Ethereum Weekly Digest, January 19, 2025
Eth News and Updates
Eth R&D protocol call (All Core Devs)
Execution layer focused protocol call (ACDE #203):
Pectra
Pectra devnet-5 is finally live
EIP-7623: Clarifies transaction gas refund calculation by applying the cap after refunds
EIP-7840: Moves base fee update fraction into a unified configuration for consistent block parameters
EIP-7691: Specifies blob and base fee calculation at fork boundaries using new fork parameters
EIP-2537: Enforces integer division for G2 multiplication gas constants
EIP-7702: Reintroduces delegated EOA introspection to mitigate frontrunning risks for relayers
TestNet / MainNet: Targets early February for testnet forks and subsequent mainnet upgrade after stable client releases.
Layer1
EVM resource pricing discussion #1
Broad agreement on short-term repricing of “compute-focused” opcodes: focus on those with mismatched computational costs, making higher-cost opcodes more expensive and lower-cost opcodes cheaper.
Lowering gas costs unlikely to “break” legacy contracts at the execution level; if increasing costs is necessary, must evaluate potential out-of-gas risks. Participants tend to prioritize long-term network scalability over preserving a few inactive or rarely used contracts.
Further data and comprehensive analysis required: especially when aiming for cheaper compute, need to determine how much throughput improves under current mainnet transaction distribution and identify worst-case execution bottlenecks for clients.
FOCIL (Fork-Choice enforced Inclusion Lists) discussion
Most clients have started or are actively advancing FOCIL branches, with basic functionality (gossip, caching, API calls) in place, but require alignment on specific interfaces and behaviors to ensure smooth testnet integration.
Primary testing objective: verify FOCIL’s true anti-censorship capability. Must simulate real-world censorship in testnets or local environments to validate mechanism effectiveness.
Devnet integration and debugging: a preliminary multi-client devnet is expected from late January to February to begin verifying various functionalities and edge cases.
Fix the “duplicate blocks” issue by identifying the root cause and ensuring proper state isolation and block generation within the simulation environment.
Unify RLP encoding across clients to prevent mismatched hashes and reduce failing tests.
Enhance eth_simulate debugging capabilities, including possible trace outputs and improved gas estimation, to streamline troubleshooting and development.
Layer2
L2 Interop Working Group Discussion #1
Purpose: Drive Layer 2 interoperability to enhance the cross-chain experience for users across the entire Ethereum ecosystem
Chain-Specific Address: Participants largely agree on implementing an ENS-based (or similar) mechanism, emphasizing its importance for user experience. Existing references include ERC-3770 and ERC-7828.
Cross-Chain Messaging ERCs: Participants concur on first defining a “minimal universal message format,” then building additional functionality on top of it—such as cross-chain function calls, cross-chain transfers, and synthetic assets.
Two dedicated working groups have been formed: the Chain-Specific Address working group—joined by ENS, MetaMask, ZK Sync, Optimism, and others—and the Cross-Chain Messaging working group—led by Axelar, OpenZeppelin, Espresso, Hyperlane, Wonderland, and more.
ZKsync Era core v26.0.0: contracts gateway integration, adapt server for new EVM bytecode hash encoding
Taiko has deployed Taiko DAO on Hekla Testnet: multi-threshold multisig for standard/emergency proposals, Security Council submission, veto period + 7-day timelock, and open token-based participation under optimistic governance.
EIPs/ERCs
EIPs (Ethereum improvement proposals):
ERCs (application layer):
Client Release
Consensus Layer
Lodestar v1.25.0: increase default gas limit to 36M
Execution Layer
Besu v25.1.0: default target gas limit for holesky
For developers
Hardhat v2.22.18: improves the performance of the display of Solidity stack traces
porto v0.0.5: renamed APIs & migrated to new Account contracts
Web3.js is sunsetting on March 4th, transitional support provided over the next 3 months
Ecosystem
EF 2024 Academic Grants Round Recipients: 41 projects, 1.79M USD total grants
The Endowment achieved an accumulated net revenue of $2.97M and a net average Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 3.7%, maintained 100% capital utilisation, and is projected to achieve a 5.1% APY.
ENS DAO’s operational revenues amounted to $27.07M, operational expenses were $16.72M, reserves concluded at $134M (indicative of an 8-year operational runway), and Endowment revenues covered approximately 22.9% of the DAO’s operational expenses.
karpatkey introduced Hypernative for real-time monitoring of every single position, conducts weekly internal and external risk reviews, and thus ensures comprehensive risk management for the Endowment.
Discussion
Vitalik discussed Ethereum Foundation's (EF) leadership restructuring, highlighting its goals to improve technical expertise, enhance communication with ecosystem actors, bring in fresh talent, support app builders, and increase the use of decentralized and privacy technologies. Non-goals include avoiding ideological shifts, lobbying political figures, and becoming highly centralized.
Some comments raised concerns about EF’s use of decentralized technologies while maintaining neutrality. In response, Vitalik suggested that EF should be more open to using Ethereum ecosystem tools, even if it compromises neutrality, but emphasized doing so judiciously. He also supported increasing visibility for cross-L2 initiatives.
Research & Paper
Block-Level Warming Proposal introduces block-level address and storage key warming to optimize Ethereum’s storage access, reduce redundant costs, and improve gas efficiency. This proposal could save 5-10% in gas costs per block by maintaining warm status for accessed addresses and storage keys throughout the block's execution, with the potential for even greater savings when extended over multiple blocks.
RANDAO Forking Attack where validators selectively fork out honest blocks to maximize rewards. This attack is more harmful than selfish mixing, increasing unfairness among validators and causing frequent chain forks, though no significant traces have been found on Ethereum mainnet.
Block-level Fee Markets explores alternative proposals for metering and pricing blockchain resources, comparing direct and mediated pricing approaches. It discusses three main claims: block-level metering provides better resource allocation, is easy to pair with mediated pricing, and enables some allocations that direct pricing cannot.
A post-quantum alternative to BLS signatures for Ethereum’s proof-of-stake consensus introduces a family of hash-based signature schemes as a quantum-resistant solution. The proposal focuses on a unified framework for XMSS signature variants, avoiding random oracles in the security proof and providing explicit standard model requirements for hash functions’ security.
Stats
Fees (via ultrasound.money):
Gas: 1.5 to 84.5 gwei, 9.2 gwei average; zero net issuance at 24.0 gwei
10.8k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $3,004 – $3,509, currently $3,394, all time high $4,878
ETHBTC: currently 0.036 (Flippening at ~0.164)
L2 Total Value Locked: 14.05 M ETH, 0.71% in 7 days
ETH ETF: $65.81k net inflow (January 13 – January 17)