Week in Ethereum News - August 08, 2025
Week in Ethereum News
August 08, 2025
Highlight of the Week
- Ethereum researchers are exploring ways to reduce slot time with a new approach that separates LMD GHOST fork choice from finality. Vitalik Buterin proposed using a smaller set of ~256 validators for LMD GHOST as the primary "heartbeat" with a finalizing consensus mechanism trailing behind, potentially enabling faster block times without compromising security.
Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)
- All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #162, August 07, 2025
- Fusaka upgrade:
- Devnet-3 updates and devnet-4 plans were discussed
- BPO (Blob Parameter Only) schedule proposals were presented, with competing timelines for increasing blob capacity
- "Perfect PeerDAS" syncing issues were identified as a potential blocker for the upgrade
- Beacon API for blobs was discussed, with feedback needed from L2s on response content and query parameters
- Tentative Fusaka mainnet timeline was proposed:
- September 1: Client releases for Holesky and Sepolia
- September 8: Bug bounty begins
- September 15: Holesky fork
- September 22: Sepolia fork
- October 1: Hoodi and mainnet releases
- October 8: Hoodi fork
- November 5: Mainnet fork (before Devconnect on November 17-22)
- Glamsterdam upgrade:
- PR #4476 to replace INTERVALS_PER_SLOT with explicit slot component times was discussed
- Stakeholder feedback on headliner proposals was synthesized
- FOCIL implementation details for both consensus and execution layers were presented
- Slot timing updates were shared with new proposals for optimizing the slot structure
- Fusaka upgrade:
- All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #47, August 4, 2025
- Fusaka devnet updates were provided
- Proposal to raise EIP-7825 gas cap to 30M was discussed
- Gas limit testing discussion focused on network stability at higher limits
- Replace INTERVALS_PER_SLOT with explicit slot timing (PR #4476) was reviewed
- Hyperledger Besu's EIP-7951 (secp256r1 curve support) benchmarking results were presented
Fusaka (Osaka + Fulu) upgrade
- Client teams are working on "Perfect PeerDAS" syncing issues, which were identified as a potential blocker for the Fusaka upgrade during the ACDC call. This involves ensuring nodes can efficiently sync and backfill data in the new PeerDAS system.
- Two competing BPO (Blob Parameter Only) schedules were proposed during the ACDC call:
- A conservative approach with gradual increases
- An accelerated timeline proposed by Alex Stokes to "move BPO1 to 24 Nov, BPO2 to 15 Dec, and BPO3 to 14 Jan" to reach higher throughput levels more quickly
- The Beacon API for blobs (PR ethereum/beacon-APIs#546) is being finalized, with feedback needed from L2s on response content (whether to include KZG commitments/versioned hash with blobs) and query parameters (indices vs. versioned hashes).
Layer 1
- A detailed presentation on slot timing optimizations was shared during the ACDC call, exploring ways to reduce the current 12-second slot time by restructuring how different components of a slot interact.
- Discussions around gas limit increases for the Fusaka upgrade continued, with testing focused on network stability at higher limits. The proposal to raise the EIP-7825 transaction gas cap to 30M was discussed during the ACDT call.
Research
- Consensus Optimization:
- Vitalik Buterin published a research post proposing a new approach to Ethereum's consensus that separates LMD GHOST fork choice (using ~256 validators) from finality (using all validators). This could enable faster block times without compromising security and provide more flexibility for consensus mechanism design.
- In the discussion, Vitalik emphasized the importance of liveness over bounded availability, arguing that "it's better to give people some information about the future state of the chain (via an available chain) than no information at all (via stalling)" during periods when finality guarantees stop.
- Block Propagation:
- Active discussions continued on the "Faster block/blob propagation in Ethereum" thread, exploring techniques to optimize how blocks and blobs are transmitted across the network to reduce latency and improve scalability.
- FOCIL Implementation:
- Detailed implementation guides for FOCIL (First-Only Committee-based Inclusion Lists) in both consensus and execution layers were shared during the ACDC call:
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
- 🚨 Lido at 25.84%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
- Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~42.71% & Prysm ~30.91%
- Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality.
- Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe.
Client Releases
- Consensus layer:
- Lighthouse v7.1.0: Introduces hierarchical state diffs for hot state (4x less disk I/O, 10x less data during non-finality), optimized processing of Electra SingleAttestation messages, and default gas limit of 45M.
- Prysm v6.0.4: Fixes for blob cache size at startup, slashing protection history exports, and API call behavior for state committees with invalid requests.
- Execution layer:
- Nethermind v1.32.4: Fixed peer discovery issues that emerged after Geth v1.16.0 release, improved network operations and peer management.
EIPs/Standards
- EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):
- ERCs (Application Layer):
Onchain Stats
- Fees (via ultrasound.money): * Gas: 0.2 to 9.5 gwei, 1.0 gwei average; zero net issuance at 20.5 gwei * 2.7k ETH net issuance this week
- ETHUSD: $2507 – $2598, currently $2,582, all time high $4,878
- ETHBTC: currently 0.0236 (Flippening at ~0.165)
Regulation/Business/Tokens
- Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of Mekong testnet, a new testnet designed to test future Ethereum upgrades including PeerDAS and other features planned for the Fulu upgrade.
- Energy Web Chain is preparing for the Zurich hard-fork scheduled for August 5, 2025, with mandatory client upgrades required for node operators.
- Hoodi testnet has increased its gas limit to 60M, following Sepolia's lead, as part of testing higher throughput for Ethereum.
Miscellaneous
- Ethereum consensus-specs released v1.6.0-alpha.4 with numerous updates for Fulu, EIP-7732 (ePBS), EIP-7805 (FOCIL), and EIP-7916.
- Nethermind fixed a peer discovery issue that emerged after Geth v1.16.0 release, improving network operations and message propagation.
- Lighthouse introduced hierarchical state diffs for hot database, significantly reducing disk I/O during normal operation and improving resilience during non-finality periods.
Upcoming Dates of Note
- August 2025: Mekong testnet launch for testing PeerDAS and other Fulu features.
- August 5, 2025: Energy Web Chain Zurich hard-fork at block 36871000.
- Q4 2025: Expected timeline for Fulu upgrade on Ethereum mainnet, pending successful testnet implementations.
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