Research & Development
Announcements related to research and development of the Ethereum protocol.
September 12, 2023
R&D
by Péter Szilágyi
Geth v1.13 comes fairly close on the heels of the 1.12 release family, which is funky, considering it's main feature has been in development for a cool 6 years now. 🤯 This post will go into a number of technical and historical details, but if you just want the gist of it, Geth v1.13.0 ships a new database model for storing the Ethereum state, which is both faster than the previous scheme, and also has proper pruning implemented. No more junk accumulating on disk and no more guerilla (offline) pruning! !Geth v1.13.0 Sync Benchmark ¹Excluding ~589GB ancient data, the same across all configurations. ²Hash scheme full sync exceeded our 1.8TB SSD at block ~15.43M. ³Size difference vs snap sync attributed to compaction overhead. Before going ahead though, a
August 29, 2023
R&D
August 2, 2023
R&D
by Carl Beekhuizen & Trent Van Epps
The Special Contribution Period for the KZG Ceremony ran 01-16 April 2023. This allowed participants to contribute in ways that may not have been possible in the Open Contribution period. While the Ceremony only needs a single honest participant to provide a secure output, Special Contributions provide additional assurances beyond a standard entropy contribution: computing over the entropy in an isolated environment (eg. on an airgapped machine, wiping and physically destroying hardware) means that it's unlikely for a malicious entity to have extracted the entropy at any point. detailed documentation (explore links below) attached to real reputations are unlikely to all have been coopted or faked by a malicious coordinating entity. The records are available for future observers to explore. different hardware and software
June 28, 2023
R&D
by Rodrigo Vasquez
We are excited to announce the recipients of this year's Academic Grants Round. We received more than 250 applications and have awarded over $2 million in funding to 43 projects across several categories. The awarded teams are distributed all across the globe with researchers from Austria, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam. Here are the categories and the number of funded projects in each:
June 1, 2023
R&D
by Protocol Support Team
TL;DR: The application deadline for the fourth cohort of EPF has been extended 📆 The EPF Team held a town hall & FAQ session - watch the recording here 👀 Submit your application here before June 18th 📝 Greetings, Ethereum community! We are excited to announce that the application period for the fourth cohort of the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship (EPF) is officially open! The EPF is an initiative aimed at supporting the development of Ethereum's core protocol by providing a pathway for aspiring protocol contributors to gain the experience needed to make meaningful contributions. This program is specifically tailored toward developers and researchers who have an unyielding passion for Ethereum, its community, and the possibilities of decentralized technology. In each cohort, we seek to assemble a diverse group of
May 10, 2023
R&D
by Protocol Support Team
TL;DR: The EPF concluded its third cohort and is preparing for the fourth cohort. Applications will be open soon. Sign up here to get notified when they open. The Ethereum Protocol Fellowship recently completed its third successful cohort in February 2023. Its completion marked 4 months of immersive learning, research and contribution to the Ethereum core ecosystem from a group of talented and dedicated fellows. Before we look into the third cohort, let's recap what Ethereum core development is and how EPF fits into its landscape.
May 3, 2023
R&D
by Fredrik Svantes
Today, we have disclosed the second set of vulnerabilities from the Ethereum Foundation Bug Bounty Program! 🥳 These vulnerabilities were previously discovered and reported directly to the Ethereum Foundation. When bugs are reported and validated, the Ethereum Foundation coordinates disclosures to affected teams and helps cross-check vulnerabilities across all clients. The Bug Bounty Program currently accepts reports for the following client software: Erigon Go Ethereum Lodestar Nethermind Lighthouse Prysm Teku Besu Nimbus In addition to client software, the Bug Bounty Program also covers the Deposit Contract, Execution Layer & Consensus Layer Specifications and Solidity. 🙏
March 28, 2023
R&D
by Protocol Support Team
Withdrawals are coming! The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Ethereum network at epoch 194048, scheduled for 22:27:35 UTC on Apr. 12, 2023 Stakers & node operators should read this post as well as the Withdrawals FAQ From now until April 5th, the Ethereum Bug Bounty rewards have been doubled for Shapella vulnerabilities You can now sign up to receive emails for these upgrade announcements. Scroll to the bottom of the page to do so 📩 After a smooth Goerli transition, client teams have scheduled the Shapella upgrade for mainnet activation. Consensus was quickly reached on an April 12th date during the 157th AllCoreDevs Execution Layer meeting. This upgrade follows The Merge and enables validators to withdraw their stake from the Beacon Chain back to