Week in Ethereum News, February 17, 2024
Eth News and Links
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade (meta EIP7569)
Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Notes from Tim Beiko and Christine Kim:
Dencun upgrade client releases expected next week, followed by a mainnet shadow fork
Retroactive EIP proposals: EIP7610 (revert contract creation for non-empty storage) need to discuss Verkle interaction and EIP7523 (deprecate empty accounts) need to verify no empty accounts
Pectra upgrade (small fork targeting late 2024)
Discussions on potential EIPs:
EIP5806 (delegate transaction), alternative to EIP3074
EIP7557 (block-level warming)
EIP2935 (historical block hashes in state) updated for Verkle
EIP5920 (PAY opcode)
EIP7609 (decrease TLOAD/TSTORE base cost)
Agreed to include EIP2537 (BLS precompile)
consensus-specs v1.4.0-beta.7: schedule mainnet Dencun upgrade
Osaka upgrade (meta EIP7607)
Verkle implementers call video & notes: updates from client teams & testing team, EIP2935 updated, new EIP7612 and deprecating serialize commitment
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 31.69% is far too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth 69% supermajority, could cause a chain split
Lido’s use of supermajority client continues to put Ethereum at risk
Supermajority dashboard: simulate Lido operators changing to minority clients
Consensus layer: Prysm 38%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe
Layer 1
Local shadowforks with single line command using Kurtosis over Docker or Kubernetes
Erb (blob archive files) design decisions, store blobs alongside Era archive files
Inclusion list breakout call video & notes from Terence
ePBS (enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation)
ePBS breakout call video & notes from Terence
Terence: minimal ePBS Beacon chain changes
Francesco: options to harden PBS without full enshrinement
MEV
MMASim: MEV-Boost auction simulation framework
predictive MEV-burn: proposal to incentivize builders to predict a blocks value
Leaderless auctions: decentralized MEV-resistant auction with no auctioneer
Research
Barnabe: rainbow staking, framework for protocol service providers (professional operators & solo stakers) to participate in spectrum of heavy (slashable) & light (non/partially slashable) services
For stakers
Blobs use max 103 GiB (average 50 GiB) plus the blob pool
Client releases
Consensus layer:
Teku v24.2.0: mainnet Dencun upgrade
Execution layer:
Besu v24.1.2: mainnet Dencun upgrade
Nethermind v1.25.4: mainnet Dencun upgrade
Reth v0.1.0-alpha.18: mainnet Dencun upgrade and trie performance improvements
Support the Roman Storm & Alex Pertsev legal defense fund
The Biden administration is attempting to criminalize open source software development as part of its war on crypto.
The fundraiser ends THIS WEEK. Donate to defend our innocent Ethereum heroes.
Layer 2
Ed Felten: blobs explainer for L2 users, transactions will be cheaper (unknown by how much)
RollCall (L2 standards) call video and notes: L2s generally plan to use blobs soon after Dencun upgrade, recap of breakout calls and proposed RIP7614 (expose call stack to contracts)
Based rollups:
Sequencing & pre-confirmations call video
Justin Drake answers shared sequencing concerns
Starknet airdrop claimable from Feb 20, includes pre-Merge stakers, Protocol Guild, EIP/ERC authors and contributors to Ethereum repos, US not eligible
ApeChain to use Arbitrum
EIPs/Standards
EIPs:
ERCs (application layer):
Stuff for developers
Foundry:
test & trace performance improvements, forge test up to 6x faster
Sphinx: DevOps platform to deploy & manage contracts
Hardhat:
v2.20.0: adds Cancun support (enable in config), blob transactions not yet supported
Account Abstraction plugin: send sponsored transactions on testnets
Remix v0.43.0: adds tool icons on hover in the file explorer, Vyper compiler displays errors in cards and plugins from external teams have warning icon
VSCode Solidity Inspector v1.3 adds inline file import suggestions with Foundry remapping support
DN404 (Solidity contract): hybrid ERC20 & ERC721, mints/burns NFTs based on ERC20 balance
Intents Engine: natural language command interface for contracts
Czip: calldata compression/decompression in Huff
Slitherin (custom Slither detectors) v0.6: adds arithmetic overflow detector & Arbitrum detectors
Sourcify: finding auxdata in bytecode for partial source code verification
Vyper JupyterLab & Google Colab integration updated to use browser wallet network directly
RainbowKit v2: EIP6963 support, wagmi v2, multiple wallet connection sessions and TanStack Query support
TrueBlocks Key: index API, beta
OpenZeppelin Ethernaut CTF March 16-17
Security
Security Alliance (SEAL): draft whitehat Safe Harbor framework
Ecosystem
Mike Neuder & Alex Stokes: rollup-centric roadmap
Data visualization of Optimism RetroPGF3 ballots
Job Listings
MetaMask Staking: Staff Software Engineer and Software Engineer
Solidity: C++ Software Engineer and Programming Language Researcher
EF seek an Executive Assistant to support senior decision makers
Sourcify seek a TypeScript Developer
Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 13.2 to 477.5 gwei, with 34.9 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 22.3 gwei
6.9k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $2,476 - $2,859, currently $2,798
ETHBTC: currently 0.054 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
Uniswap v4 planned for Q3
ENS eth.link $300k settlement offer by Manifold Finance
Onthis USDC shortcuts: send to ENS shortcut to bridge to L2
Superfluid distribution pools: one to many streams
Privacy & Scaling Explorations: Anon Aadhaar v1
General
GoFundMe canceled Roman Storm & Alex Pertsev fundraiser, donate using crypto
Breaking BFT: total cost of attack estimated at $34B for Ethereum & $5-22B for Bitcoin
Skiff sunsetting products, acquired by Notion
Polygon PoS log parsing vulnerability disclosed, patched
FRIDA: data availability sampling from FRI
Publisher & Founder: @evan van ness; Editor: @abcoathup
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Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-february-17-2024
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Feb 19 – Ethereum Protocol Fellowship study group 10 week series starts
Feb 23-Mar 3 – ETHDenver BUIDLWeek & hackathon
Mar 4 – EF academic grants round application deadline
Mar 13 – mainnet Dencun upgrade epoch 269568
Mar 13-14 – ETHLatam (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Mar 15-17 – ETHGlobal London hackathon
Mar 19-21 – ETH Canal (Panama City, Panamá) conference & hackathon
Mar 21-24 – ETHTaipei conference & hackathon
Mar 22-24 – ETHSamba (Rio)
Mar 27-30 – ETH Bucharest conference & hackathon
Mar 29-31 – ETH Seoul hackathon
Apr 5-26 – ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum virtual hackathon
Apr 5-7 – EthereumZuri.ch conference
Apr 12-14 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
Apr 16-18 – EY Global blockchain summit (London)
May 3-5 – ETHGlobal Sydney hackathon
May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
May 24-26 – ETHBerlin hackathon
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHDublin hackathon & conference
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
Jun 3-5 – ETH Belgrade conference & hackathon
Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels) conference
Jul 12-14 – ETHGlobal Brussels hackathon
Jul 26-30 – EDCON Tokyo conference
Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline virtual hackathon
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore hackathon
Oct 18-20 – ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon
Nov 12-15 – Devcon 7 - Southeast Asia (Bangkok)
Nov 15-17 – ETHGlobal Bangkok hackathon
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