Happy to report that after a month of work, EIP-8198 aka Quick Slots was merged as a feature spec in the Ethereum consensus specs! Many thanks to @jih2nn and @JustinTraglia for their tireless work as spec maintainers 🙌 What does "merging specifications" mean? Specifying a feature means writing up its behaviour, in code and in English, in a repository that has accumulated the detailed description of every feature since the launch of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake chain. This is the ground truth of how Ethereum consensus runs, and the model that all consensus clients follow to come to agreement with each other. Anyone can contribute to this repository, by submitting “pull requests” with more code and more text specifying a new feature. Pull requests remain open while the proposed changes and additions are reviewed, by specs maintainers and by the persons submitting their contributions. Once they have been sufficiently reviewed, with edge cases uncovered, the pull request can then be “merged”, and live inside the codebase of the specs, instead of besides it. This is usually a signal that the feature’s specs are now stable enough to evaluate in the context of other proposed changes. In particular, it also makes it easier for clients who want to start prototyping the feature, to do so on specifications that are no longer expected to change drastically. There can still be misses and unknowns, but at least the current thing has passed this first, close review. Importantly, this does not mean that faster slots have made it into Hegotá. We are still two steps away from it: Quick slots were Proposed for Inclusion on August 6th, and next week, on October 1st, we will likely be discussing raising its level to Considered for Inclusion at ACD. Should a decision then be made to include in the fork, quick slots would then become Scheduled for Inclusion, the last step. PFI -> CFI -> SFI. Easy eh? 😅 So this means the job's not done 🫡 We'll continue to advocate for a strong prototype of quick slots based on the specifications. We're continuing our outreach to ecosystem smart contracts and teams for who a slot change may impact their operations. And we're continuing to research the future of shortening slot times with post-quantum cryptography and zkEVM in view, beyond Hegotá. In the meantime, find the specs here: github.com/ethereum/consensu…

Security researchers, get ready! The Glamsterdam upgrade is approaching. The Ethereum Foundation’s bug bounty program will begin accepting reports for Glamsterdam bugs once the Sepolia upgrade blog post is published. And take note of the reward multipliers! ethereum.org/bug-bounty/#gla…

I would say I'm surprised, but really I'm just disappointed with the EF Protocol's continued presumption of decentralisation as a given. Let me be clear: FOCIL doesn't work if the attester set doesn't want it to. The protocol priorities post focuses on post-quantum as a goal, fine, and pays lip service to CROPS; "FOCIL is Hegotá's consensus-layer centerpiece. Our appetite beyond it is close to zero unless an addition directly supports post-quantum readiness." The elephant in the room the EF continues to ignore is that the chain is centralising at a rapid pace, and there is a lack of interest in either acknowledging the problems, or prioritising fixing any of them. For example, correlation penalties (7716) they describe as: "Adds slashing-logic surface for validator correlation with no CROPS or PQ contribution. Not a priority in a fork, we are trying to keep the CL scope light." This is inaccurate to start, 7716 has no slashing logic, and its misguided at best to assert that it doesn't contribute to CROPS. 7716 is the best EIP on the table to improve client diversity and penalise centralisation. It's not a panacea, but its what we have, it should not be DFI'd. Spending a year on H-star to ship FOCIL without addressing the validator set's underlying issues risks the big few centralised staking entities saying 'actually nah' and refusing to attest to slots with ILs they don't like. This costs them no rewards, thinking we'll socially slash them for it is wishful thinking, and now Ethereum is compromised and you need permission to use the chain. Preventing this outcome is not a matter of one EIP on the margin, it needs a cultural shift within the EF to realise they don't have a divine right from God to a decentralised chain, and that they can't just focus on academic challenges like PQ while ignoring real challenges like the ongoing acceleration in chain centralisation. We need quarterly reporting on the state of the chain, to make it harder for people to keep their head in the sand as to the severity of the situation. We need at least one EIP per fork focused on improving the nakamoto, staking gini, or other aspect of the validator set, and we need pragmatic, action-oriented leadership who care about Ethereum being CROPS beyond just a purity test. (I'm hoping that's @pcaversaccio). There are some people in the EF that care about the chain being CROPS for real, but unless we the community are outspoken and steadfast in our demands, they won't be listened to. Please show them why we're supporters of Ethereum and not any another centralised chain, please advocate for decentralisation and CROPS in H-star and beyond. Thank you.