2025 Q2 Besu
Project Health¶
Hyperledger Besu continues to demonstrate strong project health in Q2 2025, with several significant achievements and milestones reached during this quarter. The project successfully delivered critical infrastructure updates to support the Ethereum Pectra (Prague) hard fork, marking steady commitment to the Ethereum roadmap.
Major Accomplishments This Quarter¶
Pectra Hard Fork Support: The most significant achievement of Q2 2025 was the successful implementation and deployment of Pectra (Prague) hard fork support. Besu releases 25.4.0, 25.4.1, and 25.5.0 were specifically Pectra Mainnet-ready releases, with the hard fork activating on May 7, 2025. This represents a critical milestone for Ethereum infrastructure and demonstrates Besu's continued role as a key execution client.
Enhanced Plugin Architecture: Q2 saw significant improvements to Besu's plugin system, including new plugin providers for block import tracing and expanded transaction permissioning capabilities. These enhancements further solidify Besu's position as a modular and extensible Ethereum client, suitable for use by L2 rollups.
Performance and Stability Improvements: The team delivered substantial improvements in block processing performance, peer connectivity optimizations, and RPC response times. Notable enhancements include improved conflict detection in transaction pools and optimized memory management through tuned G1GC configurations.
Quarterly Release Summary¶
During Q2 2025, the Besu project released three major versions:
- Besu 25.4.0 (April): Core Pectra implementation with BLS12-381 precompile support
- Besu 25.4.1 (May): Pectra Mainnet-ready release with Prague fork activation
- Besu 25.5.0 (June): Post-fork stability and performance optimizations
These releases included over 50 merged pull requests addressing feature development, bug fixes, and security improvements.
Questions/Issues for the TAC¶
Maintainer Diversity Initiative: The project continues to face challenges with maintainer diversity, with 19 of 21 maintainers working for Consensys and only 2 from Kaleido. The team seeks TAC guidance on establishing formal pathways for increasing organizational diversity among maintainers while maintaining code quality standards.
Contributor Onboarding: Recent discussions have highlighted that Besu's contributing guidelines may appear discouraging to new contributors. The team is actively revising documentation to be more welcoming while maintaining quality standards, but seeks best practices from other LF Decentralized Trust projects.
Enterprise Adoption Tracking: With the launch of the Besu Certified Service Provider (CSP) program in Q2, the project would benefit from TAC guidance on measuring and reporting enterprise adoption metrics more effectively.
Releases¶
Major Releases (Q2 2025)¶
25.5.0 - June 2025 - Mandatory Pectra support for Mainnet compatibility - Enhanced transaction pool performance - Plugin API improvements for transaction permissioning - Gas limit increases for Mainnet and Sepolia (36M) - Updated deposit contract addresses for Holesky and Sepolia
25.4.1 - May 2025 - Critical Pectra Mainnet-ready release - Prague fork time configuration for Mainnet activation - eth_simulateV1 RPC support - New peer counting metrics by client type - Block import tracer plugin provider
25.4.0 - April 2025 - Core Prague/Pectra hard fork implementation - BLS12-381 precompile support (breaking Windows native compatibility) - Security updates for multiple CVEs - Bonsai database consistency improvements - Transaction pool blob transaction handling fixes
Point Releases and Patches¶
Multiple point releases were delivered to address critical bugs, security vulnerabilities, and minor feature requests, maintaining the project's commitment to bi-weekly release cycles.
Overall Activity in the Past Quarter¶
Community Engagement¶
Discord Activity: The Besu Discord community remained highly active throughout Q2, with consistent engagement across both public and private network channels. The #besu-enterprise channel continues to funnel significant traffic for private network support, demonstrating growing enterprise interest.
Documentation Improvements: Substantial work was undertaken to improve contributor documentation and onboarding materials, with a focus on making the project more accessible to new developers.
Certified Service Provider Program: June 2025 saw the launch of the Besu CSP program, with six companies completing certification requirements: Consensys, Kaleido, Cheesecake Labs, CPQD, DSR Corporation, and Kerala Blockchain Academy.
Technical Development¶
Protocol Development: The team actively participated in Ethereum protocol development, contributing to Prague/Pectra specifications and implementation testing across the All Core Devs process.
Layer 2 Integration: Continued expansion of Besu's role in Layer 2 ecosystems, with particular focus on Linea integration and broader rollup infrastructure support.
Enterprise Features: Significant work on private network features, including QBFT fast recovery mechanisms and enhanced permissioning capabilities.
Security and Stability¶
Security Responses: The team promptly addressed multiple security vulnerabilities, including dependency updates and core client security fixes.
Testing Infrastructure: Ongoing improvements to testing frameworks and CI/CD pipelines, with particular focus on reducing release-related issues identified in previous quarters.
Current Plans¶
Q3 2025 Roadmap¶
Performance Focus: The upcoming quarter will prioritize substantial performance improvements, targeting higher gas throughput capabilities as part of the "road to Gigagas" initiative. This includes optimization work across EVM execution, state management, and networking layers.
Technical Debt Reduction: Continued focus on code-base consolidation and legacy feature removal, including the planned sunset of Proof-of-Work features and other deprecated functionality.
Modularity Enhancements: Advancing consensus mechanism modularity work to better support diverse network types and improve plugin architecture capabilities.
Future Protocol Support: Preparation for upcoming Ethereum protocol changes, including PeerDAS, and Stateless Ethereum initiatives.
Community and Ecosystem Development¶
Documentation and Developer Experience: Continued investment in developer tools, documentation, and onboarding experiences to lower barriers for new contributors.
Maintainer Diversity¶
The Besu project currently has 21 active maintainers representing 2 organizations:
- Consensys Software Inc.: 19 maintainers (~90%)
- Kaleido: 2 maintainers (~10%)
While maintainer diversity remains a challenge, the project has seen increased contributor diversity with new organizations contributing code and participating in the ecosystem. The maintainer team continues to give special attention to new pull requests and maintains timely review processes.
Active Contributors¶
Beyond the core maintainer group, the project benefits from active contributors across multiple organizations, including Web3Labs, various academic institutions, and enterprise users. The community has shown particular growth in enterprise-focused contributions and Layer 2 ecosystem participation.
Project Adoption and Usage¶
Public Network Usage¶
Besu maintains its position as the third most popular Ethereum execution client, with approximately 18% market share of mainnet stake. This represents a healthy position for client diversity within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Institutional Adoption: Multiple institutional staking providers have adopted Besu in their technology stacks, contributing to Ethereum client diversity goals.
Enterprise and Private Networks¶
Financial Services: The project continues to see strong adoption in financial services, with institutions like Citi Bank joining as members and contributing to the Hyperledger Besu for Financial Services Working Group.
CBDC Projects: Significant traction in Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot projects, with multiple national and regional initiatives building on Besu for its performance characteristics and EVM compatibility.
Layer 2 Infrastructure: Growing adoption among Layer 2 networks, with Besu components being integrated into various rollup and sidechain infrastructures beyond Linea.
This report covers the period April 1 - June 30, 2025. For additional information or clarification on any items in this report, please contact the Besu maintainer team through the project's official channels.