Ethereum developers discuss Pectra and Validator requirements at ACDC Call 148

On January 9, 2025, Ethereum developers gathered for the first All Core Developer Consensus Conference (ACDC) of the year, chaired by Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes. The series of bi-weekly meetings serves as a platform for developers to discuss and coordinate changes to Ethereum’s consensus layer, known as the Beacon Chain, according to the Verge. galaxy.com.

Pectra Devnet 5 Requirements and Validator

During the call, developers shared updates on Pectra testing and implementation progress. The main focus was to define hardware requirements for validation node operators, an initiative led by a developer known as “Kev”. The group agreed to name the fork of the seventh consensus layer after the star “Galwas”.

Parithosh Jayanthi, EF Developer Operations Engineer, highlighted open issues in the consensus layer specification that need to be resolved before Pectra Devnet 5 launches. Hive tests for Execution Layer (EL) and Consensus Layer (CL) clients have been updated, and most clients perform well against these tests . Stokes mentioned another issue affecting EL clients related to EIP 2935 and he plans to follow up with Geth developer “Lightclient.”

Schedules and promotions

The timing of Pectra Devnet 5 was discussed, with Stokes recommending consultation with EL’s customer teams before setting a launch date. Tim Pico, EF Protocol support lead, suggested launching Devnet 5 the following week, with the goal of upgrading Ethereum’s public testnets, Sepolia and Holesky, in February and potentially having them live on the mainnet by March.

The call also touched on whether the new Ephemery testnet should be upgraded alongside Sepolia and Holesky. The consensus was to upgrade Sepolia first, followed by Holesky, with the possibility of bundling client versions to speed up the mainnet activation process.

Additional developments

Updates to PeerDAS, a blob scalability improvement scheduled for Fusaka’s upgrade, were not shared during this call. However, a developer named “Pop” has proposed three new areas of the Ethereum Node Records (ENR) specification, which will facilitate node communication on IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. These changes are backward compatible and can be integrated independently of Pectra.

Finally, the developers discussed the name of the seventh consensus layer upgrade. The “Gloas” emerged as a preferred option, allowing the “Glamsterdam” fork to have combined EL and CL upgrades, with the EL fork actually being named Amsterdam.

Image source: Shutterstock