Ethereum R&D Discord.
• New ACD Bot Coming – A bot for recordings, calendar events, and notes will be presented in the next All Core Devs call.
• EIP Editing Milestone – The 50th EIP Editing Office Hour marked a shift to dedicated EIP-only sessions to speed up proposal reviews.
• Public Goods Funding – Octant Epoch 7 is open for climate-focused projects, and Gitcoin Grants 23 is set for March with a revamped funding strategy.

Pectra (Prague+Electra) Upgrade

All Core Devs - Execution (ACDE) #204 (January 30, 2025)

• Urgent Security Update: Geth users should update their nodes immediately to apply the latest security release.
• Pectra Devnet-6 & Timelines: Client teams should share devnet-6 ready branches. If stable by Feb 6, testnet fork slots for Holesky and Sepolia will be selected, with client releases expected by Feb 10.
• Mainnet Fork Slot Consideration: The mainnet fork slot will be chosen only after Holesky forks successfully, likely around Feb 20, to avoid misleading expectations.
• System Contract Audits Completed: Audits for EIPs 2935, 7002, and 7251 were conducted by multiple firms, revealing concerns about the fee update mechanism.
• Fusaka Fork Planning: The first Fusaka devnet should only include EOF and PeerDAS, with further EIPs considered once stable. No additional decisions were made beyond this scope and that allowed teams to share their perspectives on the Pectra Retrospective thread.
• Node Hardware & Bandwidth Discussions: Validator bandwidth requirements sparked debate, with no final agreement. The conversation continues on the R&D Discord.
• Upcoming ACD Bot Presentation: A new bot to automate recordings, calendar events, and notes for AllCoreDevs will be presented in the next call.
• Recording, Podcast version, Tim Beiko's FEM Notes, Nixo's Tweet Thread, YashKamal Chaturvedi's Notes, Christine's notes

Client testing call #22 (January 27, 2025)

• Notes

Breakout & Implementers’ Meeting

EIP-7732 breakout room #15 (January 31, 2025)

• Client Implementation Updates: Progress was reported on running Teku locally with ongoing issue fixes. Plans were discussed to prioritize gossip syncing, and ensures clients are ready for devnet testing.
• Beacon API & Execution Payloads: A new API endpoint was proposed to fetch execution payloads independently. Discussions also covered adding event stream topics to notify toolings when a new payload is received.
• Pre-Confirmations & Potential Challenges: The impact of Epbs on pre-confirmation mechanisms was debated, particularly concerns over a brief period where only one entity holds key information. Further evaluation is needed to assess whether this introduces centralization risks.
• Slot Auction Research & Challenges: Various slot auction mechanisms were discussed, including potential execution ticket designs. However, major challenges remain in implementing fork choice rules, slashing conditions, and preventing collusion.
• Action Items for Next Meeting:
  • Implement new API endpoints for execution payload requests.
  • Continue improving client implementations and achieve a two-client Kurtosis run.
  • Engage with pre-confirmation teams to evaluate potential blockers.
  • Collaborate with researchers to further assess the impact of the identified "blackout period" on centralization risks.
• Next Steps: The team aims to finalize API updates, test implementations, and assess the viability of different approaches for pre-confirmations and execution tickets while focusing on safe, incremental improvements.
• Recording, Terence's notes

EVMMAX Implementers Call 2 (January 30, 2025)

• Client Updates:
  • EthereumJS team completed most of the JavaScript arithmetic library.
  • Work on vectorized and non-vectorized implementations continues, with comparisons planned.
• Poseidon Hash Implementation:
  • Initial tests show a 10x efficiency improvement using EVM Max compared to Solidity.
  • Future work includes validating gas cost reductions and potential wall clock time improvements.
• Vectorized vs Non-Vectorized Execution:
  • Ongoing discussion about whether vectorized operations should be the default.
  • Need to determine end-user requirements, such as elliptic curves vs. STARKs.
• SIMD & Hardware Compatibility:
  • AVX2 (256-bit) is widely available, while AVX-512 has limited support.
  • Investigating impact on smaller fields where SIMD benefits could be more pronounced.
• Tooling & Testing Pipeline:
  • A front-end tool is needed for easier implementation testing.
  • Options include direct bytecode generation or adding support to Solidity/Ule.
• Action Items:
  • Confirm EVM Max gas numbers and benchmark wall clock performance.
  • Investigate SIMD comparisons using AVX2 with Poseidon hashing.
  • Develop a tool for end-to-end testing of EVM Max implementations.
• Next Steps:
  • Compare Solidity-based Poseidon with EVM Max implementations.
  • Refine vectorized and non-vectorized benchmarks to guide further decisions.
  • Plan for the next meeting in one month to review progress.
• Notes & Recording

