Berlin Ethereum Meetup Opening and Recap of 2025 | Martin & Eniko (December 2025)

Okay, let's get going. I always love to um do a little throwback to old Ethereum meetups, but before I get into that, uh first our agenda real uh real quick here. Um Inuka and myself, we're both from the Ethereum Foundation. We'll do a quick little recap of 2025 in Ethereum from like some big happenings and so on. And then we'll have Matias afterwards talk about uh 2025 from a data perspective.

Matias is part of the grow the pi team um who has an incredible website that visualizes data on Ethereum. So, but you'll see much more about that later. Um first I just want to give a a quick nice throwback to um an old Ethereum Berlin meetup. I feel like a lot of these meetups uh they're often ahead of the curve. You will see some alpha here before it actually happens.

In this case here, it's seven years ago where Vlad Sier was talking about sharding and obviously the vision of sharding changed a lot over the years, but um last week we had Fusaka go live with Pieras as the headliner um which is kind of like the first time that that shing is really um materializing on Ethereum. So, um, so very exciting and it's it's cool to see that like some of these ideas that came around long time ago, they're being developed and they're coming coming into something more concrete and, um, practical and and then they're also getting shipped. And actually about two years ago or so, we had Franchesco from the Ethereum Foundation talk about peer and scaling the L1 um, at a previous Ethereum Berlin meetup, but I couldn't find a picture of that, so I took the deep throwback here. Um, and yeah, as we know, it's not just the Ethereum Berlin meetups, but it's also Berlin Blockchain Week. It's a great time to get some alpha.

Um, it's been growing a lot. It's been expanding a lot. Now it's Berlin Blockchain Weeks. Uh, or at least it was this uh year and I suspect it will be that again um next year where it's happening again. Um, it's going to be around the same time as this year u most likely.

We saw Devcon has been announced already for the 16th and 17th June. Um so probably around mid June next year there'll be multiple Berlin blockchain weeks. So look forward to that. Um something we've been trying to do more recently is to bring a bit more consistent um Ethereum community activities. One thing is reviving these Ethereum Berlin meetups, but another thing is that we've started the Berlin community hub and it's essentially um a co-working space.

We've turned part of the Ethereum Foundation office here in Berlin into a co-working space on Wednesdays and are inviting people from the community to come and and co-work with us. Um, and um, as you can see, it's currently happening every single Wednesday. Uh, we do some co-working during the day and uh, we have some social hours afterwards, a little bit of a meetup, some pizza and beers and so on. And you can apply to join here if you'd like. And um for those that might be interested in something more regular, more consistent, um stay tuned because we are evolving the concept a bit more and um we will have some more offerings very very soon.

Oh, I'm sorry. Um yeah, QR code is here. And of course, otherwise, if you need the form, just come to me or Nico and we were happy to share it with you afterwards. Here we got some great photos. Try to go out for lunch together.

The first uh one we did it back in September. We also had beautiful weather, so we did a barbecue to kick things off. Um and here you can see the very concentrated work environment. Um and then yeah, upstairs we have this beautiful terrace where we can hang out and uh and chill. Um yeah, that's it from my side.

I'll pass it over to Eniko who's going to talk a bit more about the big happenings on Ethereum in 2025. So Mike, turn around.

Okay, perfect. It's for the recording. These talks are also recorded by the way. I will share the QR in the end so you can watch them later uh and send it to your friends who are not here. Thank you so much, Martin.

Um, it was great and thanks for also for being here tonight uh and bringing probably the youngest and most adorable meetup participant I've ever seen on any meetup. So, thank you so much um and for leading the community here in Berlin um with some other contributors. So, I think 2025 was a very great year. A lot of things happened. Obviously, it's very hard to recap everything and talk about everything.

Um, I wanted to highlight a couple of things that happened this year. Um, but yeah, a lot of other things happened. A lot of people, projects did a lot of great things in the ecosystem. So, this doesn't mean that these are the only things that happened within the Ethereum ecosystem. I just uh wanted to quickly highlight and run through.

