New Week in Ethereum 2025-10-03

Week in Ethereum News

October 03, 2025

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Highlight of the Week

The Fusaka upgrade is progressing with Holesky testnet successfully forking on October 1, 2025. This major upgrade introduces PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) and will include two Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks to gradually increase blob throughput after activation.

Eth R&D Protocol Call(s)

All Core Devs - Consensus (ACDC) #166, October 2, 2025:
- Fusaka upgrade:
  - Holesky fork activation went well overall despite some turbulence
  - Participation dropped initially due to missed client updates
  - Unexplained participation drop below 66% later in day, then recovered
  - First Holesky BPO update scheduled at 2025-10-07 01:20:00 UTC
- Glamsterdam upgrade:
  - Shifting focus back to Glamsterdam development now that Fusaka is moving towards mainnet
  - ePBS updates: No spec changes recently, adding tests
  - Only Teku has passing tests on main branch, Prysm has passing tests on separate branch
  - Other clients waiting for stable Fusaka before merging ePBS work
- ePBS Trustless Payments:
  - Discussion on separating payload separation from trustless payments
  - Different stakeholder groups: core devs (scaling experts) vs ecosystem (builders/validators)
  - Different complexity profiles and ecosystem impact
  - Decision deferred - needs written trade-off analysis before next discussion

Fusaka upgrade

Fusaka testnet schedule announced with Holesky forking on October 1, Sepolia on October 14, and Hoodi on October 28. Mainnet is targeted for December at the earliest.
Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks will gradually increase blob throughput after PeerDAS activation:
- BPO1 will increase the per-block blob target and maximum to 10 & 15 respectively
- BPO2 will further increase the target to 14 and maximum to 21
The Fusaka $2,000,000 Audit Contest is currently running to help identify potential issues before mainnet deployment.

Glamsterdam Upgrade

Two EIPs remain on track for inclusion in upgrade:
- EIP-7732: enshrined Proposer-Builder separation (ePBS) - Decouples the consensus block from the execution payload, both in broadcast and validation, enabling L1 scaling by changing the time required for broadcasting and executing the payload with blob data.
- EIP-7928: Block-level Access Lists - Introduces access lists at the block level rather than individual transactions, dramatically reducing gas costs for applications that access similar state.
Non-headliner EIPs can still proposed, with 23 proposals currently under consideration, including improvements to memory management, transaction gas costs, and cryptographic capabilities.

Layer 1

Discussions on ePBS trustless payments are ongoing, with proposals to separate payload separation from trustless payments due to different stakeholder groups and complexity profiles.
EIP-7870: Hardware and Bandwidth Recommendations is moving from review to live status, establishing minimum hardware requirements for Ethereum nodes.
Holesky testnet will be shut down shortly after the Fusaka upgrade, as Fusaka will be the last network upgrade deployed to it.

Research

Best of Both Worlds? A Measured Review of Non-Interactive ZK Fraud Proofs - Examines the potential of combining optimistic rollups with zero-knowledge proofs for fraud verification.
Toward Semantic Block Chunking - Explores methods for dividing blocks into semantically meaningful chunks to improve network efficiency.

Layer 2

Privacy Cluster Leadership Announcement - Ethereum Foundation announced a new leadership structure for privacy-related efforts with Igor Barinov joining as coordinator of Privacy @ EF and Andy Guzman as coordinator of the PSE team, strengthening Ethereum's privacy work.
Fusaka Testnet Activation - The Fusaka upgrade, following this year's Pectra upgrade, introduces PeerDAS and key improvements that enhance blob throughput and L1 performance. Testnet activation begins with Holesky on October 1, 2025, with Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks to safely scale blob throughput after PeerDAS activation.

Stuff for Developers

Foundry v1.4.0-rc2 - The latest Foundry release brings up to 10.52% better performance for forge coverage and up to 11.41% for fuzzed tests, a new formatter built on Solar, enhanced handling of multiple chain configurations and deployments, and improved testing with backtraces.
Configuration inheritance - Foundry v1.4 supports configuration inheritance through the extends field in foundry.toml, making it easier to maintain a shared base configuration across multiple projects or profiles.
Checkpoint #6: Oct 2025 - The latest update on Ethereum's core development progress, summarizing recent All Core Developer calls and providing high-level updates on protocol development.

Security

Hypervault Rug Pull - Hypervault project was rugged for $4.64 million on September 30, 2025, using classic scam tactics including fake audit claims, anonymous developers with histories of scams, and privileged contract backdoors.
GriffinAI Exploit - On September 26, 2025, GriffinAI suffered an exploit through LayerZero peer vulnerability, allowing an attacker to mint 5 billion $GAIN tokens and dump 2.8% for $3 million profit.