L2 Interop Working Group - Call #2 (January 29, 2025)

• Slides from Ellie
• RIP-7859 - Ian from Polymer
• Reown and 7811
• Recording

FOCIL Breakout Room #3 (January 28, 2025)

• Recording & Notes

Portal Implementers Call #42 (January 27, 2025)

• Notes

eth_simulate Implementers' Meeting

• Notes

EIPs Update

EIP Editing Office Hour Meeting #50 (January 28, 2025)

• Milestone & New Editing Sessions:
  • Celebrating the 50th EIP Editing Office Hour and over two years of contributions by Sam Wilson.
  • Introduction of a dedicated EIP-only editing session led by Gajendra Singh to address backlog.
• Reviewing Open Pull Requests:
  • Addressing EIPs ready for status updates (e.g., moving drafts to review).
  • Noting delays due to pending author responses, especially for active EIPs related to upcoming hard forks.
  • Suggesting authors raise PR concerns in All Core Devs (ACD) calls for quicker resolutions.
• Handling Draft EIPs & New Submissions:
  • Reviewed new draft EIPs for correctness and formatting.
  • Discussed the importance of including benchmarking data and rationale for proposals with technical specifications.
  • Authors encouraged to use relative URLs for links and provide clear justification for hardware requirements.
• EIP Status & Update Policies:
  • Discussion on best practices for versioning frequently updated EIPs (e.g., hardware recommendations per hard fork).
  • Agreement on linking each update to a specific fork rather than using "Living" status.
• Process Improvements & Next Steps:
  • Encouraging active discussion in EIP's Magician forums for technical clarifications.
  • Proposal to allocate EIP numbers even for unmerged drafts unless abuse is detected.
  • Next EIP+ERC editing session scheduled for next Tuesday at 16:00 UTC.
• Notes, Recording

PEEPanEIP

• PEEPanEIP 138: RIP-7759 Layer 2 Transaction Fee Specification with Andreas Freund

EIPsInsight

• January 2025 - Insight (Tweet Thread)
• No new updates in Feb 2025

Call For Input (Open)

• Define "Meta"
• Forcibly withdraw EIP-7675
• Allow Links to Blockchain Commons

Upcoming Protocol Calls

Public Goods Funding

Octant Epoch 7 (Jan 30 – Feb 13, 2025)

Dedicated to "Climate Round", applications are OPEN for the Octant Epoch 7. If your project aligns with these areas and has been around for at least a year, the team wants to hear from you!

Deep Funding (Ongoing)

Backed by Vitalik Buterin, Deep funding is launched to support different projects based on dependency or ‘deep’ graph that shows the relative value of open source contributions in a network and deep learning.

In Deep Funding, most of the work gets done by a public market of allocators, that suggest proposed weights of edges in a graph. Using AI for allocations is encouraged.

Timeline

• December 12th, 2024: Data on 40,000 Ethereum dependencies for building your model
• Jan 20th, 2025: Sample spot check data by jury members to train your model
• Jan 20th, 2025:Deadline for “early bird” prizes for open source model submissions. At least half of the open source model submission prize pool will be reserved for early bird submissions.
• Feb 20th, 2025: Submit your model
• Feb 27th, 2025: Results

Gitcoin Grant 23 (Upcoming in March 2025)

GG23 is kicking off at the end of March, and big changes are coming. The team shared Gitcoin Grants 2025 Strategy in a recent blogpost and the team intends to moving into a multi-mechanism future, allowing us to ensure a fairer funding distribution, supporting builders at every stage of growth.

Community thoughts on Public Goods Funding

There are a lot of differnt thoughts on "Public Goods". Last week Dan Robinson shared his thoughts on what he considers as "Public Goods". Vitalik Buterin responded

careful, "infra" is itself one of those words with challenging connotations 😀 I'd say "funding for pure open source"

Pooja Ranjan thinks the Ethereum Cat Herders is one of the popular public goods projects in the Ethereum ecosystem as "Public Goods" can be many things including essential coordination funding, fuel for Ethereum’s progress, an investment in Ethereum’s future and more.

