On September 21, 2023, Ethereum’s All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call #118 was held, as described in an article by Christine Kim of the Galaxy Research Team. The biweekly ACDC calls, chaired by Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan, are critical for Ethereum developers to discuss and synchronize changes to Ethereum’s consensus layer (CL). The recent call, which lasted about 30 minutes, focused mainly on preparations for the upcoming Devnet-9.
Key points from the ACDC call #118
Preparations for Devnet-9: Devnet-9 will be the second testnet to integrate the complete set of code changes for the Cancun/Deneb upgrade (often referred to as Dencun). While previous testnets focused on Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844, Devnet-9 will mark the activation of EIP 7514 and 7516. Parithosh Jayanthi, a DevOps Engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, announced his intention to roll out Devnet-9 on September 27. 2023.
Customer Readiness: Several Execution Layer (EL) and CL client teams, including Lodestar, EthereumJS, Lighthouse, and Geth, have indicated they are prepared for the launch of Devnet-9. On the other hand, Besu and Nethermind representatives are busy running Hive tests on their Devnet-9 builds. Jayanthi underlined that the launch of Devnet-9 could go ahead even if not all customers are ready for it, noting the possibility of adding customers after launch.
Dencun-related tests: Ryan found that certain Dencun-related tests were not functioning properly. A corrective action has since been implemented in the “consensus-spec-tests” code repository.
EIP 4788 Deployment: EIP 4788 will be deployed as a conventional smart contract, requiring a contract address for client deployments to activate the code change. The final contract address for EIP 4788 has yet to be determined.
Trusted setup for EIP 4844: The validation of blobs on Ethereum depends on a unique value generated by a multi-party ceremony. This ceremony for EIP 4844 took place from January to August 2023 and attracted more than 140,000 contributions.
Cancun/Deneb Timing: Tim Beiko, chair of the ACDE calls, expressed reservations about the Dencun testing timeline after Devnet-9. If Dencun is not launched on a public testnet before the November 2023 Devconnect conference, the mainnet activation may be delayed until the following year.
Testnet launch sequence: Beiko had previously proposed a launch sequence for Dencun on the Holesky, Goerli and Sepolia testnets. However, Jayanthi suggested initiating Dencun on Goerli prior to Holesky, given Goerli’s impending disapproval.
In short, the Ethereum developer community is in full swing preparing for Devnet-9 and the Dencun upgrade. The insights from the ACDC call, as reported by Christine Kim, underscore the collective efforts to ensure Ethereum’s seamless progress.
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