Ethereum’s ACDE 171 Paves Way for Devnet Launches and Private ETH Transfers

On September 28, 2023, Ethereum’s developer community convened for the 171st All Core Devs Ethereum (ACDE) meeting, covering a range of topics including upcoming devnets, audits for Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4788, and a new proposal for private Ethereum (ETH) transfers among others, according to timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko).

The meeting kicked off with Barnabas Busa giving an update on the Dencun devnet-9 which is slated to launch the following day. The devnet is significant as 75% of its validators will be utilizing Nethermind or Geth, 19% will be on Besu or Erigon, and 2% each with Reth and EthJS. Following the devnet-9, a short-lived devnet-10 is set to launch to test the new churn limits triggered by a large validator count.

During the call, updates regarding the audit of EIP-4788 contract bytecode were shared. Three auditing firms: ChainSecurity, Dedaub, and Trail of Bits were engaged for the review. The auditors endorsed the changes made based on their feedback, including the explicit handling of the 0 timestamp, and found no issues with the implemented fixes.

Discussions moved to the Holesky re-launch where, despite initial hitches in the first 10 epochs, the chain began finalizing with a 70-80% participation rate. The causes for validators being offline were identified and were being addressed during the call.

A notable highlight was the presentation of EIP-7503, proposing a scheme for private ETH transfers by burning and reminting ETH. This proposal facilitates users to send ETH to a provably un-spendable address and, using a new transaction type, provide proof of the burnt ETH to re-mint it at another address.

The proposal stirred a rich discussion regarding the implications and practicality of this mechanism on Ethereum, with questions surrounding the calculation of ETH supply and the safety of zk-friendly hashing functions on the mainnet.

Lastly, a minor amendment to EIP-6780 was proposed by Guillaume Ballet, which only allows the SELFDESTRUCT operation in the same transaction as a contract creation. A problematic specification concerning post-Verkle Tries behavior was agreed to be removed, aligning with the current behavior of Ethereum.

With a packed agenda, the meeting set the course for the next ACDE scheduled for October 12, 14:00 UTC, where the Ethereum community will continue to iterate and improve upon the network’s protocols and features.

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