Let us know your thoughts on Public Goods funding. Tag your top 5 favorite projects and us in your response Tweet :)

Events

Upcoming Events

• ETHDenver 2025: February 23 - March 2, 2025
• Staking Summit, Dubai: April 28 - 29, 2025
• EthCC[8]: June 30 -July 3, 2025
• Devconnect 2025: Expected in Q4-2025. Exact date - TBD. Should you have improvement suggestions, share with the team - RPF 9 - Improving Devconnect 2025
• Follow the list of upcoming events by Nathan Sexer

Community Resources

• Fabric - Fabric to Accelerate Based Rollup Infrastructure & Connectivity
• Native Rollup for 3SF
• Vitalik Buterin's shoutout for Justin Drake.
• go-ethereum hiring

Share your projects with us

Have updates about your project or client? Share them with us at team@ethcatherders.com by Friday (end of day EST) to be added in the next edition of the newsletter scheduled for release on the following Monday.

Stay Curious, Stay Connected and Keep Purring 🐾

A Milestone of Collaboration and Progress!

The Ethereum community runs on teamwork, new ideas, and shared standards. Today, we’re excited to celebrate a big milestone: the 50th EIP Editing Office Hour! Let’s take a look at how it all started, thank the people who made it happen, and share what’s next.

How It Started?

The idea of EIP Editing Office Hours was based on the EIP Editors' Apprenticeship Meetings introduced in November 2021 by the Ethereum Cat Herders and EIP Editor Matt Garnett. Matt helped train new contributors to become EIP reviewers, opening the door for contributors to engage more deeply in the Ethereum ecosystem. These meetings encouraged more people to get involved and learn about editing EIPs.

Building on the success of the apprenticeship meetings, the EIP Editing Office Hour was launched to provide a real-time, collaborative platform for EIP authors and potential new contributors. The office hour sessions officially began in September 2022, taking place every alternate Tuesday.

The goal was simple: give contributors a chance to ask questions, get help with their EIPs, and learn about the process. Over time, these sessions have become a key part of improving Ethereum standards.

Big Thanks to Sam Wilson 🙏

A huge thank-you goes to Sam Wilson, who has been leading these sessions. Over the past two years, Sam has answered countless questions, reviewed hundreds of pull requests (EIPs and ERCs), and made the process smoother for everyone. Sam’s dedication has been vital to the success of these office hours, and we’re incredibly grateful for all your hard work. Thank you, Sam!

Welcome Gajinder Singh 🤝

We’re excited to announce that Gajinder Singh is joining us to provide extra support for EIP Editing Office Hours. Gajinder will focus on leading sessions dedicated to reviewing EIPs only. With this added support and now three office hours per month, we aim to further reduce the number of open pull requests and better serve the community.

Thanks to All Editors 🙌

Behind the scenes, many editors work hard to review and merge pull requests. These contributions keep Ethereum’s standards up-to-date and ready for new developments. Thanks to everyone working asynchronously to make this happen!

Join the Office Hours 👋

The EIP Editing Office Hour is open to everyone. It’s a great place to learn about the EIP process, get your questions answered, and collaborate with others. If you’ve submitted a pull request, you can:

• Get help to understand the workflow.
• Work with editors to merge your proposal.
• Learn why a pull request wasn’t merged and how to improve it.

We also encourage you to check out the EIP Editing Office Hour playlist on YouTube. It’s a helpful resource to understand the process and see the community in action.

Looking Ahead 🛣

Reaching the 50th session is a big achievement, and we’re excited for what’s next. The EIP Editing Office Hour will keep growing and adapting to support the Ethereum community. Thanks to everyone who has been part of this journey so far. Join EthCatHerders Discord for more information.

Follow the Ethereum Cat Herders on Website, GitHub, Twitter, Medium, and YouTube.

Here’s to more purr-fect collaboration and claw-some innovation in the future! 🐾

In this edition, we bring you key highlights from the Ethereum ecosystem, including updates on the upcoming Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade, insights from the latest All Core Devs Consensus Call, and details on recent implementers’ and breakout meetings. For those new to this series, don’t worry—you can catch up with our previous newsletter here.

Other highlights include exciting news about Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in progress, updates on the Public Goods Funding, and upcoming events. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue our mission to empower Ethereum through education, community building, and innovation.

