Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Arrow Glacier upgrade pushing back the difficulty bomb was successful
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
PoW switch off key tasks: optimistic sync, fork choice rules for competing terminal PoW blocks, authentication between execution & consensus layers and lots of testing
EIP4488 (call data gas price reduction) will not be done before PoW switch off
Post PoW proposals need to be prioritized with community input, e.g. withdrawals vs sharding/EIP4488
Besu v21.10.3: log4j zero-day vulnerability, update immediately or manually mitigate
Piper Merriam’s Aperture Portal Network update: changing focus from State network to Chain History network
EIPs/Standards
EIP4515: XTNDR opcode family
EIP4520: Multi-byte opcodes prefixed by EB and EC
EIP4524: Safer ERC20
EIP4527: QR Code data transmission protocol for the Ethereum wallets
Proof of Stake consensus layer
Guide to join PoW switch off devnet-3
Teku security update (v21.12.1): log4j zero-day vulnerability, Teku not believed to be vulnerable but update immediately or manually mitigate
Nimbus v1.5.5: optimizations, 6x epoch processing & 2x Altair block processing
Lodestar consensus light-client demo: tracks the head trustlessly, sync to head is 25KB/day of data, follow head is 81KB/day
Light nodes can offer similar security guarantees as full nodes if enough people run full and light nodes, need to make them easy to run on consumer hardware
Layer2
Mir team joins Polygon to build Polygon Zero zk-rollup, pivot from Layer 1 to an Ethereum Layer 2
Aztec Connect: private bridge live on testnet, aggregates like transactions from Aztec users to interact with Layer 1 DeFi
Proto’s EVM equivalence endgame is Yellow-Paper equivalence
dYdX state explorer to be built by L2BEAT, showing decoded calldata on Layer 1 and allow forced exits & trades by sending a Layer 1 transaction
L2BEAT: how to monitor that $6 billion locked in Layer 2 is secure
Polynya’s rollup fees explainer: why they get cheaper to use as Layer 2 adoption increases
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cBridge has done almost $1.5b in volume moving ETH, USDT, and USDC between Ethereum mainnet, Optimism, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Boba, Fantom, BSC and Polygon.
LIQUIDITY MINING launches December 15th for $ETH, $USDT and $USDC, with rewards paid in $CELR
Stuff for developers
Solidity prototype of user-defined operators on user-defined types
Ethers.js update: ENS avatars in v5; v6 assumes ES2016, TypeScript changes, uses new crypto libraries, dynamic & typed Contract methods, Network object makes Layer 2 providers easier to create & use
Foundry: fast testing framework for tests written in Solidity, Rust reimplementation of dapptools
kryptology: Coinbase cryptographic library, Apache-2.0 license
Slither v0.8.2: Solidity v0.8 feature support (custom errors, top level functions, immutable variables) and detectors for in loop delegatecall & msg.value
truffle-plugin-verify v0.5.20: verifies proxy implementation on Etherscan and flags as a proxy
Argent X: browser extension StarkNet wallet, currently ~4 minutes to deploy on Goerli, ~2 hours on mainnet
Tenderly adds Arbitrum support
Batch data retrieval using GraphQL on Geth
Dodoc: documentation generation from Solidity, zero-config Hardhat plugin
Security
BadgerDAO’s $121 million exploit post mortem, Cloudflare Workers script deployed using compromised API key, intermittently phished ERC20 token approvals
dYdX deposit proxy post mortem, contract had user ERC20 approvals and could make arbitrary calls, $200k stolen, $500k bug bounty paid
Ecosystem
Vitalik’s scalable blockchain endgame: block production may become centralized due to network effects within rollups or cross-domain MEV, but with decentralized validation and anti-censorship protection
Flashbots Protect RPC v0.4.0: adds free transaction cancellations
Josh Stark’s draft guide to joining the Ethereum ecosystem [Google doc], to be sent to 1000+ applicants for EF internship, contributions welcome
Enterprise
Reddit expanding Community Points to additional subreddits; pros and cons of points
Pepsi 1,893 profile pic NFTs, free + gas via US only waitlist
WhiteCastle changes Twitter handle to ENS
CryptoPunk #6457 sponsored by hair loss serum
Application layer
Messari Governor: governance aggregator, supports Snapshot, Governor Alpha & Bravo
Coinbase offers yield on Dai using Compound, covers gas fees, available in 70 countries (excludes US)
Pods on-chain options protocol live on Arbitrum
Enso Finance vampire attack of index projects
xToken lending protocol live on Arbitrum
dHEDGE decentralized hedge funds live on Optimism
WAVEFORM 1/1 music NFT produced by 3LAU with full master recording & publishing rights
Sound: limited edition song NFTs
Unlock NFTs as memberships live on Optimism
WorthInNFT: value of NFT assets for an address, supports ENS
Inb0x: address to address messaging with end to end encryption
Job Listings
Kwenta is hiring! Frontend Engineer, Solidity Engineer & Marketing Lead
OpenZeppelin are hiring a Community Manager
Ethereum Foundation: DevOps for Consensus Layer clients in lead up to merge
Trail of Bits summer internship 2022
Nethermind 1-3 month internship program
Reach developers experienced with Ethereum. DECEMBER SPECIAL: $200 for two issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
US derivatives exchange CME Group launches Micro Ether futures (1/10th of an Ether)
xDai & Gnosis token merger on track to happen
Decentralized governance structures: token governance (direct democracy), optimistic governance (representative democracy) and security guardian (conditional omnipotence)
Graph-based analysis of NFT transactions
Challenges in blockchain gaming: multi-accounting, key management, hiding information on-chain and cheat-to-earn
General
Blockchain-based approach for collaborative formalization of mathematics & programs
Novi digital wallet US pilot, sending and receiving USDP on WhatsApp
Machine-readable fuzzing corpora directory
Practical asynchronous Distributed Key Generation
Java logging library Log4j2 zero-day remote code execution
Follow @WeekinEthNews to find out what the most clicked links are. Follow @evan_van_ness and @abcoathup to get most of the week’s news in real time.
Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-december-11-2021
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Dec 11 – Codeless Conduct no-code hackathon (virtual)
Dec 16 – Gitcoin Grants Round 12 ends (support Week in Eth News)
Jan 22-23 – DeFi Security Summit (Stanford)
Jan 24-26 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford University)
Feb 17 – Schelling Point (Denver)
Feb 18-20 – ETHDenver
Mar 28-30 – ETHDubai
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Week in Ethereum News, December 11, 2021 - thanks to Celer for making this issue possible!
Would you mind sharing that MolochDAO has another grant round starting on August 1st? DAO members have requested that your readers know about this, so, hopefully, they want to submit grant proposals. I do grant ops for MolochDAO and am happy to get anyone more information.