Ethereum developers have officially removed the EVM Object Format (EOF) from the upcoming Fusaka network upgrade, citing technical uncertainties and community opposition.
According to Tim Beiko, Protocol Support Lead at the Ethereum Foundation, the decision was finalized during the Ethereum All Core Developers (ACD) call on April 28.
This announcement came shortly after Tomasz Stańczak, co-executive director at the Ethereum Foundation, indicated that EOF would be part of the Fusaka upgrade scheduled for the third or fourth quarter of 2025.
However, widespread pushback from the Ethereum community prompted reevaluating its implementation in the upgrade. Critics had argued that EOF was unnecessarily too complex for the blockchain network.
EOF refers to the proposed overhaul of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The upgrade consists of several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that aim to make smart contract development simpler, efficient, and developer-friendly.
Why is EOF being delayed?
Beiko explained that the primary reason for removing EOF from Fusaka was to avoid jeopardizing the upgrade’s timeline.
He emphasized that all client teams agreed to prioritize PeerDAS, another prominent feature in Fusaka, which promises to enhance Ethereum’s scalability and data availability.
Beiko noted that the ongoing debate over various versions of EOF has also made coordination difficult. According to him, these unresolved discussions were hindering progress in development.
The Ethereum Foundation executive also pointed to a broader issue with prioritizing proposals within the ACD process. He noted that many developers didn’t fully understand the implications of the specific EOF variant they supported. That lack of clarity, he said, should have been addressed earlier in the proposal stage.
He stated:
“There seemed to be broad support on the call towards the Option D variant, midway through, some participants realized that they did not understand the implications of this variant.”
Due to all of these reasons, Beiko concluded:
“It seems right to remove EOF from Fusaka while leaving the door for its champions to present a case for it in Glamsterdam, where hopefully the process begins by assessing what the highest impact changes for Ethereum as a whole are.”
