The week on Ethereum: protocol upgrades, core dev decisions, client releases, layer 2s and research — what changed on the network, not the price.
Glamsterdam activated on Sepolia on October 6, and most of this issue is client releases ahead of the fork from Prysm, Lighthouse, Geth, Nethermind and the OP Stack. Also here are a consensus-specs beta, two research pieces on encrypted mempools and transaction assertions, and two staking queue reports. Start with The Defiant's activation report, then the Nethermind and Lighthouse release notes.
Prysm v7.2.1 turns partial data columns (cell-level PeerDAS gossip) on by default, with `--disable-partial-data-columns` to revert. Builder `auth_data` and `builder_pubkeys` in proposer settings now use 0x-hex instead of base64, and Sepolia gets a 200M gas-limit schedule from the Gloas fork.
Consensus-specs v1.7.0-beta.3 converts `Store.time` and `Store.genesis_time` to millisecond values and adds quick slots (EIP-8198). It also fixes the empty slot support discount for Gloas and adds a restart-resilient confirmed root mechanism.
The Defiant reports nearly 1.44 million ETH waiting to begin staking, down 31% from Sept. 1 but still facing a roughly 25-day delay. The headline puts the exit queue at 767,000 ETH after MetaMask validator exits.
Streams that already watch this field. Follow one as it is — it costs nothing extra.
Changes in how ETH is staked: validator queues, staking protocols, restaking, distributed validators and the rules that affect stakers.
What the Ethereum Foundation announces: protocol priorities, grants and funding rounds, treasury policy and leadership changes.
Upgrades, launches and decentralization steps from the biggest rollups: Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync, Starknet, Scroll and Linea.