ETHosphere Timeline Update 18 April 2021

Full Article: https://ethstaker.cc/ethosphere-timeline-update-18-april-2021/

Hello Eth-fam. u/Coldsnap here with the weekly ETHosphere timeline update. Several items checked off of the list made it a pretty significant week. Crypto gained more mainstream acceptance with the Coinbase listing, and the Ethereum blockchain continues its successful run of upgrades since the beacon chain went live last year.

Alternately it could all be nothing… /s

Protocol updates first:

The Berlin Ethereum protocol upgrade this week was successful! One client, Open Ethereum, experienced a syncing issue, but this was quickly fixed. Well done to the Eth1 clients teams for a successful release.
All eyes then turn to the next Eth1 upgrade – London, featuring EIP-1559. Development progress is going well with several clients already successfully syncing to the Aleut devnet. The focus for the next couple of weeks will be the JSON RPC. There is quite a bit of appetite in the teams to get the date for London firmed up. This date was the subject of intense debate on this week’s All Core Devs call; it is not yet decided which EIPs will be included with London although we know that the difficulty bomb delay alongside EIP-3198, BASEFEE opcode, have made the cut. 3403, 3074, 2537, and 2677 are still being debated. If many more are included it’s likely the date for London will shift to August. This would both give more breathing room to test the changes but also help out The Merge by reducing the number of EIPs that need to be considered in the same breath. Alternately, if there is a need, an upgrade fork could occur in between London and The Merge, but I think this unlikely given how badly people want The Merge to happen ASAP. Basically, it comes down to what MUST be delivered this year vs what can wait 1 year+ for delivery.
The Merge testnet will be progressing further at the Rayonism hackathon this week.

In other timeline updates:

Coinbase IPO happened! Eth2 staking also went live!
Rocketpool audits are still ongoing. We are expecting the results of these any day now. In the meantime, the long-awaited tokenomics article finally dropped. Hoping we get some clarity on a mainnet date this week.

Scaling updates:

Optimism are also participating in the Ethereum hackathon @ ETHglobal. There is a testnet available for that, which to my mind satisfies the ‘late April’ public testnet milestone in the timeline.
A MakerDAO community call happened on Tuesday which focussed on scaling with L2. One of the segments was on the Optimism/DAI bridge and this appears still to be on track – in the timeline for April still in its first stage.