Research & Development

For EIP-4844, Ethereum clients need the ability to compute and verify KZG commitments. Rather than each client rolling their own crypto, researchers and developers came together to write c-kzg-4844, a relatively small C library with bindings for higher-level languages. The idea was to create a robust and efficient cryptographic library that all clients could use. The Protocol Security Research team at the Ethereum Foundation had the opportunity to review and improve this library. This blog post will discuss some things we do to make C projects more secure. <!--

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

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

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:

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

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.

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. 🙏