I hope you guys find it interesting. It's a bit technical, a bit of everything. So, yeah. So, Ethereum actually had two hard forks this year. One of them was Spectra.

Um probably most of you remembers um beginning of more towards the beginning of the year. Um so it was activated in May. Um it was following the Denon upgrade last year. Um and it's most um yeah so the most important parts of this was um some new features um to smart contract accounts um and also improving validator experience um support layer 2 scaling and some uh UX improvements that's related to um smart contract accounts basically account account abstraction So basically uh one of the major things that happened is EIP7702. Um this is kind of like a hybrid approach um that is kind of combining the simp simplicity of externally owned accounts and the programmability of contract based accounts aka smart cont smart smart contract accounts.

um this allow transaction batching, guest sponsorship, alternative authentication, spending controls, recover recovery mechanisms and a bunch of other features. I'm trying to go through these um I usually do these u technical runroughs and I'm trying to think of what are the things that are the most important. I put a lot of things on the slide just for the slides and for the recording, but I'm not going to talk about everything obviously. So there were um so that was um you know from that the smart contact accounts uh uh aspect and then uh next important aspect was validator UX improvements. There are a couple of new IP new EIPs that were implemented here.

I think one of the most important is that the maximum balance of validator can receive rewards from is now48 E. Um it was obviously before 32 ET. You probably know this. Uh so this enables reward compounding and also reduces the bandwidth requirement for the network. Some other layer ones they um restrict how many validators can be on the chain.

For example, Ethereum doesn't do that. Um but um this is actually making it um again this is a good feature to reduce the bandwidth because uh if the validator queue is long then that's not good for the network. Um so this has a lot of other perks. Um but yeah, you can read more about it. I will share the blog in the end.

Um there are some other EIPs uh that were also really um cool and important. Um but I'm not going to talk about them one by one. And then the start of like or continuing the block scaling basically, right? So um EIP7691 um was doubling Ethereum's block throughput. So what does that mean?

So from three to um to to six and maximum nine. So previously it was uh three. So what what are blobs? Um also these are a lot of things that you know if you are not familiar with it's worth to cover. So blobs are these um storage um fields that um so layer 2's scale Ethereum right they take off the execution they do the transactions on layer two but they still have to post back to layer one right.

So they used to post back to core data which is this more expensive data field. So um and because it's stored on the network forever and these blobs are now these new data storage uh solutions um and it's been work on these in the previous forks as well. So this new EIP now allows um to to like the the block throughput is now from um three to six or maximum nine. So this what does this mean? Basically it reduces layer one fees for layer 2s by 10 to 100 times.

So again it means fast four cheaper um layer 2 transactions. Um yeah so that was Spectra and then obviously Ethereum turned 10 years uh the network Ethereum this year um in this summer in July there were a lot of meetups a lot of celebrations around this a lot of communities organized events um the Ethereum Foundation also gave some grants uh for for meetups um around the world. Um so yeah that was also I want to mention I always mention this but you guys also probably aware that you know Ethereum had zero downtime. Ethereum was very reliable in the last 10 years. Um all the hard forks went through very well so there were no issues.

Um so I think that's that's pretty cool and kudos to all the core developers and every contributor who contributes to uh building the network and the and layer one. Um you I mentioned this on the previous meetup. You probably also heard about this that there were some restructuring within the ecosystem development teams within the term foundation. So now there are a bunch of new teams who are supporting um more focused uh um base of support basically to to a lot of different ecosystem participants um founder success team academic secretary at uh we do event support at Ethereum everywhere. So a lot of different focus teams who are um focusing on better uh supporting the ecosystem.

