On Ep. 72 of Infinite Jungle, Christine speaks with Robert Miller, Product Lead at Flashbots, and Lily Johnson, Rust Engineer at Astria Labs, about the launch of BuilderNet. BuilderNet is Flashbot’s latest product designed to enable collaborative block building on Ethereum. It allows third-party builders to create blocks based off shared private order flow. It also incentivizes users, wallets, and apps to share their order flow with BuilderNet and earn kickbacks from the MEV created from their transactions. Christine and Lily grill Robert about the design of BuilderNet, its timeline, and motivation.

Guests:

Name: Robert Miller

Title: Product Lead at Flashbots

X: https://x.com/bertcmiller

Name: Lily Johnson

Title: Rust Engineer at Astria Labs

X: https://x.com/lobstermindset

Show note links:

Timestamps:

(00:02:43) How does BuilderNet compete in the MEV-Boost auction?

(00:08:08) How does the BuilderNet MEV refund rule work?

(00:11:33) Why did Beaverbuild join BuilderNet?

(00:15:09) How do builders compete in BuilderNet?

(00:19:31) How transparent is BuilderNet activity?

(00:30:12) BuilderNet next steps

This episode was recorded on Friday, December 13, 2024.

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On Ep.71 of Infinite Jungle, Christine shares her main takeaways from ACDC #147. Notably, on this call, one of the main discussion topics was not about the Pectra upgrade. It was about community efforts to increase the Ethereum block gas limit. Though prominent community figureheads advocated for an increase, developers on this week’s call surfaced concerns about a little-known technical limitation on the consensus layer that would make a significant increase to the block gas limit unsafe for the network. Rather than address this limitation, developers decided not to change the protocol and instead communicate to the community that a doubling to the gas limit should not be pursued at this time. Christine advocates for why this situation was a “close call” for the stability of the Ethereum protocol and why developers need to “slow down” when it comes to advocating for and making changes to the network.

Show note links: 

Timestamps:

(00:01:04) Summary of the Ethereum gas limit debate

(00:08:32) What developers decided to do about the gossip limit

(00:17:00) Concerns about Ethereum protocol complexity

(00:20:47) Why EIP 7742 was removed from Pectra

This episode was recorded on Friday, December 13, 2024.

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On Ep. 70 of Infinite Jungle, Christine chats with founder of ProbeLab, Yiannis Psaras, about a data-driven study his team conducted on Ethereum node bandwidth availability. The study (linked in the show notes) measured the bandwidth availability of 70% of online and reachable nodes in the Ethereum network. It found that the mean available bandwidth for nodes stayed between 18 to 23 mbps, indicating that nodes do have additional capacity for packaging more blobs into blocks. Yiannis supported the decision by Ethereum protocol developers to include a blob capacity increase from 3/6 to 6/9 target/max blobs per block in the Pectra upgrade. Finally, he shared improvements that could be made to Ethereum’s P2P network to alleviate bandwidth constraints and enforce geographic decentralization of nodes.

Guests:

Name: Yiannis Psaras

Title: Founder, ProbeLab

X: https://x.com/yiannisbot

Show note links:

Timestamps:

(00:01:09) What does ProbeLab do?

(00:03:59) How Probelab measured Ethereum node bandwidth availability

(00:07:49) Differences in upload vs download bandwidth availability

(00:11:16) Comparing bandwidth of solo stakers vs professional stakers

(00:15:32) How the Probelab study compares other studies on Ethereum node bandwidth

(00:18:20) Study recommendations to save node bandwidth

(00:24:50) How geography impacts node bandwidth

This episode was recorded on Friday, December 6, 2024.

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On Ep.69 of Infinite Jungle, Christine shares her main takeaways from ACDC #146 and ACDE #201. Over the course of two developer calls, Ethereum developers agreed to include two new EIPs in the Pectra upgrade. Christine explains what these EIPs do and the decision-making process that led to their inclusion this late into the upgrade planning process. She also discusses how the latest additions to Pectra impact the upgrade’s mainnet activation timeline.

