Ethereum Developers Confirm EIP 7742 Inclusion In Pectra Upgrade

According to Odaily, Galaxy Research Vice President Christine Kim summarized the 199th Ethereum Core Developers Execution (ACDE) call, where developers reaffirmed the decision to include EIP 7742 in the Pectra upgrade. This inclusion is a prerequisite for increasing blob capacity. Additionally, they discussed the potential benefits of doubling the block gas limit within two years post-Pectra upgrade by changing the default settings of client software. This change does not require a hard fork, and developers have yet to make a final decision on it. On October 18, 2024, developers launched Pectra Devnet 4. EF Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa reported issues encountered by the Erigon, EthereumJS, and Grandine clients on the new development network. Pectra Devnet 3 has been closed, and Busa's team will conduct further testing on Devnet 4 clients in the coming weeks. Developers then discussed various specification changes for Pectra, which should be included in Pectra Devnet 5. The first change involves the gas cost adjustments for EIP 2537, which precompiles for BLS12-381 curve operations. Geth developer Felix Lange introduced a specification update for EIP 7685, a general execution layer request, and related changes to the engine API. Most developers supported these changes, although Lange anticipated some opposition from the consensus layer (CL) client teams due to potential impacts on their EIP deployment. Developer Tim Beiko suggested that, given the approval of these changes so far, they should be added to the Pectra Devnet 5 deployment. Busa confirmed that these two EIPs are already on the list of required specifications for Pectra Devnet 5. Based on feedback on the proposed changes to EIP 7702, Beiko recommended modifying proposals involving hardcoded return values. Once these modifications are completed and reviewed, they should be included in the Pectra Devnet 5 specification list. Developers reiterated last Thursday's ACDC call decision to include EIP 7742 in Pectra, separating blob counts between CL and EL. Representatives from client teams such as EthereumJS, Lodestar, Prysm, Besu, and Nethermind indicated they have begun preparations for deploying EIP 7742 in Pectra Devnet 5. Erigon developer Giulio Rebuffo shared updates on EIP 7790, which provides guidelines for controlled gas limit increases, and EIP 7783, which introduces a new controlled gas target increase strategy. Due to a lack of consensus on EIP 7790, Beiko suggested postponing the discussion and continuing it asynchronously in other forums. Finally, Beiko noted that changing the block gas limit is not within the control of Ethereum protocol developers, making it a lower priority for them.