Um the ESP grants program was also uh relaunched recently. Um you can now um instead of these open grants that used to um used to be open um open grants application at the ESP website. Now there are these more targeted more concrete either requests for proposals or wish list items that people can apply for. These are submitted by different EF teams either technical or nontechnical. So these are a little bit more concrete um and gives you a bit of a better idea of what you can work on, what you can get funding for um and what you can apply a grant for.

Um we also been opening other Ethereum community hubs around the world. So not just Berlin but London um at anode club. Uh Dubai just opened recently at Headroom Founders Club and Lagos is actually opening today. They have a big opening event in Lagos. So these are all community hubs.

Very similar concept that um Martin just explained um but different locations and obviously they are all unique. Um all of them will be listed on it.org and the events page, the community page. So um I did not include a QR for that but I have a lot of keywords in the end but I think this one won't be there but if you just go to it.org and the community and events.

All these community hubs will be there. You can apply for co-working and see the meetups and um they are all accessible for anybody basically. If you're traveling, if you're visiting, if you're staying in that country, you can um you can join. Defcon connect just happened recently. Um who was the deaf connect from here?

Okay, cool. A couple of you. Okay, that's good. Good. Did you like it?

Was it different from other? Yeah. Was it different from other dev connects or did you find it cool?

Bigger.

That's my first.

Your first. Okay, cool.

Okay, amazing. So, yeah. So, Devcon connect is not DevCon. I had a presentation about this last time. So, Devcon connect is is a more decentralized um event.

So, Defcon is more like a big conference, three four days of content talks organized by the team foundation. Dev Connect is more um letting people, communities, projects to organize their own events. Um so it's more decentralized. Um so far it was the biggest global Ethereum gathering. Uh it had its words fair which was also a first um uh at Ethereum events this concept and I think it was pretty cool.

Also the venue was very like spread it out um very different multiple buildings. Um there was a lot of student and academic activation, very strong local energy, local culture. Um there were 18 districts, D5, privacy, layer two, decentralized social hardware, well let's say gaming and art. So a lot of I think like new um approaches as well in terms of what themes we are supporting and welcoming at the space. Um and there were so many other uh experiences just here some numbers.

there were more than 14,000 attendees uh from a lot of countries. I think it's very cool that 45% was from Argentina actually. So that's very good that the local uh communities and um they were activated and they were participating and that's really cool. A lot of people were first timers like you. Um yeah, so just a couple of numbers and of course in the end everyone was waiting for the big announcement where the next Defcon is going to be because one day one year it's Defcon, the next year is Defcon next.

So this is the concept for now. So next year is going to be Defcon. So it's a little bit more of a conference um uh setup and structure um and it's going to be in Mumbai in India. Um so everyone's excited about that. Um I wanted to quickly show this uh video about Defcon connect just to if people not just to see the movie instrument I feel very energized.

Honestly, I think that it's very clear how much passion and heart and how much innovation there is within the Ethereum community. We have a really deep focus on empowering builders, creators, communities, users, and I'm really excited about this because it creates more inclusion throughout the world. It's so great seeing people from all over the world that you connect with uh on X and just on social media or on Telegram. Proximity of being in person allows you to really just think with each other and and it makes you more more bullish on the whole ecosystem because you're able to create deeper integrations with everyone. lots of optimism in the air.

It's been really nice to see the energy and so it's been wonderful to be around so many like-minded people. Okay, perfect. Back to the boring presentation. that video available somewhere.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's basically you can take a picture. Yeah, it's but EF Defcon has a um Yeah. Uh it's an X on Twitter um they have an account. So, if you Yeah, if you look for um EF Defcon account, then you will find this video.

Yep. Okay. And there is also like a full recap article if you want to read that's if you're more of a reader then you can read the blog as well. Um okay now the next upgrade that just happened recently was Fusaka um who is usually following closely these uh upgrades these technical upgrades couple of you. Okay, cool.

Nice. Good. Yeah. So, basically just recently activated on December 3rd. The most important aspects of this one is it improves layer 1 performance again, layer 1 scaling, uh increases the blob through output again, throughput again and uh some UX improvements uh at this one as well.

