Ethereal news weekly #6

BPO2 upgrade increased blobs, write Roman Storm a letter of support, Octant epoch 10

Ecosystem

• BPO2 live (blob parameter only upgrade): increased blobs per block to target 14 & max 21 (up from target 10 & max 15)
• Vitalik:
  • Resilience is the game Ethereum is suited to win, block space must be decentralized, permissionless & resilient and then abundant
  • Increasing bandwidth is safer than reducing latency, fast chains must be L2s
  • Trilemma is solved via data availability sampling & ZK-EVMs (primary way to validate blocks by 2027-2030)
• ETH metrics:
  • Gas (gwei): 0.1 average, 0.0 - 3.0 (12.2 for zero net issuance)
  • ETHUSD: $3,045 – $3,293 (all time high $4,946, August 24, 2025)
  • ETH ETFs: 5% of ETH supply
  • ETHBTC: 0.034 (0.165 for the Flippening)

Sponsor: Consensys

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Enterprise

• Morgan Stanley filed for Ether ETF, includes staking
• Wyoming Frontier stablecoin: purchasable on Kraken, supported chains include mainnet, Arbitrum, Base & Optimism

Applications

• Octant epoch 10 (public goods funding): 24 of the top projects from previous 9 epochs, allocation open until January 20
• Zak Cole: Fair launch handbook, guide to equitable token distribution
• HuddlePad (token launchpad) live on Arbitrum, uses Uniswap continuous clearing auctions (CCA)
• Allora (AI-powered inference feeds) live on Base
• Fluent Prints (reputation aggregator): humanity & influence status
• Blobstein: US DoJ Epstein files temporarily stored in blobs; using ~20% of blobs

Developers

• Foundry (dev framework):
  • Forge-std v1.14.0 (helpers): Solidity 0.8.13+ support; v1.13.0: Solidity 0.6.2 - 0.8.13 support
• Hardhat v3.1.3 (dev framework): Solidity 0.8.31+ support for ARM Linux, adds Mocha to unified test output
• Voltaire (client library): designed for AI-assisted development, supports TypeScript, Zig, C & Swift; MCP server; in browser playground; beta
• Hevm v0.57.0 (symbolic analysis): detects infeasible paths earlier, less likely to exhaust system resources analyzing complex contracts & supports symbolic powers of 2
• EVMole 0.8.2 (function selector extractor): adds Go implementation & Fusaka EIP7939 CLZ opcode support
• Sourcify (code verification) Parquet export format v2: append-only exports, S3 compatible API, file metadata from Google Cloud Storage API & ~85% compression
• OnboardMe (contract navigator): requires Etherscan API key, experimental
• Application layer standards (ERCs):
  • ERC8004 v1: Trustless agents
  • ERC8118: Agent authorization
  • ERC8119: Key parameters
  • ERC8121: Delegated metadata resolution via hooks
  • ERC8122: Minimal agent registry

Security

• Truebit $26M exploit; contract deployed in 2021
• TMX $1.4M exploit on Arbitrum
• IPOR Fusion $300k exploit on Arbitrum
• PRXVT exploit on Base

All core devs (main protocol calls)

All core devs - consensus (ACDC) #172

• Hegotá upgrade:
  • Headliner proposals: deadline February 4, requires Eth Magicians post & presentation at ACD
• Proposed EIP champion guide

All core devs - execution (ACDE) #227

• Glamsterdam upgrade (targeting June 2026):
  • Non-headliner scoping: categorized shortlist (from last ACDE)
  • Considered for Inclusion:
    • EIP7997 deterministic factory predeploy
  • Execution layer non-headliner candidates still to be decided at next ACDE:
    • Contract size limit: EIP7907 meter contract code size & increase limit vs EIP7954 simple increase to 32 kilobytes (without changing data structures); EIP7903 remove initcode size limit
    • EIP8037 state creation gas cost increase
    • Remaining Proposed for Inclusion EIPs
  • Declined for Inclusion:
    • EIP8058 contract bytecode deduplication discount; EIP7668 remove bloom filters; EIP7745 trustless log index

Layer 1

• Consensus specs v1.7.0-alpha.0: epbs-devnet-0 target, builders separated from validators & don’t perform validator duties
• Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs):
  • EIP8120: MLOAD8 & CALLDATALOAD8 opcodes

Research

• Single execution environment: unify rollups via synchronous composability so they behave as if part of unified execution environment

Staking

• Toni Wahrstätter:
  • MEV builder bids: view live auction with bids & timing
  • Transaction pool analytics: block explorer showing transactions via private order flow
• Client diversity:
  • Consensus layer:
    • Lighthouse ~35% (data may not be accurate)
    • Flashbots relay diversity stats: Lighthouse 47% exclusively, 57% including multi-client setups
  • Execution layer: Geth ~41%, Nethermind ~38% (estimated from self reports)
• Staking marketshare: Lido 24.2% [Note: dual governance]
• Validators: 973k active
• Client releases:
  • Consensus layer:
    • Prysm v7.1.2 (patch): improves management of pending attestation aggregation

Layer 2

• Arbitrum Dia upgrade live, smoother gas prices during demand spikes, default base fee increased to 0.02 gwei, Fusaka support (secp256r1 update, CLZ opcode & ModExp repricing) & Arbitrum chains can use mint/burn native gas tokens
• Optimism Foundation OP token buy back proposal, using 50% of Superchain revenue for 12 months, starting in February, Foundation would directly manage ETH treasury
• Starknet outage on January 5 due to incorrect processing of a transaction, 18 minutes of activity reverted
• Matter Labs Boojum: L2Beat reproduced zk verifiers & host programs for zkSync elastic chains

Regulation

• Write Roman Storm a letter of support
  • Vitalik’s letter

General

• Wrench attack analysis: attacks increasing & more violent but risk per user only moderately increased and significantly lower than pre-2019
• Ledger (hardware wallet) e-commerce partner Global-e data breach includes name, postal address, email, telephone & order details
• AI trading agent fairness risks: public algorithms get copytraded, sandwiched & often lose money; private algorithms can be rugged by insiders

Editor: @abcoathup
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