I’m personally not really a believer in “small” forks. Historically, the only times we’ve had truly small or quick forks were either emergencies, or simple difficulty bomb pushback. For example, Shanghai was a “small” fork relative to The Merge, and it still shipped 6-7 months after it.
If we are considering any non-trivial EIPs, I’d call this Prague for simplicity. Whether it’s a 6-9 month fork like Shanghai or a 9+ month one like Cancun can only be very roughly predicted based on what EIPs we decide to include.
That said, I agree that we should make a call about whether we include Verkle or not ASAP, as it will dictate how much extra capacity there is for other EIPs.
Right, assuming we didn’t do Verkle, we could choose to only do a set of smaller EIPs, but I just want to make sure we don’t do that thinking “it will be done in 3 months” when it’s likely to take 2x+ longer
At this point the EOF proposals represent some seven years of research and development. They are solid. They are needed. They are really not that difficult to implement. And the researchers and developers are burning out. It’s time to get them into an upgrade.
I think EIP 7002 (EL-induced exits) deserves a mention. The staking community badly needs a way to trigger exits via smart contracts to finally and fully close the loop on trustless staking protocols.
Some interesting ideas for potentially improving it were tossed around at DevConnect this year, but even if it’s included as-is, Ethereum would be significantly safer.
I think Verkle trees alongside with very few small EIPs (Verkle tree is a big update) such as EIP-2537 is desirable, in alternative we can focus on EOF and many small EIPs
I would divide the discussion into two parts, namely which large EIP (or series of EIPs) to include between Verkle Tree and EOF, and which other ‘small’ EIP to include.
Between Verkle Tree and EOF, a check should be made on the maturity of the project and the opinion of the Core Teams on it.
I believe EIP-7002 is one of the best candidates for inclusion in the next hardfork.
My team and I are working on designing and developing Lido Community Staking Module (CSM). This module is aimed to offer permissionless entry to the Lido on Ethereum validator set. EIP-7002 greatly influences the risk profile of CSM and any other permissionless staking solution. With EIP-7002 in place, CSM will become more attractive for Lido DAO to increase its staking share. Hence, more independent operators will be able to join Ethereum validation.
I also feel that including EIP-7002: Execution Layer Triggerable Exits would be a good choice for the network, being crucial not only for liquid staking protocols, and pretty sure not only for Lido.
What I am afraid of is after enabling EIP-7044: Perpetually valid signed voluntary exits in Dencun, there will be a long-term tail risk of storing and distributing the exit messages in staking protocols involving increased trust assumptions.
If EIP-7002 wasn’t included, it’s predictable that protocols trying to build a permissionless validator set (e.g., requiring bonds) would try to rely on joining the set with a pre-signed exit message intent. The message then should be stored and split in a distributed way. However, as the messages will have an infinite expiration time, it would pose a risk of falsely ‘losing’ the pieces or, in contrast, firing up exits spuriously, potentially leading to turbulence or fund losses.
In contrast, if EIP-7002 is implemented, the trust level built into the staking protocols would be reduced, not expanded.
Finally, EL triggerable exits are akin to Account Abstraction direction: getting rid of UX and trust issues with a smart contract that’s where Ethereum is great.
Strongly agree with this, but I think the adoption of 7002 is independent of this issue and simply provides a safety benefit for all LSTs. If the recent discussion on adjusting the mechanics pans out, it could even benefit smaller LSTs more heavily.
It’s a very simple consensus-only change that reduces the cost of verifying casper FFG by a factor of 64x. As such, it accelerates the viability of ZK trustless bridges on Ethereum.
Earlier, Meta EIP used to list proposals considered for an upgrade. “CFI” was created to fill the gap and provide visibility on the list of proposals under consideration for an upgrade where devs are preparing for multiple upgrades in parallel.
With “Upgrade Meta Thread” and the “Meta EIP” for an upgrade getting back in, I do have places to look for EIPs list rather than depending on “CFIs”.
To keep the EIP status harmonized across layers, type & categories. I’d support removing “CFI”.
For Core EIPs we can have standard statuses as explained in EIP-1 with a high-level understanding of when to change the status as below:
Draft = 1st PR Review = Whenever ready for clients’ review/implementation/devnet Last Call = When moved to 1st Public Testnet Final = When deployed on the Mainnet
The combination of EIP-4788 and EIP-7002, gives a fantastic design surface for decentralised / trustless staking protocols, providing the foundation for much needed competition in the space.