Uh obviously as Martin mentioned already uh the the main stars of this hard fork was pure dust and also implementing these block parameter only forks after pure dust uh which also the first one happened but I will mention that. So so what is peer? So peer data availability sampling uh this unlocks up to eight times data throughput um because it allows nodes to verify the data uh availability um instead of downloading the entire blobs. It's still very secure because it's cryptographically guaranteeing that the full data is available across the network. Um so it's basically again giving rollups way cheaper blob fees and more spaces to go grow.

Um and then after that as I mentioned these block parameter only eforts are uh implemented uh to safely scale um um the block throughput after pure um yeah so basically there were two scheduled so one of them happened on December 9 uh yesterday yes before yesterday I think. So it raised the the per block target to um 10 to 15 from 6 to 9 and another one is scheduled on January 7 which will raise it to 14 up to 21. Um this is the schedule just a picture of that as well. And yeah there this is the the announcement about the one that the the first part that happened just yesterday. Um and if you're following social media, the Ethereum Foundation recently that you can notice that there are a lot of cool videos out there um recently which I think is pretty cool um for people to understand these things you know on a high level.

So I just kind of wanted to show this one as well about

introducing something fundamentally new with it technology

that upgrade brings Pas

that's the cornerstone of the book. So it stands for peer data availability softly.

This has been talked about for a long time. Actually shipping it is a huge milestone.

So to understand peer das you first have to understand blobs. Blobs are where all the data goes and we can scale up blobs tremendously. It's going to be super super helpful for the entire ecosystem of L2 built on Ethereum.

Is basically putting in this infrastructure that's hopefully going to let us actually scale blobs almost infinitely any one point in time. L2s and other block consumers on boarding, you know, many different use cases, consumer applications, institutional finance, they're going to want to have predictable low fees. And if Ethereum can't scale its data availability capacity, then we're not going to be able to keep those low fees for it users.

Ethereum can also itself use blobs, so not just the rollups allows Ethereum to also scale.

I'm very excited because it's the only way to achieve this video. the validators. They don't no longer need to download the whole block to verify the data.

Now all of the nodes aren't responsible for handling all of the data. We'll be able to increase the block count without adding additional throughput. The first time that we'll have a large scale production blockchain that runs without requiring any single node to process all of the data. We're all excited to see it finally launch. Okay, so that's some pieras again.

Here is the video if anyone wants to watch this. Take a picture. Should I wait? No. Okay.

Okay. Uh and there were a couple of other things. So against scaling layer 1 there were some other optimizations like uh EIP 7883 um and then uh 7825 the transaction gas limit cap um there are a bunch of uh advantages of all of these but yeah let's not just go through uh this one by one because we have a limited time um yeah so a lot of things this one for example was removing legacy components that are no longer needed. Um the guest limit increase is kind of an important one. Raises default guest limit to 60 million.

This enables more layer on execution capacity but it was very well tested. Um at the same time I think there were concerns about this. Um and then improving UX as I mentioned that's also an important part of this hard fork. Um yeah, this is more um related to the EVM, but uh yeah, not going to go through all of these. You guys can uh just read in the end.

I will I will put the yeah the blog uh QR here. Um and yeah, so all these recordings are uploaded to the YouTube channel. Uh if you want to scan this one, you can watch them later. Um we also have a Twitter account so you can get all the updates about the uh next meetups here and because yeah we are running out of time I will just show this one quickly um the popup if you're a collector then scan this QR code and you can have your December poll up and I will pass it on to our next speaker. Um and please don't go anywhere because so let's uh finish the the program quickly and then we will have some more time um in the end to to chitchat and network.

Um we are a little bit um behind the program. So yes

go two slides back.

Sure. The blog the Yeah, this one here. Yep. All right. Okay.

So that's it from my part and we're just going to do a quick turn around of the speaker and please stay at your seat.