Week in Ethereum News, February 11, 2023 - sponsored by Nexus Mutual
Eth News and Links
Shapella (Shanghai + Capella) upgrade
Sepolia testnet upgrades to Shapella on Tuesday February 28, 4:04:48 AM UTC, a sync committee & historical roots boundary
Zhejiang testnet upgraded to Shapella, processing full & partial withdrawals and BLS changes
Guide to run a Teku+Besu node
Ephemery (ephemeral testnet) upgraded to Shapella
Latest all core devs - consensus (ACDC) call video. Notes from Ben Edgington & Christine Kim:
Sepolia testnet upgrade date selected, Goerli testnet could follow 1-2 weeks later (early/mid March) with mainnet a couple of weeks after that, assuming no issues
Fallback from MEV-Boost needs to be tested with Shapella
Discussion of positive EIP4844 block/blob decoupling simulation results
Tim Beiko proposed using EIPs for consensus layer & add core EIP editors
Engine API exchange transition config to be deprecated in Dencun upgrade
Danny Ryan’s Finalized update: Shapella upgrade & reminder of EF academic grants round
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade
KZG Ceremony:
39,000+ contributors, 2500+ in the lobby, 30 days left in first general contribution period
Dappnode adds support for contributing
Latest EIP4844 implementers call video. Notes from Terence: planning to decouple blobs from blocks
Layer 1
Lodestar added as fifth consensus layer client to mainnet staking launchpad
Client team in person interop in Austria focused on Shapella & Dencun upgrades
Lido MEV Boost relay list added Ultrasound, Agnostic & Aestus relays
Client releases
Consensus layer:
Lodestar v1.4.2: peer scoring improvements & fix for isBetterUpdate light client issue
Execution layer:
Research
Metrics for network performance: value generated (welfare) & value gained by users (surplus)
Rollup relay to reduce trust assumptions in PBS relay
Layer 2
Kelvin Fichter: why 7 days is used for challenge period in Optimistic Rollups
Ticking-Optimism: ticking blockchain built on Optimism Bedrock, proof of concept
Optimism airdrop 2: OP tokens sent directly to delegators and power users
Arbitrum Stylus announcement, programming environment & WASM VM for Arbitrum One/Nova, allows for programs in non-EVM languages such as Rust, C, C++, expected in 2023
EIPs/Standards
EIPs:
ERCs:
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Stuff for developers
Remix IDE v0.30.0: Solidity unit testing displays revert reason, ERC20 template expands Solidity unit test examples, view compiler input, added Mocha Chai test & Slither GitHub workflows and added Flatten & generate UML as internal plugins
Foundry:
Foundry Book: guide to invariant testing
Visualize code coverage in Foundry tests using coverage gutters
Fuzzing ordered Solidity arrays in Foundry
Hardhat v2.12.7: Hardhat Network option for blocks with same timestamp, http_proxy environment variable support, batch requests via WebSocket and config validation for optimizer runs
Solidity compiler bloating deployments by including library functions only called in the constructor in runtime bytecode
PRBMath v3.3.0: adds Rust like type casting
Epoch commit/reveal for NFT randomness
ERC20Emit: ERC20 logic implemented in events, don’t use in production, beware of Solidity's evaluation order of event parameters
File pattern: single Solidity function that dispatches multiple setters
Storage Struct pattern for storage in upgradeable contracts
Query Storage Slot: web UI to read ERC1967 & custom proxy storage slots
Mr Steal Yo Crypto CTF solutions in Foundry
EVM puzzle solution using Halmos symbolic testing
Slither Printers to display/output contract info such as function summary & inheritance
Palla’s intro to coding zk proofs: overview of Circom, Halo2 & Noir using rock/paper/scissors
