Week in Ethereum News, December 23, 2023

and

Dec 22, 2023

Eth News and Links

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade (meta EIP7569)

Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Recap by Tim Beiko. Notes from Tim Beiko and Christine Kim:
- Testnet upgrade dates: Goerli Jan 17 (epoch 231680), then assuming no issues, single client releases for Sepolia Jan 30 (epoch 132608) & Holešky Feb 7 (epoch 29696)
- Goerli shadow fork 1 analysis: 290 nodes across 4 continents with all clients except Erigon; blobs increased network usage by ~200kbps & block latency by ~300ms
- Precompile address ranges: upper half of range reserved for L2s
- Prague/Electra planning: discussed potential small upgrade then Verkle-only upgrade

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 31.67% is far too close to 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

MEV

PBS Foundation pilot grants: infrastructure, research, data transparency & community education
bloXroute MEV-Boost relays rejecting blocks with OFAC transactions
MEV-Boost community call notes

For Stakers

Client releases

Consensus layer:
- Lodestar v1.13.0: logs info on connected service URLs, supports voluntary exits by remote signers and performance improvements
- Teku v23.12.1: fixes minor bugs in v23.12.0, validator client not compatible with Lighthouse beacon nodes
Execution layer
- Geth v1.13.8: hotfix for refusing to start after shutdown during sync; v1.13.7: eth_sendTransaction RPC improved for low-fee txs; v1.13.6: faster gas estimation with 1.5% error ratio & non-deterministic and logging changed to slog (Go logging framework)

Research

Timing games: impact of intentional vs unintentional delays, validators needing longer signature times (e.g. DVT) won’t be able to play timing games as efficiently

Layer 2

Arbitrum One Sequencer downtime & L1 gas pricing issue post-mortem
L2Beat’s risk analysis exit window: available time to exit L2 before an upgrade is executed
Gelato rollup deployment platform: choose OP Stack or Polygon CDK
Once an OG “ETH killer”: Lisk plans migration to OP Stack rollup
Manta Pacific stops publishing calldata to Ethereum; sidechain DA but done with minimal security
20% of mainnet gas is now used for L2 data

Stuff for developers

Hardhat v2.19.3: Solidity v0.8.23 support
Tip: Solidity v0.8.13-21 via-IR code generator can result in different but equivalent bytecode when using dependencies via symlinks, causing verification issues, fixed in v0.8.22
CreateX: contract deployer using CREATE/2/3, factory live on mainnet & L2s
Vyper LSP (Language Server Protocol): errors/warnings, auto-complete, code navigation & hover-over info
Ape v0.7.0: test account key pairs same HD path as Anvil/Hardhat and upgraded to Pydantic v2
Guide to decoding raw EVM calldata
Curta Golf: gas optimization competition, Par NFT for valid entry, King NFT for most optimized
Secureum
- RACE #24: 12 question Solidity quiz & answers
- RACE #0: Solidity quiz explainers [videos]
Stealth address (ERC5564) library implemented in Zig
Quint: specification language based on TLA
Kumavis: LavaMoat (JavaScript supply chain security) and the Ledger supply chain attack

Security

NFT exploits:
- NFT Trader (p2p trading) exploit via reentrancy of older contracts, some NFTs recovered
- Flooring protocol (fractionalize NFTs) exploit via external multicall
Audit Wizard adds support to create/run Foundry tests for Proof of Concepts

Ecosystem

EF Q3 grantees share $9M in funding
Etherscan refresh NFT image & metadata
Inscriptions explainer: tokens stored in low cost calldata with offchain indexers
- Hildobby: inscriptions dashboard, 90% of Goerli testnet gas this week

Enterprise

Onchain stats

Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 20.1 to 289.8 gwei, with 47.7 gwei average
- Zero net issuance currently at 21.9 gwei
- 19k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $2,131 - $2,342, currently $2,314
ETHBTC: currently 0.053 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer

Sablier Airstreams: vesting airdrops via token streams, supports up to 50k recipients
3cities pay pages: payment to an address or ENS using mainnet & L2s
Protocol rewards: Mirror & Sound split fixed fees between creator, referrer & protocol
Coordinape CoLinks (Friend Tech fork) live on Optimism, professional social network

Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

Regulation/business/tokens

$78M raised for Fairshake super PAC in Q4 to support pro-crypto leaders in 2024 US elections
Congress of Mexico approves decentralized justice as alternative dispute resolution mechanism

General

Rekt: return of ape season
Ledger replacing blind signing by June 2024 with Clear Signing (centralized registry)
Fake Calendly site asks to connect Twitter for account takeover
Privacy & Scaling Explorations: applied Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)
Trail of Bits: Forbidden attack on AES-GCM in secure enclaves to extract ECDSA private 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.

(new/changes in bold)

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