Context

Its dawned on us that Besu now represents upward of ~$5B on Mainnet in stake !! Great job for everyone https://supermajority.info/

This is a big responsibility, not just on Mainnet, but other chains that use Besu too. We are representing more and more value and reputation for a ton of organizations. The Consensys team is thinking on how we may be more careful in the release process (specifically regressions). As we approach the Cancun fork, is it OK to delay less-tested PRs on Main to avoid releasing any issues (especially in 24.1.2)? The problem is, users may not be able to safely downgrade after the fork without a manual intervention / new release. Is anything going into this next release that may be less tested? or a default that should be hidden behind a feature flag? Additionally - I wanted to crowd source ideation about regressions. We have had a handful of interventions on releases recently. Instead of just entirely slowing down releases, any ideas from maintainers? The Consensys team is scheduling a sprint to look at testing gaps and improvements that can be made in the codebase. If anyone would like to help in this, let me know! Thanks all!