On May 5th, Ethereum client teams gathered for the ACDC Call #108 to discuss various upgrades for the Ethereum network. The primary topics of discussion included the preparation of two Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) for inclusion in the upcoming Deneb upgrade, as well as diversifying the dependencies of MEV relay clients through PR 317.
During the call, developers agreed to consider EIP 4788 for inclusion in the Deneb upgrade. This proposal enables proofs of CL state on the EL for trustless verification by smart contracts, including those that underpin staking pools. Additionally, client teams discussed including PR #3175, which aims to prevent slashed validators from being selected as block proposers.
MEV Relay Clients & SSZ Considerations Discussed During Ethereum Dev Call
The chair of the ACDC called Danny Ryan and confirmed that developers would start working on including and testing these EIPs for the Deneb upgrade. However, no estimated date has yet been announced for the Deneb upgrade, though a developer mentioned during last week’s call that Q3 is a rough estimate.
Developers also discussed the “flat hash” SSZ type currently being used in EIP 4844, describing it as the “worst of both worlds” as it is not formatted for RLP and does not take advantage of full SSZ serialization. In light of recent MEV-Boost exploits, relay clients are verifying the blocks’ contents before broadcasting them on gossip.
To accommodate this functionality, Michael Sproul, a developer for the Lighthouse (CL) client, has proposed a standard query parameter for adjusting when a block is broadcast to the functionality of all CL clients.
However, some developers, such as Terence Tsao of the Prysm (CL) client, expressed concern that this added support could encourage continued dependence on MEV-Boost, which should be deprecated in favor of enshrined PBS as soon as possible.
During the call, Ryan also reminded developers that the revamping of Beacon Chain attestation subnets (attempts) would be rolled out on May 4th. Nevertheless, community members responded positively to the updates, with one member asking for more background information and others expressing appreciation for being kept in the loop.
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