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Summary of the latest meeting of Ethereum core developers: Beacon API specification conversion and optimization of CL proof subnet.

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On January 11th, all core developers of Ethereum participated in the 125th All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) conference call.

Original Title: "Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call #125 Writeup"

Author: Christine Kim

Translated by: Luccy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note:

The Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call (ACDC) is held every two weeks to discuss and coordinate changes to the Ethereum consensus layer (CL). This is the 125th ACDC call, which provided a brief update on the upcoming Cancun/Deneb upgrade testing and discussed two research topics: the conversion of the Beacon API specification and the optimization of the consensus layer proof subnet.

The testing team launched the third and final shadow fork of the Goerli testnet on January 11th in preparation for the Cancun/Deneb upgrade, which will be activated on January 17th. At the same time, developers discussed the fork selection specification and reached a decision to asynchronously introduce the consensus fork near the activation of the Cancun/Deneb mainnet. In addition, the latest progress on the SSZ to JSON specification mapping for beacon API routing, shared by Lodestar developer "Dapplion," was discussed with minor changes related to the longevity advocacy subnet (attnets).

Christine Kim, Vice President of Research at Galaxy Digital, provided a detailed record of the key points of this meeting, which BlockBeats has translated as follows:

On January 11, 2024, Ethereum developers gathered on Zoom for the All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call #125 meeting. The ACDC conference call is a bi-weekly series of meetings hosted by Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan, where developers discuss and coordinate changes to the Ethereum consensus layer (CL). This week, developers briefly introduced the progress of the Cancun/Deneb upgrade test and discussed two research topics, namely converting the Beacon API specification to OpenAPI mode and optimizing the CL proof subnet by using node ID prefixes.

Cancun/Deneb Goerli Fork

The testing team of the Ethereum Foundation launched the shadow fork of the Goerli test network on January 11th. This is the third and final Goerli shadow fork before the Cancun/Deneb is activated on Goerli on January 17th. All final client releases for the Goerli upgrade were tested on the Goerli Shadow Fork (GSF) #2, which can be found at https://dora.dencun-gsf-2.ethpandaops.io/. Parithosh Jayanthi, DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, stated that the initial analysis of GSF #2 was positive, saying "Blobs and blocks seem to propagate smoothly." More detailed information about the final client releases for the Goerli upgrade and the Cancun/Deneb specification can be found in the Ethereum Foundation's blog post published on January 10th at https://blog.ethereum.org/2024/01/10/goerli-dencun-announcement.

Fork selection filtering changes

As discussed in ACDC #114 and ACDC #115, there are some minor changes to the CL fork selection specification, which the client teams expect to gradually implement asynchronously around the time of the Cancun/Deneb mainnet activation. Mikhail Kalinin from the Teku client team explains, "Previously, we decided to gradually roll out this change in Deneb and coordinate loosely." Therefore, these changes should be enabled in the mainnet release. Kalinin suggests that client teams can start merging these changes into their releases in the coming weeks, or choose to wait for an epoch fork boundary, such as the activation of Cancun/Deneb, to trigger these changes and have them take effect in real-time across all clients. For more detailed information on the fork selection filter changes, please read this GitHub pull request (PR).

Developers unanimously agree to merge these changes as soon as possible, without waiting or coordinating with the era fork boundary, demonstrating the customer team's confidence in quickly integrating changes in their next release.

Beacon API's OpenAPI Type Definition

Lodestar developer "Dapplion" shared the SSZ to JSON specification mapping for all beacon API routes completed as of this week. The benefits of this mapping include simplified code. "The code is much simpler and looks much clearer," said Dapplion. "Currently, this is not very important, but for future forks, it should reduce a lot of maintenance work, and if necessary in the future, we can easily convert everything to SSZ. This idea has been around for a while, and it will make this process very easy." For background on the SSZ coordination discussion, please read the ACDE #153 call record.

Dapplion asked developers about their thoughts on transitioning from OpenAPI to SSZ as the next step. No obvious objections were heard. Dapplion stated that he will communicate with relevant teams regarding the specification changes listed in his pull request (PR) and ensure a smooth transition process.

Modify Proof Subnet Calculation

Developers also discussed small changes to the long-term proof-of-stake subnet, attnets, for nodes. Attnets is the network that staking node operators connect to when submitting proofs for blocks. Developers last made improvements to attnets in May 2023. To further optimize attnets, Lighthouse developer Age Manning proposed increasing the use of node ID prefixes to aid in node discovery on the subnet, or as Manning put it, "finding all nodes on the subnet by searching for prefixes." Developers briefly discussed the potential negative impact this could have on the network and attack vectors related to using node ID prefixes to find nodes. Ryan stated that Manning's proposed change would require a hard fork regardless. He asked one of the developers on the call, Pop Chunhapanya, to investigate the strategy for implementing Manning's proposal and gather feedback from other developers in a PR on the topic.

Electra Discussion

Finally, Ryan has opened suggestions for code changes or Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to prioritize in the next upgrade after Deneb (code-named Electra). Ryan stated that he will guide a more "structured conversation" on this topic in the next ACDC call in two weeks. Meanwhile, Ryan encourages developers to check out the EIPs proposed on Ethereum Magicians and GitHub, and share their thoughts on these forums.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Ansgar Dietrichs said that in his view, Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is a "highest priority" upgrade focused on the consensus layer. "[DAS] largely has features that would typically become part of an EIP, but just because of the way 4844 is structured, it doesn't actually require a hard fork or additional EIPs, and I think the risk there is that it may not have the same visibility," Dietrichs said. Ryan disagreed with this comment, stating that in his view, DAS will be included in an EIP because the change would naturally be combined with discussions about modifying Ethereum's gas limits. To learn more about what DAS is and how it is implemented on other blockchains such as Celestia, please read this Galaxy Research report.

Ryan mentioned that there is a preliminary PR about DAS and a formal EIP number will be proposed within two weeks. Ryan encouraged the customer team in the call to consider what should be given priority in Electra during the next ACDC call on January 25th.