This is my Week 1 update. I have decided to completely double down on the project to decouple blobs from execution payloads. The reasons why I am super excited to work on this is that: 1. This contributes to the vision of a highly scalable ethereum blockchain. 2. This touches a lot of aspects of ethereum core development from CL, EL, Mev relayers and Mev builders. This week mainly went into more research, making my first contribution to prysm and starting a design board around the project. --- # Research As part of my research, I delved into more topics of Ethereum core to get a deeper understanding of them. I tried to understand the same topic from different perspectives by reading about it in different contexts. For e.g, I initially learnt about Fork choice from [Ben Edignton's book](https://eth2book.info/capella/part3/forkchoice/phase0/) But I also spent time reading the post of the [April MeV boost relay incident](https://collective.flashbots.net/t/post-mortem-april-3rd-2023-mev-boost-relay-incident-and-related-timing-issue/1540) which gave me a different insight about block timeliness and fork choice. The liveness isue in MeV relayers also gave me a different perspective on [skipped slots](https://writings.flashbots.net/understanding-mev-boost-liveness-risks). Also read about [equivocation attacks in MeV boost](https://ethresear.ch/t/equivocation-attacks-in-mev-boost-and-epbs/15338) to gain more understanding on the block proposal mechanisms. I spent time studying MeV relayer and builder architecture from the [flashbots documentation](https://docs.flashbots.net/) and the [MeV boost](https://github.com/flashbots/mev-boost) and [MeV boost relay codebase](https://github.com/flashbots/mev-boost-relay). I have yet to touch upon the codebase of the MeV boost builder. I studied the architecture from https://ethresear.ch/t/mev-boost-merge-ready-flashbots-architecture/11177. I also learnt about relay monitoring from [here](https://hackmd.io/@ralexstokes/SynPJN_pq). I enhanced my knowledge on EIP-4844 by studying the following articles: https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/blob_transactions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lyb02wZQQ4 https://notes.ethereum.org/RLOGb1hYQ0aWt3hcVgzhgQ?view I also took a lot of notes related to my learning [here](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s482/sh/5ffa10e1-f9f7-1bd0-abe5-2a0193358d5b/FWFZxwyXfZAAQkoojrDyjMkkOCt-k_TBnkye-hgBn8raW8EshuBNyS2AUQ) --- # Code Contributions I also submitted my first Prysm [PR](https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm/pull/12650). This PR added support for a prometheus metric which would inform if a validator would be part of the upcoming sync commitee. It also fixes a bug with the existing metric which reports if a validator is in the sync commitee. --- # Design Work I started the design work for my project in this [Miro board](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVM0VeZRg=/?share_link_id=971454726270). I prefer using Miro for initial design work as it allows me to think in a non-linear manner. I started listing down the questions I had and the different points of the design where we would have to make a decision related to my project. --- # Conclusion I really enjoyed my time spent in research. I feel much prepared now to tackle problems related to my project going ahead. I aim to complete as much as my design board before a call with my mentors next week to enable all of us to kickstart on the problem.