Research & Development

Withdrawals are imminent. tl;dr Shanghai+Capella (aka Shapella) is on the horizon. Stakers, node operators, infrastructure providers -- pay attention and test! The Academic Grants Round is live! Applications are due by February 27, 2023

With The Merge now firmly behind us, protocol developers have been making progress across a (record?) number of areas over the past few months. Withdrawals, danksharding, EOF, verkle tries, history expiry, SSZ and more have all seen significant progress recently! In order to help move each of these threads forward, and to run through one more series of Shapella stress tests, client team members gathered in person for a week-long interop event in Austria: Edelweiss 🏔️ Unlike Amphora, which had a singular focus on The Merge, this event had two major tracks, focused on the Shapella and ProtoDanksharding network upgrades respectively. Several breakout sessions were also held to dive into other open problems. Here is a brief overview of what was accomplished, as well as links to

The Protocol Support team is organizing a grant round to support the upcoming Ethereum KZG Ceremony. The KZG Ceremony is a coordinated public ritual that will provide a cryptographic foundation for Ethereum scaling initiatives like EIP-4844. Learn more about the Ceremony and participate in the test version at ceremony.ethereum.org. If you'd like funding support to contribute at a deeper level, there are two ways to qualify: writing your own implementation submitting entropy generated by non-traditional sources or through a unique process → APPLY BY JAN 31 or learn more below

Do you enjoy solving interesting and challenging problems? Are you interested in getting involved at the most foundational level of the Ethereum protocol? The Protocol Support Team (EF) is excited to announce that applications are now being accepted for the third cohort of the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship (formerly Core Developer Apprenticeship Program (CDAP))! With the Merge closing in (58750000000000000000000 🥳), Ethereum core developers are looking forward to the next steps in the protocol’s development and there is a need for qualified and committed people to help create an increasingly powerful and robust Ethereum network. Enter the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship.

~20 days until the Merge 🚀 tl;dr The Merge Data Challenge is live! Collect, analyze, and visualize all of the data Merge Mainnet client releases are out. Did you upgrade yet?

tl;dr Merge sequence engaged 🚀

tl;dr ETHStaker/clr.fund Ethereum Staking CLR in progress! Don't wait, 5 days left to contribute Data Availability Sampling is a hard but critical problem. Submit a proposal to the DAS RFP to get involved: $1.5M in funding available!

The Ethereum Foundation Bug Bounty Program is one of the earliest and longest running programs of its kind. It was launched in 2015 and targeted the Ethereum PoW mainnet and related software. In 2020, a second Bug Bounty Program for the new Proof-of-Stake Consensus Layer was launched, running alongside the original Bug Bounty Program. The split of these programs is historic due to the way the Proof-of-Stake Consensus Layer was architected separately and in parallel to the existing Execution Layer (inside the PoW chain). Since the launch of the Beacon Chain in December of 2020, the technical architecture between the Execution Layer and the Consensus Layer has been distinct, except for the deposit contract, so the two bug bounty programs have remained separated. In light of the