Week in Ethereum News, April 2, 2022 - thanks to SpeedRunEthereum for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko & Christine Kim:
shadow fork merge testing finds RAM & timeout issues
difficulty bomb will need to be delayed if public testnet upgrades to PoS are not started by late April
Shanghai upgrade planning: append withdrawals in block headers, discussed if EIP1153 (transient storage opcodes) should be included
Goerli supply inflation discussion
Besu v22.1.3: bonsai tries (“super pruning”) no longer experimental, enables faster read & improved storage performance
Geth v1.10.17: prep for merge and upcoming state layout change
Erigon v2022.03.02: MDBX upgrade, subscribe to events via websockets
Erigon v2 video of plans to solve snapshot sync & granularity of history
Analysis of selfdestruct usage after London upgrade
Verkle tree explainer for app devs to understand the gas cost changes
Proof of Stake consensus layer
No more supermajority staking client:
Prysm estimated usage down to ~62%
Coinbase, Kraken & Binance estimated usage still over 70%
competent staking providers should run every client
Beacon APIs v2.2.0
Nimbus full sync in 42 hours & trusted node sync in 7 hours
PoW switch off (the merge)
Reminder of what to expect from the merge, fees go to block proposers, withdrawals in Shanghai, 12s block times, no fee reduction, stakers need to run EL client, transition trigger is TTD and don’t need ETH to run a node
Details of how withdrawals spec has evolved: push-style withdrawals, managed by the consensus layer, processed by the execution layer
Alchemy’s Kiln testnet faucet
EIPs/Standards
EIP4944: NFT with wallet
EIP4950: Entangled Tokens
EIP4955: NFT metadata standard namespaces extension
EIP4962: DEST Operation
Layer2
Optimism calldata compression: how to decompress Layer 2 transactions
Rollup centric future rather than cross-chain as bridges are single point of failure and introduce contagion risk for the destination chain
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Stuff for developers
Foundry v0.2.0: faster compilation & testing, call traces, gas reports, interactive debugger, more cheatcodes, smarter fuzzer, TOML config and easy installation; Docker image
Contract-template: Foundry template with GitHub actions configured
Foundry-Yulp-Template: Yul+ contracts template, test using Foundry
Solve ParadigmCTF's JOP challenge using Foundry call traces, cheatcodes and debugger
Forta Hardhat plugin: add security/operational monitoring for contracts
Solidity trivia, a thread by Patrick Collins
Sourcify (source code verification) adds Sepolia testnet support
Goerli ETH faucet using PoW
MetaMask Snaps tutorial
Share mnemonics using Shamir’s secret sharing
Security
Ronin bridge $600 million exploit, 5 of 9 keys compromised, reportedly via social engineering, not discovered for 6 days; Kelvin’s explainer
Revest Protocol ~$2 million exploit, reentrancy on ERC1155 minting, protocol soft locked, pause on transfers saved further loss of $1 million
GearBox protocol vulnerability disclosed, path parsers gave different results, ~$10 million was at risk, fixed, $150k bounty paid
Rari Capital: Fuse pool vulnerability disclosed, cross-asset reentrancy allowed assets to be borrowed for free, pools fixed via upgrade
Guide to security incident war rooms: document, test, improve, repeat
Ecosystem
Fortune correcting misconceptions about the merge: doesn’t create a new token, doesn’t lower fees and no set date
Flashbots Protect fast mode: frontrunning protection with faster inclusion and more blockspace but can revert
Vitalik’s retrospective on decisions not taken: simpler Proof of Stake, complex sharding, more EVM features, high level language VM or clone of existing VM and different supply distribution
Enterprise
Budweiser USA hosted NFT Beerfest for token holders, physical Beer.eth cans (only 300 made)
Visa creator program: accelerate creator businesses with NFTs
Application layer
LooksRare integrates Etherscan chat for users to message addresses
DeFi Saver stop loss options for MakerDAO Vaults
Instadapp Lite single click strategies
Polynomial Earn (options vaults) live on Optimism
Verse (NFTs with built-in ERC20 exchange) in beta
Element DAO: users & ecosystem contributors can claim non-transferrable governance token, GitHub/Discord claims via zk proofs [Evan is an advisor]
Job Listings
Status is Hiring! Libp2p Networking Engineer. All jobs!
SideShift.ai is hiring a Solidity Engineer. Good job!
EF’s Privacy & Scaling Explorations team: Technical Project Coordinator, ZKP Security Engineer, L2 Security Engineer & Marketing Ops Manager
Hifi is hiring a Senior Solidity Engineer & Community/Social Media Manager
Devcon needs a front-end web developer
EF hiring Test Engineer to improve testing infrastructure & coverage
Reach developers experienced with Ethereum. $600 for four issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet, Arbitrum or Optimism. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
Coinbase users in Canada, Singapore and Japan will need to provide recipient info when required by regulations
EU committees voted to extend AML requirements to crypto, includes unhosted wallets & remove EUR 1000 floor, not final legislative stage
US derivatives exchange CME Group adds options on Micro Ether futures
Arthur Hayes: $10k prediction for ETH; switches to 75% ETH/25% BTC
General
Vitalik: defense of maximalism [posted April 1]
Chrome zero day exploit, attackers could inject own JavaScript
KYC considered harmful: fake emergency data requests used to subpoena customer data
Discord bookmarklet attack: JavaScript gets Discord auth token from local storage and sends via a webhook to the attacker
Remco’s intro to approximation theory
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-april-2-2022
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Apr 4 – DeFi22 conference for central bankers (Zurich - livestream only)
Apr 7-9 – ETH Portland hackathon
Apr 8-10 – DAOHacks (hackathon & summit)
Apr 18-25 – Devconnect (Amsterdam)
Apr 22 – deadline for EF academic grants round
Apr 22-24 – ETHAmsterdam
May 20 – US Fed CBDC discussion paper feedback deadline
Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague
Jun 20-23 – NFT.NYC
Jun 24-26 – ETH NYC
Jul 8 – ETH Seattle summit
Jul 19-21 – EthCC 5 (Paris)
Aug 19-21 – ETHMexicoCity
Aug 27-28 – DeFi Security Summit (Stanford)
Aug 29-31 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford)
Sep 6-9 – MCON 2 (Denver)
Sep 12-14 – DappCon (Berlin)
Oct 11-14 – Devcon 6 (Bogotá)
Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco
Dec 1-4 – ETHDownUnder (Sydney)
Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei
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