On the eve of the launch of the Shanghai Capella testnet by Ethereum developers this week, the Consensus Layer (CL) client team discussed the progress of testing the upgrade in All Call Consensus Core Developers (ACDC).
The Ethereum development team has begun testing Maximum Extracted Value (MEV) Boost, an open-source middleware managed by validators to access the competitive block building market. MEV-Boost allows validators to access blocks from the builder market.
Built by the research organization, Flashbots, it is an implementation of the Prosperity Builder Separation (PBS) for the proof-of-stake blockchain that supports the Ethereum network.
The Shanghai upgrade has been activated, along with the Zheijang and Devnet7 testnets. Tim Beiko, the Ethereum core developer, published a blog announced the date and final client release for Shanghai activation and Sepolia testnet. Beiko said:
After months of testing and ephemeral devnet launches, the Shanghai/Capella (aka Shapella) network upgrade is now scheduled for deployment in Sepolia. This update follows Merge and allows validators to withdraw shares from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer.
Ethereum Has A Long Path To Growth
Ethereum Foundation researcher and network upgrade coordinator Danny Ryan recently published a blog stated that despite “The Merge” and recent upgrades distributed in the network, Ethereum still has a long way to go. Ryan said:
Take a brief look at Vitalik’s roadmap document, and you can’t help but feel the weight of the headache for the long and complicated years (5, 10?) ahead until the protocol is “done.”
According to Ryan, the Ethereum development team is tasked with finding a “sufficient end state” for a functional, secure, and decentralized blockchain, which means providing a sufficiently secure service to clients and users of the Ethereum protocol.
Although Ethereum has started the year with great strides in development and offering a more secure ecosystem to its customers, Ryan suggests a complex and long road map, with “immediate technological concerns” to fix the network.
As for the plan for Deneb, which comes after the Shanghai-Capella upgrade to the protocol, the CL client team has released a new one. post for future upgrades, which include cryptography and new test cases.
Danny Ryan also admitted that the work done on the protocol aims to remove extra code logic to handle empty blob transactions, which contain large amounts of data that cannot be accessed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Danny Ryan sums it up:
In short, Ethereum stands stronger than ever. The community building the core infrastructure, the layers of society at scale, and the community building above is amazing to be a part of and observe. However, there are still major challenges; there is still great risk.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in the market by market capitalization, is currently trading at the $1,600 level, which represents a 2.8% drop in price over the last 24 hours.
In the seven-day time frame, ETH is down 2.1%, and in the long-term, ETH seems to remain at the same level as the January uptrend, with a gain of 3.5% in the last 30 days.
Featured images from Unsplash, charts from TradingView.