Research & Development

Today, we're excited to announce the Pectra Audit Competition, kicking off on Cantina! This month-long event will run from February 21 to March 24, and we're excited to see what issues the security community can find.

The Pectra network upgrade is scheduled to activate on Ethereum testnets!

tl;dr: Ethereum Protocol Studies is returning for 2025. Visit epf.wiki to fill out the survey and join the town hall on Wednesday, Feb 12. The Ethereum Protocol Studies program (EPS) is back for 2025! Designed to lower the barrier to understanding Ethereum's core protocol, EPS provides structured learning and a direct path to deeper protocol knowledge.

The Protocol Security Research Team and the Ecosystem Funding Initiative at the Ethereum Foundation are proud to announce the launch of the ETH Rangers program to help incentivize Public Goods Security Work for the Ethereum Ecosystem.

The Protocol Security Research Team and the Ecosystem Funding Initiative at the Ethereum Foundation are pleased to announce the launch of the first Ethereum protocol Attackathon with a reward pool of $1,500,000, hosted by Immunefi. The attackathon runs between November 25th and January 20th and aims to enhance the security of the Ethereum protocol through a large-scale crowdsourced security audit competition. We invite the entire Ethereum community — from auditing firms to individual security researchers — to participate in this important event to help secure the Ethereum Protocol. You can get started on your journey into understanding the Ethereum Protocol via live and pre-recorded technical walkthroughs through the Academy. The Attackathon is co-sponsored by: Bybit Wormhole Arbitrum The Graph GMX Base

The 2025 Ethereum Foundation internship applications are open! Both research and development teams have open positions. Applications close on December 9, 2024. The Ethereum Foundation is running its first formal summer internship program in 2025 aimed at nurturing the next generation of Ethereum developers and researchers. Interns will work alongside EF teams and, with the help of dedicated mentors, contribute directly to core projects in key areas such as protocol security, account abstraction, scaling research, client development, and more. For example, a past intern worked on MEV smoothing research before eventually joining the EF full time.

After scoping the Pectra fork, a successful interop event and four devnets, we're now launching the first short-lived Pectra testnet: Mekong! The Mekong testnet includes all the EIPs proposed for the upcoming Pectra fork on Ethereum. These changes include UX changes via EIP-7702, Staking changes via EIP-7251, changes to the deposits and exit mechanisms via EIP-6110/ EIP-7002 and more. An exhaustive list of the EIPs as well as specifications implemented can be found here. Mekong is meant to be a playground for wallet developers to experiment with UX changes and for stakers to gain confidence in the upcoming changes. The testnet will be short-lived and is feature complete with all the intended EIPs for Pectra). We may see some minor spec changes or smaller EIPs,

In March 2024, the Ethereum network underwent a significant upgrade with the implementation of EIP-4844, an essential part of the Dencun hardfork, aimed at bolstering Ethereum’s role as a data availability layer. This upgrade introduced "blobs" of data, dramatically enhancing the scalability of Layer 2 solutions by increasing data availability by approximately 100 times. As with any major upgrade, it’s crucial to evaluate its impact, understand its implications, and refine our approach moving forward. To that end, we launched a dedicated data collection round, inviting researchers and developers to delve into the empirical impacts of EIP-4844. The response was overwhelming, with submissions exploring everything from consensus layer security to rollup economics. Today, we are thrilled to announce the winners of this round, who have provided