According to the latest Ethereum Developer Conference, the testing of the Shapella upgrade is entering its final stages. Tim Beiko, who oversees Protocol Support at Ethereum Foundation, tweeted that a last mainnet shadow fork is scheduled next week, and cross-client EVM fuzzing of the latest releases is underway.
Updates On EOF, SELFDESTRUCT, & CL Access At Ethereum Developer Conference
Shapella, which was announced earlier this week, is a much-awaited upgrade to Ethereum. According to Beiko’s Twitter thread, Lodestar just released v1.7.1, which includes a hotfix that solves an issue mainly experienced by users on the Goerli testnet about checkpoint syncing.
The tweet also states that Nethermind has decided to delay its Ethereum Client 1.18 version to go post-Shanghai to minimize any risk with Shapella going live. The latest spec version of EOF is ambitiously named and aims to remove some of the concerns raised about code and gas observability.
Additionally, SELFDESTRUCT a new proposal to follow the rules in EIP-4758, except when it happens in the same transaction as a contract creation. Moreover, trust-minimized CL access by the EL was discussed at the conference.
According to the tweet, the first part here provides access to the CL’s state roots on the EL, which EIP-4788 proposes. However, one would also need access to the CL’s Generalized Index to verify proofs.
Several options were proposed to address this; teams will look into them in the coming weeks. The builder overrides flag in EL clients was also discussed, allowing ELs to suggest the CL override external builders based on heuristics. It could help in cases of censorship detectable by clients.
The question was around whether this should be done before or along with Cancun. Some client teams said they could start prototyping this soon. Lastly, an unscheduled update was made by Guillaume Ballet on Verkle Tries.
During the EOF conversation, there was some debate about its readiness relative to VT, so Guillaume walked the attendees through all the latest updates.
The developers were generally positive toward EOF but were skeptical that it could fit alongside EIP-4844 in Cancun. There were proposals to potentially schedule it for the next fork.
The teams agreed to CFI EIP-6780 for Cancun to send a signal that “this is happening,” but obviously, the final decision will only be made once more analysis has been done. There were also concerns about how it would impact Verkle Tries.
All the teams will analyze contracts more thoroughly in the coming weeks, and if there are any significant issues, they will be addressed. Nevertheless, the productive conference showcases Shapella upgrade proposals and updates, with some still in development. Excitement builds within the community for the upgrade’s potential benefits.
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