eth-rnd-archive

name: eth-rnd-archive description: Search the Ethereum R&D Discord Archive for protocol discussions. Use when looking up what was discussed about a specific topic (ePBS, PeerDAS, inclusion lists, etc.), finding decisions made in Eth R&D Discord, or tracking research conversations. Requires a local clone of ethereum/eth-rnd-archive.

Eth R&D Discord Archive Search

Search through the Ethereum R&D Discord Archive — a machine-readable archive of all discussions in the Eth R&D Discord server. Updated weekly by EF DevOps.

Setup

Clone the archive repo locally (included in scripts/clone-repos.sh):

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ethereum/eth-rnd-archive.git ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive

Searching the Archive

The archive contains daily JSON files per channel: {channel}/YYYY-MM-DD.json

Search by topic across all channels

# Find discussions about a topic
grep -rl "PeerDAS" ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive/ --include="*.json" | head -20

# Search with context (shows the actual message content)
grep -r "inclusion list" ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive/consensus-dev/ --include="*.json" -l

# Read messages from a specific channel and date
cat ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive/epbs/2026-02-20.json | python3 -m json.tool

Search a specific channel

# Recent messages in a channel
ls -t ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive/consensus-dev/*.json | head -5 | xargs cat | python3 -c "
import json, sys
for line in sys.stdin:
    try:
        msgs = json.loads(line)
        for m in msgs:
            print(f\"[{m['created_at'][:10]}] {m['author']}: {m['content'][:200]}\")
    except: pass
"

Search threads

Threads are stored in _threads/ subdirectories:

# List all threads in a channel
ls ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive/epbs/_threads/

# Search within threads
grep -r "keyword" ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive/epbs/_threads/ --include="*.json"

Key Channels

Core Protocol Development

Active Research Areas

Networking & Testing

Other Notable Channels

Message Format

Each JSON file contains an array of messages:

{
  "author": "username",
  "category": "Discord category",
  "parent": "thread parent (empty if top-level)",
  "content": "message text",
  "created_at": "ISO8601 timestamp",
  "attachments": [...]
}

Tracking Updates

Use the provided script to check for new messages in configured channels:

bash scripts/check-updates.sh [specific-date]

The script:

1. Pulls latest changes from the archive repo
2. Compares against the last-checked commit (stored in scripts/state.json)
3. Outputs new/modified files from tracked channels as JSON

Configuration

Edit scripts/config.json to configure which channels to track:

{
  "channels": ["epbs", "consensus-dev", "allcoredevs", ...],
  "repoPath": "~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive"
}

Tips

• Start with the right channel. Use the channel table above to narrow your search before grepping the whole archive.
• Date-based browsing is useful for finding what was discussed around specific events (ACD calls, devnet launches).
• Thread names often describe the topic — ls _threads/ gives a quick overview of discussion threads.
• Authors matter — filter by known contributors (e.g., grep -r '"author": "vbuterin"') for high-signal content.
• Keep the clone updated — git -C ~/ethereum-repos/eth-rnd-archive pull before searching for recent discussions.