https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libevent/libevent/release-2.1.8-stable/ChangeLog given that is the first release after 3 years and the changelog also shows security relevant fixes it should make it into fedora in a reasonable point of time and depending packages rebuilt there are also openssl-1.1 relevant changes
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 26 development cycle. Changing version to '26'.
FWIW, I'm building libevent 2.1.8 for Fedora at: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:dmdiss:elastocloud/libevent Please feel free to use / take whatever is needed for Fedora inclusion.
well, there are tons of dependencies and at least one of my local maintained packages "dbmail" is using it heavily - dunno if it builds/works with libevent-2.1 but that can be tested and solved with upstream when fedora packages are using the new major version
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1418488 ***