Massive New Ethereum Update Around Corner: Here’s All You Need to Know

A significant Ethereum upgrade is on the horizon, expected to bring substantial changes to the blockchain network’s structure. The core developers of Ethereum recently gathered to discuss and coordinate the implementation of several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), marking crucial steps toward the upcoming Cancun upgrade.

Central to the discussion was the impact analysis of EIPs 4758 and 6780, which propose to modify the self-destruct function on Ethereum. This function, presently, allows the complete transfer of ETH from one address to another, without executing any code on the recipient’s end. EIP 4758 proposes renaming the function to «sendall» and removing its ability to reset values and delete any bytecode, while EIP 6780 adds conditions to limit its impact.

While the change might disrupt some decentralized applications (dApps) currently running on Ethereum, the consensus among developers was that the impact is manageable, with most dApps being upgradeable to accommodate the new logic. Notably, the developers also discussed the possibility of introducing a new instruction, «setcode,» to preserve the ability to replace code in smart contracts.

The developers also reviewed progress on EIP 4844, a key part of the upgrade. This proposal is set to introduce changes to the Ethereum transaction process, with the goal of improving efficiency and reducing costs. Developers agreed to incorporate an update to block validity rules into EIP 4844, which specifies the maximum number of «blobs» per block.

On top of these significant proposals, the Cancun upgrade is also expected to include EIPs 4844, 6780 and 1153. Other EIPs under consideration are EIPs 5920, 5656, 7069, 4788 and 2530. These proposals range from introducing a new «pay» opcode (EIP 5920), improving memory copying efficiency (EIP 5656), revamping Ethereum call instructions (EIP 7069) and enabling direct access to the execution state via the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM; EIP 4788).

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