Week in Ethereum News, February 5, 2022 - thanks to Celer for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
Stakers should be cognizant to have enough disk space in case of non-finality periods
Kiln devnet expected late next week, app devs & infrastructure providers should test on this prior to public testnets
Testnets in our post-PoW world: Goerli & Sepolia to continue, Ropsten & Rinkeby to be deprecated
Shanghai upgrade discussion on EIPs to include: EVM changes, account abstraction, reduction in rollup fees & removing self destruct
Preview of executable spec for execution layer
Vitalik’s proposal for blob transactions in same format as sharding to provide scaling relief for rollups, along with a simpler version
Proof of Stake consensus layer
Danny Ryan’s Finalized PoS update: engineering progressing for PoW switch off; no progress on client diversity, run a minority client to protect your ETH
Lighthouse v2.1.2: improves peer stability, Key Manager API support & optimized Docker images
Prysm v2.0.6: patch release, improved memory usage, JSON API fixes
Lodestar v0.34.0: optimization for non-finality periods, Bellatrix spec upgrades & fixes and remote signer support
Polynya: Danksharding explainer
Ben Edgington’s Upgrading Ethereum book Simple Serialize (SSZ) chapter
PoW switch off
Kiln v1 spec (pre-production sprint for PoW switch off): optimistic sync fixes, semantic changes to better handle reorgs
Geth close to being ready for PoW switch off, one major PR awaiting tests
EIPs/Standards
EIP4762: Statelessness gas cost changes
EIP4760: SELFDESTRUCT bomb
EIP4758: Deactivate SELFDESTRUCT
EIP4750: EOF Functions
EIP4747: Simplify EIP 161
EIP4736: Consensus Layer Withdrawal Protection
Layer2
L2Savings: shows Layer 2 transactions and estimated saving if these were made on mainnet
Sliding window for challenge process, allows significant decrease of the deadline for challenge-response and expands the deadline during congestion
Secure Asymmetric Frugal Exchange prototype for optimized batched cross-chain swaps, gas efficient transferring from Layer 2 to mainnet
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Stuff for developers
Foundry gas reports: gas usage report generated when running tests
Hardhat roadmap: opinionated, streamlined default experience, with ability to opt-out of defaults
Remix v0.21: migrated to React, updated backup & restore, added StarkNet plugin, removed Optimism plugin as no longer required
EthereumJS:
Ethers.js v5.5.4: support invalid IPFS URI format
ExcessivelySafeCall: Solidity library to call untrusted contracts and prevent return bombing by specifying maximum bytes to copy
Cloaks: ERC721 with bid commit/reveal scheme, mint price is mean of bids; SPADES variant: revealers get discounted mint, public mint price increases per mint and decays per block
Cairo Language Server: adds Cairo support to IDEs implementing Language Server Protocol such as VS Code, early preview
Cairo Math 64x61: fixed point 64.61 math library
Sign-In with Ethereum docs
Single use address guide, without the need for a private key (Nick’s method)
Alchemy NFT API on mainnet
0x Protocol v4 NFT swaps, off-chain & on-chain listings, lowers gas costs, on Ropsten testnet
3D interactive NFT using gITF (Graphics Language Transmission Format)
Tweet storm of building on-chain SVG NFT project
OpenSea’s guide to creating an NFT using Hardhat, IPFS & OpenZeppelin
Intro to web3 for web2 frontend devs
Security
Wormhole’s Solana/Ethereum bridge ~$300 million exploit, attacker spoofed guardian signatures after input wasn’t properly validated, 120k Wormhole ETH minted on Solana, 93k ETH bridged back to Ethereum
Qubit bridge post-mortem, code modified after audit, additional mitigations could have reduced risk
Index Coop Rari pool attempted attack, Uniswap V3 TWAP oracle manipulation prevented by arb bot, attacker lost 68 ETH
List of Smart Contract Vulnerabilities
Ecosystem
Vitalik’s reminder on shared security, rollups are just as secure as Ethereum mainnet, Validiums somewhat less secure, sidechains/independent layer 1s much less secure
NFT marketplaces should show transfer recipient information such as ENS, account name, previous transfers and NFTs held to prevent transfer errors
0xPARC: ZK-Identity should be used to re-architect identity systems putting users in control of their data
Sign-in with Ethereum: concept of session keys, ephemeral keys for a user’s session, stored in the browser with very limited permissions
Enterprise
GameStop NFT marketplace to be powered by Immutable X, marketed as carbon neutral with no gas fees; $100 million for creator grants
Nike sues StockX for selling NFTs with unauthorized images of sneakers
Application layer
UMA optimistic oracle live on Optimism, Boba Network & Arbitrum
Thales migrated to Optimism
Rubic multichain swaps adds Arbitrum
Mean Finance v2 Dollar Cost Average protocol for tokens live on Optimism
Kuiper permissionless index tracking live on mainnet
Utopia Core: DAO payroll, payments & expenses using Gnosis Safe, public beta
Lit Protocol adds token gated Zoom meetings/webinars and WordPress
Arcade NFT lending platform live on mainnet
Rarible adds floor bids for any NFT in a collection
Mirror Plugins: first plugin is minting ERC20 tokens
Job Listings
Re7 Capital – a DeFi yield fund – is hiring analysts and data engineers
Wanna build a cutting edge ETH Staking pipeline? 🅐ℙⓅ🄻ʸ for Ether Capital
Senior Technical Writer to take ownership & completely redo Geth docs
EF research hiring Networking Engineer
Internship program at Nethermind (1-3 month)
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
India to tax transfer of digital asset income at 30%
UK tax authority guidance treats DeFi deposits as asset disposal triggering capital gains
US Virtual Currency Tax Fairness bill reintroduced to exempt personal crypto transactions where gains are $200 or less
Circle runs ads in US newspapers on how the US can win the digital currency space race
ConsenSys acquires MyCrypto to join MetaMask team
Skepticism of ve-tokenomics: reduced investor base, staking derivatives, short term incentives, bribery and prisoners’ dilemma
Update on the Triple Halving thesis
Visualization of ETH and BTC percentage share of fees over time
General
Estimating bit security of pairing-friendly curves
EU data protection authorities find industry bodies consent system violates GDPR and all data collected must be deleted
German Court rules embedding Google Fonts violates GDPR
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-february-5-2022
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Feb 11 – PoW switch off community call
Feb 17 – Schelling Point (Denver)
Feb 18-20 – ETHDenver
Feb 23 - Mar 11 – Codeless Conduct no-code hackathon (virtual)
Mar 9-24 – Gitcoin Grants Round 13
Mar 11-16 – Ethereum Rio
Mar 15 – Cryptocurrency Class starts (virtual)
Mar 17-18 – ETH Austin summit
Mar 29-31 – ETHDubai
Apr 7-9 – ETH Portland hackathon
Apr 18-25 – Devconnect (Amsterdam)
Apr 19-20 – Layer Two Amsterdam
Apr 20-21 – The Alliance (gaming) summit (Amsterdam)
Apr 21 – ETHconomics (Amsterdam)
Apr 22-24 – ETHAmsterdam
May 3-8 – spaghettETH (Milan)
May 20 – US Fed CBDC discussion paper feedback deadline
Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague
Jun 20-23 – NFT.NYC
Jun 24-26 – ETHNewYork
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)
Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco
Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei
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