Ethereum Developers Discuss Pectra Devnet Updates And Historical Growth Solutions

According to Odaily, the 200th Ethereum Core Developers Execution (ACDE) call provided significant updates on the Pectra development network (devnet) and outlined the next steps for the PeerDAS devnet. During the meeting, developers addressed short-term solutions for Ethereum's historical growth issues and the removal of EIP 7610 from Pectra. EIP 7610, one of the two retrospective EIPs in Pectra, does not add functionality to the protocol but formalizes and constrains protocol rules. Ethereum Foundation's Developer Operations Engineer, Parithosh Jayanthi, announced that the official blog post regarding the Mekong testnet has been published on the Ethereum Foundation website. This post provides detailed guidance for application and tool developers on joining the testnet and experimenting with EIPs in Pectra. Jayanthi also mentioned plans to deprecate Pectra Devnet 4 soon. Changes proposed in EIP 7702, discussed during ACDE 199, have been deployed by a developer known as "Frangio." With no objections raised, Tim Beiko confirmed these changes will be included in the specifications for Pectra Devnet 5. Geth developer Felix Lange proposed improvements to the fee logic of the withdrawal contract detailed in EIP 7002, which allows the execution layer to trigger withdrawals. Beiko suggested that developers continue asynchronous discussions on these improvements and aim to finalize decisions before the next ACDE meeting. Erigon developer Giulio Rebuffo introduced a new EIP to enhance the Ethereum wire protocol's capabilities and provide a short-term solution to the historical growth issue. Rebuffo noted that due to the growth of historical data, validators will need to operate hardware with at least 4TB of disk space by mid-2025. Alternative solutions like EIP 4444 and the Portal Network may not be ready in time to prevent validator node operators from updating their equipment within approximately six months. Lange argued that since EIP 4444 is not on the "critical path," serious integration with Portal has not yet begun, indicating it is not a necessary EIP for the upcoming hard fork. Developers will continue discussions on this topic at Devcon. It is noted that there will be no ACDE call on November 21, as Ethereum developers will gather for an in-person meeting at the Devcon conference.