Ethereum's CL next upgrade: Electra?

Ethereum is composed of two types of upgrades: the Execution Layer (EL) and the Consensus Layer (CL). The EL upgrades are named after cities that have hosted Devcon, like Shanghai and Cancun. The next EL upgrade is predicted to be named after Prague. On the contrary, CL upgrades are named after stars in alphabetical order. Following the 'Deneb' CL upgrade, the search is on for a star name starting with 'E'.

This topic is being discussed in the Ethereum Magicians forum where developers and community members propose potential star names for the next CL upgrade. Some suggestions are Ebla, Edasich, Electra, Elgafar, Elkurud, Elnath, Eltanin, Emiw, Enif, and Errai. The name 'Electra' seems to be a favorite among the developers.

After the 'Dencun' upgrade (Cancun + Deneb), it's speculated that the next upgrade will be a combination of Prague and a star name beginning with 'E'. 'Petra', merging Prague and Electra, has been proposed.

combined fork name: petra pic.twitter.com/AEcTk672Nr
— parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) July 13, 2023

Moreover, a separate PR is set up to monitor the EIPs proposed for the next upgrade after Dencun.

EIP-7002: Execution Layer Triggerable Exits: This proposes a new stateful precompile allowing validators to initiate exits to the beacon chain using their execution layer (0x01) withdrawal credentials. These exit messages are added to the execution layer block for the consensus layer to read.
EIP-6110: Supply Validator Deposits On Chain: This aims to add validator deposits to the Execution Layer block structure, thus shifting the task of deposit inclusion and validation to the Execution Layer. Consequently, this eliminates the need for deposit voting in the Consensus Layer.
EIP-7251: Increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE: MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE, or MaxEB, currently limits the effective balance of Ethereum validators to 32 ETH. This limit has resulted in a large validator set, with over 600,000 active validators as of June 6, 2023, plus an additional 90,000 waiting in the activation queue.

In the coming months, developers will initiate discussions around the proposed EIPs mentioned above, as well as any others brought up in the GitHub issue.

Should you be interested in following Dencun upgrade closely, checkout our curated resource list.