Best of notes.ethereum.org on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
12 stories from notes.ethereum.org have been shared on Kiwi News since 7 October 2023, with 26 upvotes and 1 comment in total. The latest was shared on 29 May 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Apples of the Infinite Garden: A Children’s Book on EIP-7918
This children's-book style explainer uses an apple orchard analogy to present EIP-7918, an Ethereum proposal that bounds the blob base fee by execution cost. Audrey the Auctioneer raises prices by about 10% per 12-second round when more than 6 apples sell, but when prices fall to tiny fractions of a cent, demand does not rise because customers still must pay transportation costs such as a $1 bus ticket. The friends therefore decide that Audrey will stop lowering the price once the cost of the 6 apples produced each round equals the bus ticket price, so that customers always care at least somewhat about the price.
- Protocol and staking pool changes that could improve decentralization
The article argues that Ethereum's emergent two-tiered staking, where node operators run validators and delegators hold liquid staking tokens such as stETH from Lido or rETH from Rocket Pool, has two flaws: centralization risk in node operator selection and needless consensus burden from roughly 800,000 signatures per epoch. Using a Rocket Pool scenario, the author concludes that delegators have no meaningful role and that delegation then reduces to a pointless intermediary. The post proposes that delegators should have a real role, through delegate selection or a lighter consensus participation tier. It suggests better voting tools within pools, more cross-pool competition via capped slashing penalties of 2 or 4 ETH, and enshrined delegation.
- What might an “enshrined ZK-EVM” look like?
Vitalik Buterin's post proposes an "enshrined ZK-EVM," a ZK-EVM built into Ethereum's protocol that could verify L1 blocks and be used by rollups. The author prefers an "open multi-client system," where proofs from different ZK-SNARK schemes are placed outside the block and verified separately by clients, rather than a fixed set of proof systems. The post names PSE ZK-EVM, Polygon ZK-EVM and Kakarot as examples of systems that a closed design could include. It also argues that speed is the most important property, with proofs ideally generated within a few seconds, and that single slot finality could absorb the extra proving delay.
- Magnitude and direction of Lido attack vectors
This article by Mike Neuder explores potential attacks on Lido and Ethereum by examining malicious strategies available to three participant groups: stETH holders, node operators and LDO holders. For each attack, it discusses the strategy, short and long-term impacts, possible mitigations and overall severity. For stETH holders, the main example is governance griefing through veto power under dual governance, which the article rates low to medium at 3.5/10, noting that an attack would be extremely costly: if 1% of stETH is needed to veto, that price is 150mm USD, based on a stETH FDV of around 15 billion USD at the time of writing. The node operator section notes that operators are not required to post collateral and have no direct penalty through Ethereum for misbehavior.
- Rollup-Centric Roadmap (2024 version) (mike+stokes version) (From The Vault)
The article, co-authored by Mike Neuder and Alex Stokes and dated February 15, 2024, revisits Vitalik Buterin's October 2020 "rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap" and proposes an updated version. It reviews protocol milestones from the beacon chain genesis in December 2020 through the Deneb/Cancun proto-danksharding upgrade scheduled for March 13, 2024. It then identifies present concerns grouped into scaling, MEV, and staking, and sets out a forward-looking plan for the short and medium term. The authors state that the piece reflects their own opinions rather than the Ethereum Foundation's official views.
- Difference between full account abstraction and execution abstraction
The article argues that ERC-4337 and EIP-3074 are not direct alternatives, since they overlap only in execution abstraction and aim to solve different problems. EIP-3074 extends existing EOAs with invoker-based execution logic without migrating assets, but it keeps the irrevocable ECDSA key and cannot add functionality to EOAs on every chain without consensus changes. ERC-4337 abstracts all five account functionalities, requires a smart account, and aims to keep decentralization and censorship resistance by mitigating DoS and griefing attacks. The article presents RIP-7560, which uses the ERC-4337 architecture natively at the protocol level, as a promising path for full native account abstraction.
- L2 interop working group - Call #9
This working group call on May 28, 2025 covered progress on several Ethereum interoperability standards and projects. ERC-7786 for crosschain messaging has a frozen core spec, presented by Frangio of OpenZeppelin, with adoption pending ERC-7930 finalization. Wonderland and EF are developing Interop Wallet v0, a testnet proof-of-concept built on Ambire, whose Phase 1 focuses on crosschain transfers using interoperable addresses (ERC-7828). Socket's VC presented filler vaults, a proposal to separate capital from execution in intent markets, with a demo using Across and Socket's Switchboard.
- Devcon d/acc discovery day
This page announces a one-day Community-led Session at Devcon on d/acc (decentralized accelerationism), a vision that emphasizes decentralization, democracy, differential accelerated progress, and defensive technologies. The session is organized by Vitalik Buterin, Vincent Weisser, Tim, and Juan, and its themes include crypto as security technology, bio defense and pandemic prevention, neurotech and longevity, and decentralized AI. Confirmed speakers include Vitalik Buterin, Shayne (Polymarket), Juan Benet (Protocol Labs), Jay Baxter (X Community Notes), and Emad Mostaque (Schelling AI). The program has not yet been published, and the session is included with a Devcon ticket.
- Issuance Issues — Subsequent Soliloquy
Mike Neuder's post continues his "Issuance Issues" series on Ethereum's staking issuance, asking how real yield might be higher in equilibrium despite reducing issuance. He builds the analysis from the current inverse-root issuance curve, f(x) = 2.6 · 64/√x, using an approximate circulating supply of 120 million ETH, where 30 million ETH staked implies about a 3.0% nominal yield and about 2.3% real yield. He then adds a hypothetical staking supply curve, s(x) = 2·10⁻⁶√x, which he states is purely illustrative. The intersection of the two curves gives an equilibrium of 83.2 million ETH staked, which he says implies a real yield of about 0.05%.
- Issuance Issues — Initial Issue
The article by Mike Neuder, written with input from Caspar Schwarz-Schilling and Ansgar Dietrichs and dated March 30, 2024, argues that Ethereum should make a deliberate decision about its issuance curve before the upcoming Electra fork, and it argues for changing that curve. It notes that staked ETH stood at about 31 million of a 120 million supply in March 2024, a 26% stake rate, above the 30 million ETH target the current curve was based on. The authors also list factors they expect to drive further staking growth over the next one to two years, including ETH price appreciation, restaking demand, and high interest rates.
- Minimum Viable Issuance - HackMD
The article argues that Ethereum should keep issuance at a minimum viable level (MVI), issuing no more ether than security strictly requires, because excess issuance acts as an inflation tax that degrades user utility. Using a hypothetical supply curve, the author shows that halving issuance raises utility for all holders except those who stop staking, who are still better off overall. The author also contends that a 1 million ETH yearly difference between a 2 % and 3 % yield at 25 to 50 million ETH staked could instead accrue to token holders, and that high yields favor centralized exchanges and staking service providers.
- The risks of LSD
Liquid staking derivatives such as Lido pose inherent risks to Ethereum and pooled capital once they exceed consensus thresholds, and the author recommends that capital allocators avoid LSD protocols above 25% of total staked Ether. The article argues that a pool past 1/3, 1/2, or 2/3 of stake can earn outsized profits through coordinated MEV extraction, block-timing manipulation, or censorship, creating a cartel. It says this holds whether Node Operators are chosen by governance, where the governance token could become a regulatory target, or by automated profitability rules, which would push honest operators out. The article also argues that risks to the protocol and to pooled capital are tied together, and recommends that Lido and similar products self-limit.