Protocol Update 001 – Scale L1

In June, we introduced Protocol, reorganizing the Ethereum Foundation’s probe & improvement teams to amended align connected our existent strategical goals, Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX without compromising connected our committedness to Ethereum's information and hardness.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll people updates connected each enactment stream, covering their ongoing progress, caller initiatives, unfastened questions and opportunities for collaboration. We commencement contiguous with Scale L1 --- expect follow-ups astir Scale Blobs and Improve UX soon!

TL;DR

• Marius van der Wijden joined Ansgar Dietrichs and Tim Beiko to co-lead Scale L1
• Mainnet’s state bounds accrued to 45M post-Berlinterop, a archetypal measurement connected the roadworthy to 100M state and beyond 
• All large execution furniture clients shipped Pre-Merge History Expiry, importantly reducing node disk usage
• Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) are being considered arsenic a headliner for Glamsterdam
• Compute & authorities benchmarking initiatives are underway to amended negociate EVM assets pricing and show bottlenecks
• The way to zkEVM real-time proving is becoming much concrete, with the prototyping of a ZK-based attester lawsuit underway
• We are inactive hiring a Performance Engineering Lead: applications adjacent Aug 10

Geth-ing Serious About L1 Scaling

Scaling Ethereum requires reconciling ambitious designs with engineering pragmatism. To assistance america execute this, we've appointed Marius van der Wijden arsenic co-lead for Scale L1 alongside Ansgar Dietrichs and Tim Beiko.

Marius's extended engineering acquisition connected Geth combined with his committedness to protocol information marque him a cleanable acceptable to align our scaling strategy with Ethereum's constraints.

Together, Ansgar, Marius and Tim person defined a acceptable of cardinal initiatives that volition alteration america to Scale L1 arsenic rapidly arsenic possible. 

Towards a 100M Mainnet Gas Limit

Our contiguous extremity is safely scaling Ethereum’s mainnet state bounds to 100M per block. Parithosh Jayanthi, intimately supported by Nethermind's PerfNet team, is starring our enactment getting done each incremental increase.

At the caller Berlinterop event, lawsuit teams importantly improved their worst-case show benchmarks, enabling the caller summation to 45M state --- a archetypal measurement connected the way toward 100M state and beyond!

Additionally, lawsuit hardening has go an integral portion of the 100M Gas initiative. The Pectra upgrade rollout highlighted respective issues caused by web instability. It is paramount to guarantee clients stay robust arsenic throughput increases, adjacent if the web temporarily loses finality.

History Expiry

The History Expiry project, led by Matt Garnett, reduces Ethereum nodes' humanities information footprint. The caller deployment of Partial History Expiry removed pre-Merge humanities data, redeeming afloat nodes astir 300–500 GB of disk space. This ensures they tin tally comfortably with a 2TB disk.

Building connected this, we’re present processing Rolling History Expiry, which volition continuously prune humanities information beyond a fixed retention period. This volition support nodes' retention needs manageable, adjacent arsenic Ethereum scales.

Block-Level Access Lists

Block-Level Access Lists (BALs), championed by Toni Wahrstaetter, are emerging arsenic a starring campaigner for inclusion successful the Glamsterdam upgrade. BALs supply respective captious benefits:

• Enable parallel transaction execution wrong blocks.
• Facilitate parallel computation of authorities roots, importantly speeding up artifact processing.
• Allow preloading of required authorities astatine the commencement of artifact execution, optimizing disk entree patterns.
• Improve wide node sync efficiency, benefiting caller and archival nodes.

These improvements collectively heighten Ethereum’s capableness to reliably grip higher state limits and faster artifact processing.

Benchmarking & Pricing

An ongoing situation successful scaling Ethereum is aligning the state costs of EVM operations with their computational overhead. The show of worst-case borderline cases presently limits web throughput.

By improving benchmarking infrastructure and repricing operations that can't beryllium optimized by clients, we tin marque artifact execution times much consistent. If we adjacent the spread betwixt the worst and mean lawsuit blocks, we tin past rise the state bounds commensurately.

Ansgar Dietrichs leads efforts focused connected targeted benchmarking and engineering interventions, informed straight by PerfNet’s broad benchmarking, to place and resoluteness compute-heavy bottlenecks. Significant advancement has already been made post-Berlinterop, peculiarly successful managing worst-case compute scenarios.

In parallel, Carlos Pérez spearheads Bloatnet: an inaugural aimed astatine benchmarking and optimizing authorities performance. This involves investigating node show nether conditions with authorities sizes treble the existent mainnet and state limits reaching 100–150M, to straight pass some repricings and lawsuit optimizations.

Both of these efforts volition pass Glamsterdam EIP proposals to homogenize assets costs crossed operations, enabling further L1 scaling.

zkEVM Attester Client

Today, Ethereum nodes execute each transactions successful a artifact erstwhile receiving it. This is computationally expensive. To trim this computational cost, Ethereum clients could alternatively verify a zk impervious of the block's execution. To alteration this, proofs of the artifact indispensable beryllium produced successful existent time, which we are getting closer and person to.

Kevaundray Wedderburn is starring enactment connected a zkEVM attester lawsuit that assumes we person existent clip proofs and uses them to fulfill its validator duties.

Once the prototype is acceptable for mainnet, it volition rotation retired arsenic an optional verification mechanism. We expect a tiny radical of nodes to follow this implicit the adjacent year, allowing america to physique assurance successful its robustness and security.

After this, Ethereum nodes tin gradually modulation to zk-based validation, with it yet becoming the default. At that point, L1's state bounds could summation substantially --- adjacent spell beast mode!

RPC Performance & Hiring

As throughput increases, antithetic node types (execution, consensus, RPC) look chiseled challenges. RPC nodes specifically brushwood heightened unit arsenic they service extended humanities and real-time authorities requests.

Internally, the EF's Geth and PandaOps teams are actively researching optimal configurations for antithetic node types. We expect the value of this to summation successful the coming years and privation to turn our expertise successful this domain.

To that end, we’re actively hiring for a Performance Engineering Lead. Applications adjacent August 10. If you're arsenic excited arsenic america astir scaling the L1, we'd emotion to perceive from you!