Pectra (Prague+Electra) Upgrade

Consensus (ACDC) #149, (January 23, 2025)

• devnet-6 will likely launch in the week of Jan 27th
• Proposed timing for Pectra:
  • SEPOLIA (Feb 12, 2025) - epoch: 219392; slot: 7020544; timestamp: 1739980128; forkId: 0xbafd09c3
  • HOLESKY (Feb 19, 2025) - epoch: 113152; slot: 3620864; timestamp: 1739352768; forkId: 0xf818a0d6
  • Mainnet: Mar 11, 2025 (NOT FINAL, just an ambitious goal)
• Recording
• Podcast (Audio) by EthCatHerders
• Twitter summary by Nixo
• Highlights of Ethereum's All Core Devs Meeting (ACDC) #149 by Yash Kamal Chaturvedi
• Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call #149 by Christine_dkim

Pectra Interop #21 (January 20, 2025)

• Move forward with Pectra devnet 6, incorporating a new genesis file and validator set increase to 50,000–100,000.
• Mario will release updates with EIP-7702 changes and fixes.
• Client teams to review and comment on PRs as needed.
• Notes by EthCatHerders, Fellowship of EthMagicians. No recording is available.

Breakout & Implementers’ Meeting

EOF Implementers Call #65 (Jan 22nd, 2025)

• Recording, FEM Notes by Danno Ferrin

JSON-RPC Standardization Breakout (Jan 20, 2024)

This is a new breakout room meeting initiated as a result of discussion to be continued from the last ACDE.

• The discussion focused on broader goals and stakeholder involvement, emphasizing the need to refine internal processes before involving external stakeholders like wallets and RPC providers.
• Suggestions included using the group to address consistency issues and align new feature proposals with broader stakeholder needs.
• Key action items were identified:
  • incorporating eth_fillTransaction `into the execution spec, refining and documenting new methods, ensuring RPC compatibility through rigorous testing, and improving specification documentation for better usability.

• As next step, devs decided to continue async discussions on eth_fillTransaction and RPC compatibility tests on Discord.

• Future discussions will prioritize error handling and establishing processes for integrating new features and methods.

• The next meeting will be scheduled in the next two weeks.
• Recording & Notes by EthCatHerders

eth_simulate

No meeting on Jan 20, 2024

EIPIP Metting #112 (January 15, 2025)

• Stagnant Tag Discussion: A few suggestions to address issues with the "Stagnant" tag for Core EIPs under active consideration. Will bediscussed further in the next meeting.
• EIP Reviewers: Proposal to introduce formal EIP Reviewer roles approved. Details to be finalized in the Editors' Workshop.
• Editors' Workshop Announcement: Workshop planned for onboarding and discussions.
• Proposal Builder Tool:
  • Get the .md file to document a proposal using this tool. Demo shared, tool deemed useful for new authors.
  • Requested adding the tool link to eips.ethereum.org.

EVM Resource Pricing Breakout #1 (January 15, 2025)

The Gas Repricing Working Group meeting is a new breakout focused on three key agenda items: benchmarking efforts, short-term pricing changes, and research for medium-term updates.

Presentations included an overview of the Nethermind gas-benchmarks tool by Marek, showcasing its use in identifying bottlenecks, and Jacek’s Gas Cost Estimator tool, which proposed updated gas cost schedules tested across seven EL clients.

Discussions addressed strategies for short-term adjustments, such as single and multi-block warming to improve efficiency, and medium-term considerations for hardforks like Fusaka and Amsterdam. Concerns around backward compatibility were highlighted, with suggestions to leverage EOF mechanisms for versioning and restrict gas schedule changes to EOF contracts.

• Benchmarking Efforts:
  • Tools presented for analyzing gas costs and addressing bottlenecks in existing schedules.
  • Proposals to refine gas pricing schedules for greater efficiency.
• Short-Term Pricing Changes:
  • Adjustments to precompile gas costs due to benchmarking insights revealing they are underpriced.
  • Ideas like single and multi-block warming were discussed, with efficiency gains estimated at 5-6% for single block and ~15% for multi-block.
• Medium-Term Strategy:
  • Addressed strategies for future hardforks like Fusaka & Amsterdam.
  • Backward compatibility concerns raised about repricing, with suggestions to restrict changes to EOF contracts.
  • Agreement that increasing gas prices historically caused breakages, while reducing prices carries lower risk.
• Backward Compatibility:
  • Suggested leveraging EOF mechanisms for versioning to mitigate issues.
  • Discussions on feasibility of automating checks to detect potential contract breakages.
• Future Considerations:
  • Incentivizing fair contract usage without disadvantaging smaller contracts.
  • Exploring zk-proof pricing adjustments (e.g., 10x keccak costs).
  • Dcrapis proposed a session on EVM memory pricing, potentially to be covered in a future call if time doesn’t permit.

Action Items

• Draft EIPs for short-term pricing changes.
• Continue benchmarking efforts to refine gas cost schedules.
• Explore applying new gas schedules only to EOF contracts to preserve legacy compatibility.
• Schedule EVM memory pricing presentation for the next call.

