Week in Ethereum News, December 2, 2023
Eth News and Links
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade
Latest all core devs – consensus (ACDC) call video. Notes from Christine Kim:
Devnet-12 launched, likely to run over holidays, Prysm expect to join in ~2 weeks
Upgrade process discussion: upgrade documents in PM repo, meta EIPs for each upgrade and considered for inclusion (CFI) label
Dencun interop testing call video
Prague + Electra upgrade
Upgrade meta discussion: community input into which features (EIPs) to include
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 32.28% increasing towards 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth ~84% supermajority, could possibly cause a chain split
Consensus layer: Prysm 41% & Lighthouse 34%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe
Layer 1
Timing games are bad for Ethereum
P2P.org (Lido founders) are delaying requests up to 1 second to increase MEV
Pari (EF DevOps): how to create a shadow fork
Verkle implementers call notes
Guide to join Verkle testnet (verkle-gen-devnet-2)
For Stakers
Dappnode MEV smoothing pool for solo stakers
Obol (distributed validators) live, beta, clusters capped at 1 validator
Lighthouse user experience survey
Client releases
Consensus layer:
Nimbus v23.11.0: Obol enhanced support, improved scoring algorithms to maximize block rewards with multiple beacon nodes, simple bootstrapping and performance improvements for 10k+ validators on a single machine
Execution layer:
Reth v0.1.0-alpha.12: support Canyon upgrade on OP Stack networks (not OP mainnet) and fix for pruned node operators
Research
Barnabe: Liquefaction, semantics of liquid staking
Chipmunk: synchronized lattice-based multi-signature scheme, plausibly secure against quantum attacks
Layer 2
RollupCodes: opcodes, precompiles & system contracts for each rollup
EIPs/Standards
EIPs
ERCs (application layer):
Stuff for developers
Testnets:
Goerli is deprecated: client teams & EF will exit validators 3 months after upgrading to Dencun (or 1 month after mainnet Dencun upgrade if later)
Sepolia: use for application layer testing
Holešky: use for staking & infrastructure testing
OP testnets migrating to OP Sepolia from OP Goerli
OpenZeppelin Contracts wizard adds AI assistant to update code & answer questions, alpha
Wake (previously Woke): Python based Solidity dev framework with vulnerability detectors
EVMole: extract function selectors from bytecode, Python & JavaScript implementations
OP Wagmi: wagmi v2 style hooks to interact with OP Stack networks
Coinbase build onchain apps starter kit: RainbowKit, wagmi, Next.js & Tailwind CSS
CTFs:
Ethernaut reforged: solve & submit first 8 challenges using just Foundry
Curta CTF adds writeups
Crypto data advent calendar: data ecosystem project featured each day
Security
KyberSwap plan treasury grants for affected users
Elastic exploiter demands to take over the company
Curve price oracle usage
Ecosystem
~15% of transactions via private transaction pools
Data visualization of where all ETH sits onchain
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 14.7 to 185.0 gwei, with 34.8 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 21.8 gwei
9.8k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $1,994 - $2,111, currently $2,084
ETHBTC: currently 0.054 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
StakeWise v3 live on mainnet, marketplace of staking offers, node operators & stakers can mint LSD
Paradigm distances itself from Blast (despite being lead investor twice for this founder)
Gitcoin Grants 19 completed, $600k donated, 45k donors
American Cancer Society Gitcoin grants round on Arbitrum
Job Listings
Aragon: Senior smart contract developer w EIP, auditing experience
Senior Operations Security Expert wanted by EF
Enya Labs: Lead Security Engineer, Sr. Fullstack Dev (with Go exp), BizDev
Nethermind: Lead Software Engineer, BizDev & CTO
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
Circle denies baseless Elizabeth Warren claims on illicit financing & banking Justin Sun
SIM Swapper sentenced to 8 years prison
General
Vitalik: techno-optimism, d/acc (defensive/decentralization/differential acceleration)
BSC: bsc-geth bug, bsc-erigon unable to sync
Polygon POS proposal to increase max contract size from 24kb to 32kb
Velodrome & Aerodrome domains were compromised in social engineering attack on provider
Twitter 15 minute security self-audit
BLUFFS: Bluetooth MitM attack reusing a weak session key
Follow @WeekinEthNews to find out what the most clicked links are. Follow @abcoathup and @evan_van_ness 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-2-2023
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Dec 4 – ETHVenice
Dec 6-7 – Columbia CryptoEconomics workshop (New York)
Dec 7 – Optimism’s RetroPGF 3 voting ends (support Week in Ethereum News)
Jan 15 – EF’s Next Billion fellowship cohort 4 deadline
Feb 2-4 – ETH Cinco de Mayo hackathon (Cholula, Puebla)
Feb 23-Mar 3 – ETHDenver BUIDLWeek & hackathon
Mar 13-14 – ETHLatam (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Mar 15-17 – ETHGlobal London
Mar 21-24 – ETHTaipei conference & hackathon
Apr 5-26 – ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum (virtual)
Apr 5-7 – EthereumZuri.ch conference & hackathon
May 3-5 – ETHGlobal Sydney
May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
May 24-26 – ETHBerlin
Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels)
Jul 12-14 – ETHGlobal Brussels
Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline (virtual)
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore
Oct 18-20 – ETHGlobal San Francisco
Nov – ETHGlobal DevCon
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