Ethereum Developers Agree to Begin Electra Upgrade Work

According to PANews, Ethereum developers have agreed to begin work on the Electra upgrade during the 128th Ethereum Core Developer Consensus (ACDC) conference call, summarized by Galaxy Research Vice President Christine Kim. Currently, the three Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) agreed upon for inclusion in the upgrade are EIP 6110, providing validator deposits on-chain; EIP 7002, enabling the execution layer to trigger exits; and EIP 7549, moving committee indices outside of attestations. Additionally, developers will work on the proof of concept and inclusion list for EIP 7547 in the coming weeks. If the code changes for EIP 7547 are found to be easy to implement and test, developers agree to add it to Electra as the fourth EIP without delaying the implementation of the other three EIPs.

Developers also reiterated their intention to make Electra a "small fork," meaning the upgrade can be activated on the Ethereum mainnet before the end of the year. The meeting also discussed preparations for the Dencun upgrade, with all Ethereum clients except the Lodestar (CL) client releasing the final versions of their software for the Dencun upgrade. The Ethereum Foundation (EF) DevOps team is testing the upgrade on the last dedicated testnet using these final client versions and Lodestar's denun-ready candidate version. EF DevOps engineer Parithosh Jayanthi reported that the final mainnet shadow fork for Dencun, a testnet reflecting Ethereum mainnet activity, went live on Thursday, February 22. So far, Jayanthi said the client versions appear stable, with no issues to report on the network. The DevOps team will conduct further testing on the shadow fork in the coming days. If no major issues are found with the upgrade or client versions, EF will publish an official blog post announcing the mainnet date for the Dencun upgrade on Monday or Tuesday (February 26 or 27). Developers have agreed to set the mainnet activation date for Dencun on March 13, 2024. The Flashbots team also plans to share a new version of their MEV-boost software, a validator software for running on Ethereum to obtain MEV, which will be ready by early next week.