New Week In Ethereum 2025-08-08
- 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)
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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:
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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:
Layer 2
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Polymarket bettors foresee $5K ETH by end of August, though liquidity is increasingly moving to TRON which could impact growth.
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ETH transaction volume climbs on price rally and cheaper DeFi costs, fueled by increased network capacity and reduced transaction costs for DeFi protocols.
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U.S. Spot Ether ETFs hit $1B daily inflow for first time with BlackRock's ETHA leading at $640 million and Fidelity's FETH second with $276.9 million.
Stuff for Developers
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Solidity 0.8.30 released with
pragueas the new default EVM version, improved NatSpec documentation for enum values, and several SMTChecker bugfixes. -
EIP-7212: Precompiled for secp256r1 Curve Support continues to gain traction with active discussions on implementation details for rollups.
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EIP-7999: Unified multidimensional fee market proposal aims to improve gas pricing mechanisms across different resource dimensions.
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All Core Devs - Testing (ACDT) #48 meeting discussed upcoming protocol changes and testing coordination.
Security
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Credix exploited for $4.5 million when an attacker compromised an admin account, minted worthless acUSDC tokens, and borrowed against phantom collateral before transferring funds to Ethereum.
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WOO X lost $14 million in a phishing attack that compromised a team member's device, giving hackers access to wallets across multiple blockchains.
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GMX V1 recovered $42 million after an apparent cross-contract reentrancy exploit that manipulated globalShortAveragePrices to inflate GLP pricing. A $5M bounty was paid for the coordinated disclosure.
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ArcadiaFi lost $3.6 million when an attacker used crafted swapData to trigger arbitrary calls through a trusted rebalancer contract, draining user vaults during a pause cool down period.
Ecosystem
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BitMine's ETH holdings near $5B after latest purchase, with the company aiming to acquire 5% of all ether supply (worth around $25B at current prices).
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Tom Lee's BitMine Immersion aims to raise up to $20B for more ETH buys, expanding on their current $5B ETH holdings.
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FG Nexus buys $200M in Ether as part of their bid for a 10% network stake, building one of the largest corporate ETH holdings.
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Arthur Hayes "had to buy it all back" after selling $8.3M worth of ETH, suggesting renewed confidence in ether's upside potential.
Notable at app layer
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Coinbase is becoming a major Ethereum-focused player, according to Bernstein analysts who maintain an outperform rating with a $510 price target.
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Ethereum transactions hit record high as staking adoption and regulatory clarity fuel the ETH rally, supported by growing corporate treasury investments.
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
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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.
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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
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EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):
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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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