FOCIL Meeting #2 (Jan 14, 2025)

• Notes by Matthew
• CL Implementation: The team is actively working on implementation, though some bugs may still need addressing.
• FOCIL Implementation Notes: Terence shared detailed notes.
• Lighthouse has provided support for the effort.
• The plan includes shifting focus to RETH on the EL side.
• Launching a percentage of EL clients with a modified mempool is in progress.
• Kurtosis is supporting the definition of mempool logic with Tx Spammer Configuration.
• Implementation Goals:
  • Implement blocks with inclusion lists.
  • Expected to complete in the next day or two.
• FOCIL Intro Slides: Shared by Soispoke.
• The team has started work in Privacy & Anonymity area. Interested contributors can reach out to Soispoke.
• Relevant Links:
  • Beacon API PR
  • Jacob's Update
  • Jihoon's Talk
  • Docker and Kurtosis Config: Repo
  • Setting Up Local FOCIL Devnet
• Local Devnet: A local devnet for FOCIL is ready to be run.

Client Updates

• Teku: Progress underway with active work on FOCIL implementation.
  • Teku FOCIL Branch.
• Nethermind: Prototyping and implementation in progress (PR).
• Lodestar: Differences addressed in this PR.
• Metrics: Katya has started working on beacon metrics, to be shared soon.
• Timeline: Aiming for the FOCIL devnet by the end of January, with progress on track.

EIPs Update

EIPsInsight

The latest Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) updates reflect progress across various repositories:

• EIPs: 10 proposals transitioned to Stagnant, 4 moved to Review and 5 new added to Draft.
• ERCs: 4 proposals advanced to Final, 4 are in Last Call, 3 transitioned to Review and 3 added to Draft.
• RIPs: 3 proposals added as Draft.

Proposals in the Last Call

• ERC-7734: Decentralized Identity Verification (DID)
• ERC-7751: Wrapping of bubbled up reverts
• ERC-7820: Access Control Registry
• ERC-7818: Expirable ERC-20

PS: This data is collected from EIPsInsight

Other tools

• Editor's Leaderboard

Call For Input (Open)

• Define "Meta"
• Forcibly withdraw EIP-7675
• Allow Links to Blockchain Commons

EIP Editors' Workshop

• If you've missed the Workshop, watch the replay here
• If you are interested in joining as EIP Reviewer, please fill out the Reviewing Interest Form.

Upcoming Protocol Calls

PS: This table is created based on Protocol calendar and GitHub Issues.

Public Goods Funding

Octant Epoch 6

A heartfelt thank you to all the donors and supporters who contributed to making this round impactful. 💖 Your generosity will fuel us, to continuously work for you all and drive meaningful change.

ECH Public Goods Challenge

Ethereum Cat Herders is on a mission to empower Ethereum through Education, Community building, and Homesteading Ethereum initiatives. Now, we’re calling on you—our amazing community and supporters—to help us take this mission even further. Your contributions fuel the tools, resources, and connections that keep Ethereum thriving.

Stay tuned—more details on Public Goods Challenge coming soon. Let’s build a stronger Ethereum ecosystem together! 🐱

Events

Consensus 2025 - HK (Feb 19, 2024)

If you’re at Consensus HK, don’t miss the session with our Ethereum devs! The Ethereum community’s participation and sharing of the latest developments at events like these are fantastic opportunities to foster engagement and strengthen connections within the ecosystem. Excited to see the Cat Herders leading the coordination for this representation.

Upcoming Events

• ETHDenver 2025: February 23 - March 2, 2025
• Staking Summit, Dubai: April 28 - 29, 2025
• EthCC[8]: June 30 -July 3, 2025
• Devconnect 2025: TBD

Community Resources

• Pectra Retrospective by Tim Beiko
• Rough consensus: post-Pectra By Nixo
• A Tweet Thread on Pectra upgrade by Sassal
• Ethereum Acceleration by Paradigm
• Scaling Ethereum L1 and L2s in 2025 and beyond by Vitalik Buterin
• Ethereum Macroeconomics via Dynamics by EthResearch
• EIP explainiers
  • A high level overview of EIP-7702 by letgetonchain
  • EIP-7623 Explained + Deep dive in to the Evm code changes by letsgetonchain
  • ERC-7779: Understanding & Redefining Wallet Interoperability by EtherWorld

Share with us

Have updates about your project or client? Share them with us at team@ethcatherders.com by Friday (end of day EST) to be added in the next issue, scheduled for release the following Monday.

Stay Curious, Stay Connected and Keep Purring 🐾