Ethereum’s EOF Delay to Fuji Upgrade Sparks Backlash—Again

Ethereum’s core devs hit pause on the highly anticipated EOF feature—community pushback forced a last-minute punt to the next hard fork. Sound familiar?

Fuji upgrade gets the leftovers: The Ethereum Object Format (EOF), once slated for Prague, now gets tacked onto Fuji’s roadmap. Devs insist it’s ’strategic sequencing,’ but critics smell another round of roadmap roulette.

Meanwhile, traders shrug and buy the dip—because nothing screams ’decentralized governance’ like a handful of anon devs and whale wallets calling the shots.

What is EOF?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the execution software for the Ethereum network, and the EOF is a series of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that seek to make several changes to the EVM.

These proposed changes are expected to improve how EVM analyzes the Ethereum smart contracts and make transaction execution more efficient. According to pseudonymous Ethereum developer Logarithmic Rex in a 2023 post, the purpose of EOF is to ensure that EVM can analyze smart contracts before deploying them on-chain.

This ensures they meet all the parameters before being deployed instead of the current system, where each instruction in a smart contract is tested chronologically as they are being deployed.

He said:

“Once EOF has been built into the protocol, the EVM will have a map of what each smart contract will look like. It will know where the code is and can therefore check all of it beforehand and then we can stop checking after every single instruction.”

The developer added at the time that the EOF is important for Ethereum to achieve its goal of becoming a mature computing platform.

Strong opposition to EOF in the Ethereum community

However, many in the Ethereum community oppose the EOF, noting that it is too complex and does not have any obvious benefit to the network and its users. This has led to a series of debates between stakeholders pushing for it and those against it.

Several stakeholders who have opposed it include developer Pascal Caversaccio, who published an article saying its complexity outweighs the necessity, and Paradigm chief technical officer Georgios Kostantopoulos.

Even a former Ethereum developer, now at Solana, jokingly advised that Ethereum developers should focus heavily on the EOF so that they will have less time to compete with Solana on the things that actually matter.

Opposition to Ethereum EOF is very strong (Source: ETHPulse)

This strong opposition is also reflected in a poll held on the subject on ETHPulse. The poll shows that 85% of voters are against the idea, while 98.3% of registered ETH votes also said “No” to it. For many of those opposing, ETH’s struggling price is evidence that this should not be a priority.

Cryptopolitan Academy: Want to grow your money in 2025? Learn how to do it with DeFi in our upcoming webclass. Save Your Spot