Show note links: 

Timestamps:

(00:02:22) EIP 7691, Blob throughput increase

(00:03:25) EIP 7623, Increase call data cost

(00:05:12) EIP 7762, Increase minimum blob base fee

(00:07:38) Decision-making on EIP 7691

(00:09:42) Decision-making on EIP 7623

(00:14:19) Decision-making on EIP 7762

(00:20:09) Pectra Timeline

This episode was recorded on Friday, December 6, 2024.

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On Ep. 68 of Infinite Jungle, Christine chats with Prysm developers Terence Tsao and “Potuz” about their efforts to prepare EIP 7732, enshrined payload block separation, for the Fusaka upgrade. They discuss the benefits of EIP 7732 for Ethereum’s decentralization and censorship resistance, as well as some of the open questions and concerns related to the proposal. Finally, they discuss the likelihood of the EIP’s inclusion in Fusaka and the EIP’s next steps in the Ethereum governance process.

Show note links:

Timestamps:

(00:01:24) Potuz and Terence’s Devcon 2024 takeaways

(00:04:36) What’s the main selling point of ePBS?

(00:05:53) How ePBS improves node bandwidth constraints

(00:09:42) How ePBS offers CPU advantages and better censorship resistance

guarantees

(00:16:53) How ePBS removes the need for a trusted relay

(00:20:12) How much will builders have to stake in ePBS?

(00:23:59) How ePBS helps dapps capture MEV from high value blocks

(00:26:37) What are slot auctions?

(00:30:17) What are the blockers to ePBS in Fusaka?

(00:37:00) How should developers resolve disagreements about what EIPs to include in

Fusaka?

This episode was recorded on Friday, November 22, 2024.

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On Ep.67 of Infinite Jungle, Christine shares her main takeaways from Devcon 2024. She shares her thoughts on the Beam Chain announcement and native rollups. She explains why the most compelling ideas shared at the conference were not related to Ethereum’s technical roadmap or ZK innovations, but rather ideas about the values and beliefs grounding the Ethereum ecosystem. Christine makes the case for Ethereum’s new North Star post-Merge to be building Ethereum and Ethereum-based technologies with decentralization and credible neutrality as top of mind over and above other objectives like scalability and mass adoption.

Show note links: 

Timestamps:

(00:03:14) The Beam Chain Announcement

(00:14:13) Introducing Native Rollups

(00:22:38) d/acc Day at Devcon

(00:27:43) Ethereum’s North Star as Values and Beliefs Not a Technical Roadmap

(00:35:07) Pectra Testing Call Updates

(00:38:09) Infinite Jungle Programming Notes

This episode was recorded on Friday, November 22, 2024.

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Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at www.galaxy.com/research/ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/

On Ep. 66 of Infinite Jungle, Christine chats with Dmitry Gusakov, Technical Lead for the Lido Community Staking Module (CSM), about the future of solo staking on Ethereum. Gusakov explains why he believes there will always be solo stakers on Ethereum staking 32 ETH directly on the network even if it’s an irrational behavior. He posits that a realistic share of validators operated by solo stakers on Lido would be between 2% to 4% and that a meaningful change to the minimum effective balance of validators from 32 ETH to 1 ETH could help increase this share in the long run. Finally, Gusakov explains the tools and resources available for individuals with no technical knowledge to stake on Ethereum and spin up a validator in 5 minutes. This episode is the second in a two-part interview series with Gusakov.

Show note links:

• https://dappnode.com/en-us/blogs/news/lido-is-looking-to-decentralize-its-operator-base-become-a-lido-node-operator-with-dappnode

Timestamps:

(00:01:00) Is there a future for solo stakers on Ethereum?

(00:05:29) How to spin up an Ethereum validator in 5 minutes

(00:10:43) What is a realistic share of solo stakers on Lido?

(00:13:14) What should Ethereum protocol devs do to help solo stakers?

(00:18:12) How out of protocol apps like Lido can help Ethereum decentralization

This episode was recorded on Friday, October 29, 2024.