Semaphore v3: CLI to create projects, Hardhat plugin to deploy Semaphore contract & boilerplate demo
Security
dForce on Arbitrum & Optimism ~$3.65M exploit via read only reentrancy of Curve pool
Sperax USDs rebasing token on Arbitrum ~$300k exploit via internal balance bug, funds returned after exploiter identified
Barter solver on CoW Swap ~$166k exploit via arbitrary execution code
Ecosystem
Ethereum.org page on staking withdrawals
Modeling withdrawals: extreme case of 110k ETH partial withdrawals on day 1 and 57.6k ETH full withdrawals per day
EthStaker staking survey results: technical setup is barrier to solo staking
Proposal for Lido v2: withdrawals & Staking Router to allow permissionless onboarding of node operators
Enterprise
Shopify tools for tokengating merchant apps, includes Shopify connect wallet (built on wagmi React hooks)
Application layer
Flux Finance (tokenized US treasury bonds) live on mainnet, currently earning ~4.3% with $100k minimum and KYC required
Backed bCSPX: tokenized tracker for S&P UCITS ETF, non-US qualified investors only
Nexus Mutual v2 partial claims are live on mainnet, being used for FTX, BlockFi & Gemini claims
Aave’s GHO stablecoin live on Goerli testnet
Spark Protocol to use Element Finance’s Hyperdrive AMM for fixed rate lending on Maker, competing with Aave
Synthetix adds 22 perpetual futures markets, mostly crypto plus a few major FOREX markets
tBTC v2 (more “trustless” BTC) live via optimistic minting
Sound curator rewards: 5% on music NFT mints via referral links
53% of DAO delegates have never voted
Job Listings
Request Network is hiring a Community & Communication Manager
Shell Protocol team is hiring senior Solidity devs & more, remote or Hawaii
Community Lead for ethereum.org sought by Ethereum Foundation
Cyfrin.io is hiring senior security engineers $190k-$300k.
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet or Layer 2. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
SEC shuts Kraken’s staking as a service in US:
SEC settlement for unregistered offer & sale of securities includes $30 million payment
Commissioner Peirce dissents: paternalistic and lazy regulator
ETH to be unstaked after Shapella upgrade
Paul Grewal: Coinbase’s staking services are not securities
Revolut (challenger bank) offers ETH staking in UK and parts of Europe
Bank of England digital pound (retail CDBC) consultation, may not use smart contracts [PDF], feedback by June 7
Nic Carter: US government is using banking sector to crackdown against crypto
Hermès won trademark lawsuit against NFTs depicting Hermès handbag
General/crypto
Erigon to remove code for BSC & Polygon unless they fund support & maintenance
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-february-11-2023
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Feb 24 - Mar 1 – ETHDenver BUIDLWeek
Feb 27 – deadline for EF academic grants round
Feb 28 – Sepolia testnet upgrades to Shapella
Mar 2-5 – ETHDenver Hackathon
Mar 10-29 – Scaling Ethereum (ETHGlobal) virtual
Mar 15-16 – ETHDubai
Mar 16-18 – ETH Porto
Mar 28-30 – Ethereum Rio
Apr 12-14 – NFT NYC
Apr 14-16 – ETHGlobal Tokyo
Apr 14-16 – ETHZurich conference & hackathon
Apr 21-25 – EthTaipei hackathon & conference
Apr 27-30 – Istanbul ETH Privacy conference & hackathon
May 5-7 – ETHMalaysia conference & hackathon
May 5-7 – ETHTallinn hackathon
May 9-10 – NFT Tallinn conference
May 19-23 – EDCON Montenegro (changed from Vienna)
May 20-21 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
May 24-26 – Spaghett ETH (Naples) conference
May 26–28 – ETHGlobal Istanbul
Jun 2-4 – ETH Seoul
Jun 23–25 – ETHGlobal Toronto
Jul 5-7 – ETHBarcelona
Jul 17-20 – EthCC (Paris)
Jul 21–23 – ETHGlobal Paris
Sep 22–24 – ETHGlobal New York
Oct 6–25 – ETHOnline (ETHGlobal) virtual
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