Author: Michael Johnson

The commons called. It wants a runway. Every so often, in the blockchain world’s usual cycle of funding scares, a team maintaining a widely used open source public good declares mayday. Libp2p is a core infrastructure stack that powers multiple Ethereum clients (among others) and a large part of Web3 infrastructure. It was, not long ago, one of the latest projects to put out a call for assistance as financial resources ran thin. Ethereum’s public goods landscape (in the sense of “teams building and open-sourcing things that are maximally valuable to our ecosystem”) has no shortage of talent: the ecosystem…

Dearest Friends, Today we are publishing the EF Mandate, a document that serves as part constitution, part manifesto, and part guide for the Ethereum Foundation. It is written primarily for the EF itself: to be clear about what we are here to do, the principles by which we make decisions, and what we must both do and refuse to do if we are to stay true to our mission. But within it is also the story of a journey, from source to stars. It carries a message not only to the Ethereum ecosystem, but also to the broader field of…

The North Star of the Platform team is for Ethereum to scale as a cohesive system and enable confident adoption by all users. This post is intended to share our perspective on the L1 L2 relationship, the roles of each layer, and how we (as an ecosystem) are leveraging the strengths of L1 & L2 to create the most compelling platform for all users. Some of this is already clear today, and some of this will need to be validated through ongoing experimentation and iteration with the community and users 🙏. On the L1 + L2 relationship TL;DR: Goal: all…

Ethereum’s All Core Developer calls can be a lot to keep up with, so this “Checkpoint” series aims for periodic high-level updates, depending on what’s happening in core development. See the previous update here. tl;dr Glamsterdam progress is slow but steady: enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) implementation is proving to be trickier than anticipated and non-headliner features like gas repricing have their own complexities to work through. The following upgrade, Hegotá, now has chosen its major feature, FOCIL, with a commitment to work on Account Abstraction as part of the minor feature set. Non-headlining EIP proposals can be submitted starting April…

In late 2024, the Ethereum Foundation, together with Secureum, The Red Guild, and Security Alliance (SEAL), launched the ETH Rangers Program, an initiative to provide stipends for individuals doing public goods security work in the Ethereum ecosystem. The goal of the program was straightforward: to fund independent efforts that enhance the resilience of the Ethereum ecosystem, and to recognize people with demonstrated track records of meaningful contributions to important security work that benefits Ethereum as a whole. Now that the six month ETH Rangers Program has wrapped up, we want to share the outcomes of the 17 stipend recipients’ work.…

Application InfrastructureDeveloper toolingEthereumJS maintenanceMaintenance for the EthereumJS TypeScript stack to ensure reliability and compatibility with execution-layer changes. This includes implementing protocol updates, improving tests, and supporting downstream developers.LinkApplication layerResearchProtecting Ethereum User Anonymity via TorEnhances Ethereum light client privacy by integrating Tor. This project designs and implements a Tor-based mitigation scheme, improving user anonymity and network resilience.Application layerEcosystem developmentERC-8004 Developers EngagementFosters ERC-8004 community growth by providing technical assistance and coordinating builder engagement. Supports decentralized AI engineers through direct feedback and Devconnect event curation.Application layerDeveloper toolingBuidlGuidl: AI-Ready Ethereum Education & Infrastructure MaintenanceTransitions flagship Ethereum education and developer tools, including SpeedRunEthereum and Scaffold-ETH…

TL;DR: We are excited to announce that applications are now open for the seventh cohort of the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship (EPF7). EPF provides a pathway for aspiring protocol developers to make meaningful contributions to Ethereum. In each cohort, a diverse group is assembled to work toward advancing Ethereum’s roadmap focused on the core properties that define Ethereum; censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security. This includes the development of client implementations, testing and specifications, and engaging with the latest core protocol research. With an overarching goal of finding placement for fellows in R&D teams working on core protocol development, EPF…

This past week, just over 100 Ethereum core contributors gathered above the Arctic Circle — in Longyearbyen, Svalbard — for the Soldøgn Interop: a week of intense work on the Glamsterdam network upgrade. Soldøgn followed last year’s Berlinterop, but returned to the format used by Amphora 🏺, Edelweiss 🏔️, and Nyota ✨: a single-track week of focused, multi-client progress toward a specific upgrade — in this case, hardening Glamsterdam. By Friday, the group had delivered on its three core goals: alignment on a post-Glamsterdam gas limit floor of 200M, stable ePBS implementations running with external builders, and final EIP-8037 repricing…

A semi-regular gathering of Ethereum core devs from various client teams, or interop, recently took place in Svalbard, Norway. Over the week-long event, teams focused on hardening and preparation for the next upgrade, Glamsterdam. Several important milestones came out of the week, including: 200M gas limit floor established: Credible post-Glamsterdam target derived from convergence of ePBS, BAL optimizations, and EIP-8037 repricingePBS stabilized: Multi-client Glamsterdam-devnet running with external builders pipeline tested end-to-end across nearly all clientsEIP-8037 finalized: Fixed cost_per_state_byte adopted; full repricing numbers delivered by Friday on bal-devnet-6Hegotá groundwork laid: FOCIL prototypes are functional; native AA requirements were scoped; the multi-client…

An Ethereum Working Group consisting of wallet developers, security firms and the Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative today launched an open standard designed to end blind signing — a structural flaw that has contributed to billions in user losses, including the Bybit hack. Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative is taking an active role as a credibly neutral steward of the Clear Signing registry. Across major exploits in crypto and blockchain applications, the final step often isn’t a bug in code, but a user approving a transaction. Even when phishing or an infrastructure compromise initiates the breach, the last…