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On Ep.65 of Infinite Jungle, Christine talks about the main takeaways from All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) call #200 where developers talked about all the usual topics related to Pectra development, including devnet testing, specifications changes, and new EIPs. The newest EIP presented on the ACD calls was presented by Erigon developer Giulio Rebuffo. His proposal seeks to address the problem of history growth. Christine explains what history growth is and the various solutions that developers are weighing alongside Rebuffo’s latest EIP to address the problem. Finally, in commemoration of the 200th ACDE call, Christine gives a brief history lesson on how these ACD calls got started and why they are so important to Ethereum governance.

Show note links: 

• https://www.galaxy.com/insights/research/ethereum-all-core-developers-execution-call-200/

Timestamps:

(00:01:20) Pectra Devnet Updates

(00:04:24) PeerDAS Devnet Updates

(00:15:28) Urgency to Fix Ethereum’s History Growth Problems

(00:23:46) The History of Ethereum ACD Calls

(00:35:06) Infinite Jungle Programming Notes during Devcon Week

This episode was recorded on Friday, November 7, 2024.

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On Ep. 64 of Infinite Jungle, Christine chats with Dmitry Gusakov, Technical Lead for the Lido Community Staking Module (CSM), about the mainnet launch of the CSM. Gusakov explains how solo stakers can earn 2.3 times more rewards staking their ETH through the CSM than vanilla staking or staking 32 ETH on Ethereum directly. Gusakov shares the technical details of how the CSM works and why it is an important step towards making Lido permissionless and towards enabling the permissionless onboarding of new Lido node operators. He talks about what learnings were applied to the CSM from the mainnet launch of the Simple DVT Module earlier this year and what the next steps are for the CSM. He anticipates an end to the Early Adoption phase of the CSM as early as Q1 2025. This episode is the first in a two-part interview series with Gusakov.

Show note links:

Timestamps:

(00:01:38) Is the CSM truly permissionless?

(00:06:15) What happens once the early adoption phase is over?

(00:08:46) Why are rewards from the CSM higher than vanilla staking?

(00:11:08) Why are validator rewards higher in the CSM than the Lido Curated Module?

(00:13:09) Why is the CSM capped at 1% of total ETH staked in Lido?

(00:17:36) When will the early adoption phase end?

(00:21:31) Are there any reasons solo stakers may not be qualified to join the CSM?

(00:26:01) What learnings from the Simple DVT Module have been applied to the CSM?

(00:31:47) What is MEV stealing?

This episode was recorded on Friday, October 29, 2024.

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On Ep.63 of Infinite Jungle, Christine talks about the main takeaways from All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call #145. Ethereum Foundation Developer Operations Engineer Barnabas Busa announced that his team has launched a public Pectra testnet called Mekong on Halloween, October 31, 2024. Mekong will be a long-lived testnet that application developers can use to test out new features like batching transactions and validator consolidations. However, given the constant iterations being made to Pectra specifications and the high potential for new bugs and issues to be found in Pectra code, Christine shares concerns about how stable Mekong will be for public use. Christine also summarizes the state of PeerDAS development and shares her thoughts on whether developers should plan PeerDAS in advance for inclusion in the Fusaka upgrade before Pectra specifications are ready for mainnet activation. Finally, Christine reminds listeners of the need for a discussion among developers about how Ethereum nodes are handling blob transactions to inform a final decision on the inclusion of a blob capacity increase in Pectra. All this in 30 minutes! Tune in!

Show note links: 

• https://www.galaxy.com/insights/research/ethereum-all-core-developers-consensus-call-145

Timestamps:

(00:00:56) Announcing Mekong, a public Pectra Testnet

(00:08:01) 100,000 slot reorg on PeerDAS Devnet 3

(00:12:22) Should PeerDAS be tested as part of Fusaka?

(00:16:30) Looking back on Verkle

(00:18:56) New EIP proposed but not for Pectra

(00:21:41) Data incoming to help inform a blob capacity increase

This episode was recorded on Friday, October 31, 2024.

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Follow us on Twitter, @glxyresearch, and read our research at www.galaxy.com/research/ to learn more! This podcast, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. View the full disclaimer at www.galaxy.com/disclaimer-galaxy-brains-podcast/