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 23.44%, still too close to the 33.3% threshold.
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~41% & Nethermind ~38%
- Consensus layer: Lighthouse 42.71%
- 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 v1.16.4: Enables Osaka (Fusaka) fork on testnets, adds BPO forks for testnets, fixes eth_call operations under Osaka fork rules, and updates the default block gas limit to 60M gas.
- Nethermind v1.34.0: Implements Osaka testnet forks, updates RPC behavior for eth_getBlobsV1, fixes snap sync edge cases, and improves node stability.
Consensus layer:
- Lighthouse v8.0.0-rc.0: Release candidate for the upcoming Fulu-Osaka (Fusaka) hard fork targeting Holesky, Hoodi, and Sepolia testnets, with full PeerDAS support and memory leak fixes.
- Prysm v6.1.1: Includes Fusaka testnet support, raises default builder gas limit from 36M to 45M, and optimizes memory utilization.

EIPs/Standards

EIPs (Core, Networking, Interface):
- EIP-7883: Move to Last Call - ModExp Gas Cost Increase
- EIP-7823: Move to Last Call - Set upper bounds for MODEXP
- EIP-7951: Move to Last Call - Precompile for secp256r1 Curve Support
- EIP-7918: Move to Last Call - Blob base fee bounded by execution cost
- EIP-7939: Move to Last Call - CLZ opcode
ERCs (Application Layer):
- EIP-7934: Move to Last Call - RLP Execution Block Size Limit
- EIP-7594: Move to Last Call - PeerDAS
- EIP-7917: Move to Last Call - Stable proposer lookahead
- EIP-7825: Move to Last Call - Transaction Gas Limit Cap

Onchain Stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 0.1 to 28.6 gwei, 0.8 gwei average; zero net issuance at 16.3 gwei
- 17.17 ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $3,981.17 – $4,545.93, currently $4,481, all time high $4,946
ETHBTC: currently 0.037 (Flippening at ~0.165)

Regulation/Business/Tokens

Commissioner statement on DoubleZero: A commissioner highlighted the letter’s innovation-friendly posture and limits of SEC authority, signaling tone around functional token distributions
ESRB (EU systemic risk board) warns on “multi-issuer” stablecoins: Calls for urgent safeguards where EU and non-EU issuers co-operate, to prevent runs and regulatory arbitrage
FCA retail crypto ETP rollout faces launch-week delays: UK retail access to regulated crypto exchange-traded products (incl. ETH ETPs) is slipping a few days due to FCA/LSE logistics after the retail ban lift (Oct 3)
NYDFS outgoing chief backs US-UK “crypto passporting”: Suggests mutual market access to reduce compliance friction for firms; relevant to cross-border ETH businesses
Sanctioned ruble-linked stablecoin “A7A5” at TOKEN2049: Highlights enforcement gaps and sanctions-evasion risks that could prompt stricter policy responses

Job Postings

Ethereum Foundation — Open roles (Lever): Protocol tester (consensus), dev-tooling coordinator, performance engineering lead, formal verification, AI security, PM, and more (rolling; page updated frequently)
Nimbus (Status) — Protocol Engineer / Product Strategy (Ethereum Staking): Core client/validator-focused roles in the Ethereum stack.
IFT / Logos — Ethereum Validator Operations Lead: Lead validator ops for staking at scale across EF-aligned tooling.

Upcoming Dates of Note

Oct 14: Fusaka on Sepolia (testnet activation) – Ethereum protocol milestone, activating PeerDAS, gas limit expansion and UX EIPs.
Oct 28: Fusaka on Hoodi (testnet activation) – Second testnet activation for upcoming Ethereum hard fork.
Oct 28–29: Blockchain Life in Dubai, UAE – One of the world’s largest blockchain and crypto forums, uniting global leaders, investors, and innovators to explore Web3, DeFi, and the future of digital assets.
Nov 5–6: ETHWomen Florida 2025 in Florida, USA – A women-focused Ethereum hackathon and summit driving inclusion and innovation.
Nov 10–13: Web Summit 2025 in Lisbon, Portugal – Global tech event with dedicated blockchain and Ethereum programming tracks.
Nov 17–22: Devconnect Buenos Aires in Buenos Aires, Argentina – A week-long Ethereum gathering with deep dives, workshops, and the Ethereum World’s Fair.
Dec 11–13: Solana Breakpoint 2025 in Abu Dhabi, UAE – While Solana-focused, it includes multi-chain ecosystem discussions relevant to Ethereum builders.