The great renaming: what happened to Eth2?

Ethereum is a protocol undergoing significant changes. Client teams are upgrading the protocol to scale to meet global demand while improving security and decentralization. Beyond protocol development, a critical shift in Ethereum has been the movement…

Announcing the KZG Ceremony

High fees have made life difficult for travelers through these Dark Forests. The Pools of Mem once clouded, now clarified by the filter of 1559, reveal that they are not deep enough to sustain. Legends tell of a society flourishing under the abundance…

EF-Supported Teams: Research & Development Roundup

We all have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season, from the first birthday of the beacon chain, to the successful upgrades over the past year and the incredible progress across the entire Ethereum ecosystem. As a highly productive year draws to…

Announcing the Kintsugi Merge Testnet

Since returning from the Amphora merge workshop, client teams have been hard at work implementing the latest versions of merge specifications and testing them on devnets. After four ephemeral devnets, Kintsugi 🍵, a longer-lived public testnet, is now …

An update on Devcon 6, and something new…

It’s been a little while, and we’ve got some news. đź‘‹ It’s happening! đź‘‹ After being cooped up for the last years, it’s exciting to finally say that Devcon 6 will take place in the first half of Q4-2022 in Bogota, Colombia. We know that Devcon has a……

Announcing the Client Incentive Program

Note: this post was updated on April 4, 2022 to include a full copy of the Client Incentive Program details. A diverse set of clients is key to the Ethereum network’s health and decentralization. Diversity ensures that innovation continues at the base…

Spotlight on Kenya: Microinsurance for Every Farmer

In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 3% of 48 million smallholder farmers are insured. Owning 1 acre of land and earning approximately $1.40 per person per day characterize a smallholder farmer. Smallholder farmers often own a mixture of cash crops and subsiste…

Verkle tree structure

A Verkle tree is a commitment scheme that works similar to a Merkle tree, but has much smaller witnesses. It works by replacing the hashes in a Merkle tree with a vector commitment, which makes wider branching factors more efficient. Thanks to Kevaund…

How The Merge Impacts Ethereum’s Application Layer

Note: this post was updated in March 2022 to reflect the latest changes to specifications. These include the renaming of consensus layer specifications to “Bellatrix”, the renaming of the RANDOM opcode to PREVRANDO and JSON RPC specification changes. …

Update on the partnership between EF and UNICEF

Since 2019, we have supported UNICEF’s CryptoFund with recurring contributions, and we are excited about our most recent donation too. Today, I would like to share the story of our journey together, to recognize some of the achievements of our partners…

Finalized no. 32

tl;dr Kintsugi🍵 in progress — testnet to come Stakers must upgrade for Arrow Glacier Kintsugi🍵 in progress At the start of November, the Kintsugi🍵 month-long Merge sprint began! Kintsugi specs and milestones/plans were released, and now client team…

Announcing Grants for Advocacy Non-Profits

The Ethereum Foundation is allocating 1 million USD in grant funding to organizations that educate governments and policymakers about Ethereum and blockchain technology. We encourage others in the Ethereum community to support their important work. A …

Arrow Glacier Upgrade Announcement

The Ethereum network will be undergoing a scheduled upgrade at block number 13,773,000, which is predicted to occur on Wednesday, December 8, 2021. The exact date is subject to change due to variable block times and timezones. Please upgrade your node …

Allocation Update: Q2 2021

It’s that time again – our Q2 grantee lineup is coming right up. But before we get to that: ESP is hiring a Team Lead! We’re looking for someone organized, innovative, and passionate about Ethereum. If you think you might be the right person to lead a…

Announcing Devcon Archive V2

Devcon is coming in 2022 (along with something new 🤫), but ahead of our next event updates, we invite you to check out a completely refreshed Devcon archive. Meet the new Devcon Archive Devcon’s impact goes beyond just the physical event, and with …

Finalized no. 31

This issue of Finalized is dedicated to the contextualization of a recently published paper describing three possible attacks on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake algorithm. tl;dr These are serious attacks with a formally-analyzed, technically-simple mitigati…

Grantee Roundup: September 2021

It’s always fun to hear about new grants as they’re awarded, but what happens after the announcement? In this series, we’ll check in on a couple of projects that are well underway – or already at the finish line. Read on to learn about some recent mile…

Finalized no. 30

tl;dr Altair is fast approaching. Upgrade your nodes! Now! 🚨Upgrade to Altair before Oct 27🚨 As mentioned in the previous Finalized post, Altair is scheduled to go live at epoch 74240 — Oct 27, 2021, 10:56:23am UTC. See the Altair Mainnet Announcem…

Amphora: A Major Merge Milestone

Earlier this year, the Rayonism hackathon kicked off to protoype the architecture for Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake. The transition, often refered to as The Merge, will keep the existing beacon chain (eth2) and execution layer (eth1) clients,…

Altair Mainnet Announcement

The Altair beacon chain upgrade is ready to be activated on the Ethereum mainnet. The upgrade will go live at epoch 74240 (Oct 27, 2021, 10:56:23am UTC). Client Versions In order to be compatible with the Altair upgrade, beacon node operators must up…