The Ethereum community is actively discussing Fusaka upgrade timelines, with a proposal to target mainnet deployment before Devconnect (November 17-22, 2025). The tentative schedule includes Holešky testnet in early September, Sepolia around September 15-22, Hoodi on October 16, and mainnet around November 5-12.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

  • ACDE #217 (July 31, 2025):

    • Fusaka upgrade:
      • Discussions on EIP-7825 (Transaction Gas Limit Cap) concerns, with application developers raising issues about the proposed 16.8M gas limit being too restrictive for some existing applications.
      • Proposal to increase BALANCE_PER_ADDITIONAL_CUSTODY_GROUP from 32 to 128 ETH to address PeerDAS validator count concerns.
      • Detailed upgrade rollout timeline proposed, targeting mainnet before Devconnect (November 2025).
    • Glamsterdam upgrade:

  • FOCIL Breakout #16 (July 29, 2025):

  • ACDT #46 (July 28, 2025):

    • Fusaka Devnet 3 updates:
      • Network is live with 18 blobs per block, with BPO-4 planned to reduce blob count.
      • 30% of nodes are gigabit "super nodes" with the rest at 100 Mbps down / 50 Mbps up, based on EIP-7870.
      • Issues identified with Nimbus EL/CL connecting to bootnodes and higher-than-expected orphan blocks.
    • Gas limit testing:
      • Mainnet running at 45 million gas with no major issues noted.
      • Investigation into secp256r1 gas pricing planned.
    • CLZ benchmark results:
      • Tests based on EIP-7825 focusing on worst-case block sizes.
      • Two gas limit scenarios tested: 72M and 100M.
      • Recommendation to maintain gas pricing at 5 for now, with plans to reduce in Glamsterdam.

Fusaka Upgrade

Glamsterdam Upgrade

Layer 1

  • Geth team identified and fixed an issue where nodes were running out of memory during tracing, causing node crashes and database corruption on BloatNet. The fix involves reworking tracing to use less memory.

  • Peer discovery issues reported between Geth and Nethermind clients, with investigation ongoing into potential problems with ENR exchange. The issue appears to have started about 5 days ago and is unrelated to the 45M gas limit.

  • Sunnyside Labs reported progress on large block size propagation tests, running two testnets with regular transactions to monitor how larger block sizes affect network data propagation.

  • EEST Benchmark v0.0.3 released, including all benchmark tests and enabling Nethermind tools to use genesis files.

Research

Layer 2

  • Fusaka upgrade preparations continue with devnet-3 stability testing reaching ~94% participation. Core developers aim to release client binaries by September 1, with mainnet upgrade targeted for mid-November, just before Devconnect.

  • Transaction Gas Limit Cap debate intensifies as developers discuss whether to cap transactions at 16.8M gas or increase to 20M. The decision, which impacts DEX aggregators and other complex applications, will be finalized on August 4.

  • Block-Level Access Lists (BAL) has been Considered for Inclusion as the execution layer headliner for the Glamsterdam upgrade, with strong community consensus. Benchmarking between variants including/excluding read-locations is ongoing.

Stuff for Developers

  • Foundry:

    • Foundry v1.3.0 released with significant performance improvements (up to 21.5% faster tests), built-in linter, time-based campaigns for invariant tests, coverage-guided fuzzing, table tests, and improved EIP-712 support.
    • New cast pad command added for hex data padding in the nightly build.
    • Fixed consistent handling of unresolved imports in forge.

  • Partial history expiry has been delivered across all Ethereum execution clients, allowing nodes to drop pre-merge history and reduce disk space requirements by 300-500 GB.

  • Gas limit increase to 45M has been successfully implemented, with the latest blocks now using the new limit. Testing teams are working on a path to progressively higher limits in the future.

Security

  • Woo X exchange lost $14 million in a phishing attack that compromised a team member's device, giving hackers access to wallets across multiple blockchains. This marks the third major security incident for the WOO ecosystem.

  • GMX V1 experienced a $42 million exploit on July 9 via a cross-contract reentrancy vulnerability introduced by a 2022 bug fix. The attacker manipulated globalShortAveragePrices to inflate GLP pricing, but funds were later recovered in coordinated disclosure with a $5M bounty paid.

  • ArcadiaFi lost $3.6 million when an attacker used crafted swapData to trigger arbitrary calls through a trusted rebalancer contract. The exploit hit during a pause cool down period, leaving ArcadiaFi unable to intervene before the funds were bridged out.

Ecosystem

  • Ethereum celebrated its 10th anniversary on July 30, marking a decade since the genesis block and mainnet launch. Over 100 ecosystem-led events took place across 6 continents, and the Ethereum Foundation hosted a livestream event featuring discussions with co-founders and ecosystem builders.

  • Lean Ethereum vision unveiled by Justin Drake as a roadmap for the next 10 years, focusing on extreme performance with uncompromising security and decentralization. The plan includes upgrades across all three L1 sublayers: consensus, data, and execution.

  • Checkpoint #5 published, providing updates on Fusaka upgrade progress, Glamsterdam headliner discussions, gas limit increases, and history expiry implementation.

  • Glamsterdam upgrade headliner discussions continue, with stakeholder feedback being solicited. The consensus layer community is choosing between enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS) and delayed execution (EIP-7862).

Notable at app layer

  • GENIUS Act introduced, potentially reshaping the regulatory landscape for stablecoins and DeFi protocols. Critics argue it may be Wall Street's victory disguised as crypto's win, forcing DeFi protocols into compliance boxes while traditional finance absorbs the innovation.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

  • 🚨 Lido at 25.84%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
  • Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
    • Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
    • Consensus layer: Lighthouse ~42.71% & Prysm ~30.91%
    • Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality.
  • Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe.

Client Releases

  • Execution layer:
    • Geth v1.16.1: Patch release fixing regressions from v1.16.0, including abigen v2 improvements, fixes for eth_getLogs and eth_getTransactionReceipt, and statically-linked binaries.
    • Nethermind v1.32.4: Fixes peer discovery issues after Geth 1.16.0 release, improves peering, and optimizes peer-distance calculations for faster network operations.

EIPs/Standards

  • EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):

    • EIP-7928: System Contract Standard - updated with system contract logic
    • EIP-7916: SSZ ProgressiveByteList - updated to indicate absence of limit explicitly
    • EIP-7910: Blockchain Configuration Interface - removed configHash and updated config members
    • EIP-7773: CFI EIP-7928 for Glamsterdam - updated

  • ERCs (Application Layer):

    • ERC-7996: Contract Feature Detection - new proposal for standardized feature detection in smart contracts
    • ERC-7994: Purpose-Bound ERC20 with Multi-Condition Unlocking - extension of EIP-7291
    • ERC-7977: Future-block oracleless randomness - new proposal for randomness generation

Onchain Stats

  • Fees (via ultrasound.money):
    • Gas: 0.2 to 9.5 gwei, 1.0 gwei average; zero net issuance at 20.5 gwei
    • 2.7k ETH net issuance this week
  • ETHUSD: $2507 – $2598, currently $2,582, all time high $4,878
  • ETHBTC: currently 0.0236 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Miscellaneous

Job Postings

Upcoming Dates of Note