Eth News and Links
Eth1
Update your clients for the Muir Glacier hard fork in early January
Nethermind v1.3.8 significantly better peer connections stability, can now sync a full node in a few hours. They also have a Beam Sync prototype
Parity v2.6.7beta and v2.5.12stable. ready for Muir Glacier
EthereumJS VM v4.1.2 supports Muir Glacier
Notes from the latest eth1 very long-term sustainability call on the path forward to stateless Ethereum
New version of BlockchainsLLC/Slockit’s Incubed light client now also supports TOR
Is state growing faster with block gaslimit of 10m? Seems like it, but inconclusive.
Ethereum on ARM update: run a full node on Raspberry Pi 4, NanoPC-T4, and RockPro64 boards
Eth2
Latest what’s new in Eth2
Danny Ryan’s quick Eth2 update - Least Authority spec audit, native nim libp2p, v0.10 spec coming in Jan with standardized BLS
Latest implementers call. Notes from Ben and Mamy.
Sigma Prime’s lessons learned from the Lighthouse public testnet. Bitfly/Etherchain put up a block explorer for Lighthouse.
Prysmatic client update. Better peering, faster syncing, fuzzing the caches. New testnet early Jan
Dankrad’s primer on data availability checks. Several options on this: FRI as erasure code fraud proof and using polynomial commitment schemes
cross-shard Eth transfers through a meta execution environment
Exploring the 2 keys used in Eth2 staking
Layer2
Loopring launches the first rollup chain, capacity 1400 transactions per second (not yet 2000-3000 because of operator bottleneck)
Perun’s state channel framework in Go
Stuff for developers
Solidity v0.6 - “Changes include explicit virtual and override keywords in inheritance, support for try/catch, splitting the fallback function into a receive Ether function and an actual fallback function and limitations on how the length of an array can be changed.” ABIEncoderV2 no longer experimental. Yul optimizer automatically activated.
Truffle v5.1.5 compatible with Solidity v0.6
Easier deployment with Truffle Teams with Metamask and hardware wallets
AirAssembly v0.2, language for STARKs
MythX: the journey from slow Python tool to EVM code analysis platfom
decentralized source verification repository for better wallet confirmations
Loredana released an early version of Pipeline, visual IDE
Austin Griffith’s latest eth.build on transactions and gas prices
3 approaches to permissioning in Solidity
EY’s ERC20 token testing service is in public beta
how EY reduced Nightfall’s gas costs so drastically by using logs
Ecosystem
Privacy is here: Tornado.cash v2. 10 ETH and 1 ETH now supported. Also now supports DAI, with USDC and USDT coming. Plus withdrawals 60% cheaper due to EIP1108 in Istanbul. 1000+ anonymity set and anyone can run a relayer.
Parity announces plans to assign IP for its Rust client to a DAO. Drama ensued, to put it mildly.
Social recovery with Argent gets even easier. Plus, Argent’s Ethereum ecosystem 2020 hype video is great
Enterprise
Tradeshift Frontiers and Monerium first cross-border euro transaction. “Invoices and purchase orders were issued through Tradeshift smart-contracts and settled using Monerium e-money on-chain.”
Seberino: private blockchains are not pointless because of decentralized administration and complete security histories.
Hyperledger Besu v1.3.8 better loq query performance
Governance and standards
Control of the MKR token handed over to MakerDAO
Synthetix planning to decentralize its governance in 2020
Deversifi launches its necDAO on DAOstack with 17k ETH in the DAO. Reputation received for locking NEC.
MetaCartel Ventures: a Moloch extension for-profit dapp investment fund
EIP2442: LOGQUERY(x) opcode
Application layer
Buy ads-free Forbes for a week or month using Unlock Protocol
Affogato is doing a Unisocks-style sale of specialty coffee from Honduras.
Roll: a “social money exchange” on Uniswap, aimed at online content creators
Synthetix is now using Chainlink oracles
Neon District: Every blockchain game is an MMO
Burner Machine: spin up 3 hours of an anonymous cloud desktop for $1 in crypto
ETH being down in the market meant every set on Set Protocol is up in Eth terms
Tokens / Business / Regulation
TheGraph: web3 is going to be the next big platform, and it will start in 2020
SEC still charging random ICOs with unregistered security offerings
SEC proposes adding financial sophistication as criteria for accredited investor status
Proof of use as standard in token launches
ZimDai: a plan for Dai adoption in Zimbabwe to offer its citizens a hyperinflation alternative
1:1 collateralized stablecoin for the Nigerian Naira
General
PLONK benchmarks vs Groth16 on MiMC and SHA-256
Redundancy in Swarm (arxiv paper)
DeFi explained. A nice primer
Surveillance capitalism: location tracking from your smartphone apps (NYTimes)
Who should own the internet naming system of the future? ENS as public good
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new in bold):
Jan 1 - Augur v1 cutoff
Jan 1-30 - EthIndia online hackathon
Jan ~2 - Muir Glacier upgrade to delay difficulty increase
Jan 6-20 - Gitcoin take back the web online hackathon
Jan 6-21 - Gitcoin grants quadratic matching
Jan 31 - deadline for EU ledger 200k euro grants for blockchain startups
Feb 14-16 - ETHDenver
Mar 3-5 - EthCC (Paris)
Mar 29-Apr4 - EthLagos
Apr 3-7 - Edcon (Vienna)
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