Week in Ethereum News, January 15, 2022 - thanks to Starbloom Ventures for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Kintsugi testnet returns to finality after issues found from fuzz testing changing expected blockhash and setting block number to 1
Erigon v2022.01.01: bug fixes
Nethermind v1.12.4: JSON RPC support improvements
Besu v21.10.7: bug fixes
Why and how clients will stop serving chain history older than a year
EIPs/Standards
Proof of Stake consensus layer
Client diversity stats: we have a super-majority client; Institutions, pools & stakers are negligent if they run a super-majority client (more than 66% share), as a super-majority endangers both their stake and the network
Latest What’s New in Eth2
PoS implementers call. Notes from Ben Edgington:
Spec to be updated for call semantics, keep Kintsugi until this happens
One more testnet before upgrade public testnets to switch off PoW
Nimbus v1.6.0: Key manager API support (beta), validator performance metrics, speed improvements, uses just 1 gig of RAM on mainnet
Key manager UI with Lighthouse demo, uses Key manager API, work in progress
Proposal for Whisk, privacy-preserving protocol for electing beacon chain block proposers, modified version of Single Secret Leader Election
Vitalik’s Serenity design rationale updated (old but relevant)
Layer2
Optimism transaction fees reduced, transactions ~30% cheaper on average
Arbitrum Sequencer downtime due to hardware failure, backup had software upgrade in progress, Arbitrum still in beta, plans to decentralize Sequencer
Binance enables Arbitrum withdrawals
Polygon Zero (formerly Mir) Plonky2: recursive SNARK based on PLONK and FRI, recursive proofs generated in ~170ms on Macbook Pro
Fuel proposes Layer 2 token model: tokenizing right to collect fees as a Layer 2 block producer; suggests models to avoid: PoS, fee paying & governance
Celer inter-chain message framework live on testnet, single click UX to send arbitrary messages and execution instructions
Adoption curves of Optimism and Arbitrum vs sidechains (linear & log scale)
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Stuff for developers
Foundry: debugger: step through a transaction and view opcodes, stack, memory & source code highlighting
Foundry parallel EVM tests: speed up unit and fuzz tests
Getting started with Forge (Foundry testing framework)
OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.5 release candidate open review
Hardhat-marmite: Hardhat plugin to compare gas costs of Solidity snippets
xdeployer v1.1.0: Hardhat plugin to deploy contracts with deterministic address (uses CREATE2), supports mainnet, Arbitrum, Optimism & testnets
Seatbelt: test suite for Governor Bravo proposals, lists referenced addresses, confirms referenced contracts are verified and lists state changes
PaymentSplitter: factory to create low cost splitters using EIP1167 minimal proxies, fixed cost <200k gas
evm-codes: adds precompiled contracts reference
evm-puzzles: new levels, set transaction data/value so won’t revert
starknet-cairo-101: set of exercises to learn StarkNet
Blocknative Transaction Preview API: simulate transactions to see effects before authorizing
Matthew Green’s casual review of MetaMask crypto
Ethereum Data Warehouse: queryable full history, based on Snowflake cloud, relation between events and emitting call, limited beta
Security
Stobox STBU deployer private key compromised, reserve funds stolen
OpenZeppelin Contracts security advisory for GovernorBravo compatibility layer, proposals executing function calls could have incorrect arguments due to bad ABI encoding
Ecosystem
Galaxy Digital’s MEV report: $730+ million in MEV in 2021, most common strategy is arbitrage, Flashbots transactions are less than 1.5% of block space
Cryptopunk sandwiched: 26.25 ETH bid placed, bot makes a higher bid, bot withdraws bid, bot adds new highest bid at 1 wei and wins
Etherscan features in 2021 [in case you missed any]
Bot drained 58 ETH from WETH <> WTF liquidity pool, beware of tokens with high slippage; reminder to be mindful of low effort airdrops
Moxie (Signal founder): first impressions of web3; responses from Vitalik and Dan Finlay
Analysis of Ethereum PoW emissions, bottom up estimate, 20 ktCO2/day, ~ 2-3 coal power plants; roll on switching off PoW forever
Application layer
Opyn Squeeth live on mainnet, tracks index of ETH squared, options like exposure without need for strikes or expiries, no liquidations on long side
EPNS (push notification service) live, subscribe to channels for notifications
Olympus v2 Bonds: adds auto-staking and flexible vesting
Live on Optimism
Euler Finance guide to hedging in Uniswap
ENS eth.link: DNS servers being switched to CloudFlare to avoid breaking ENS subdomain SSLs, older IPFS versions need upgrading
LooksRare NFT marketplace, fees paid to token stakers, offer on any NFT in a collection, floor prices of traits, apparent wash trading for rewards
MoonCats: traits, colors and SVGs now on-chain
FancyLoogies: composable on-chain SVG NFT on Optimism
Doomsday NFT: on-chain survival game, NFTs randomly destroyed
Job Listings
Geth team seeks Senior Technical Writer to take ownership & redo docs
The VAC team at Status.im are looking for a blockchain engineer
Are you a p2p networking whiz? EF research hiring Networking Engineer
Kwenta seeks Frontend Engineer, Solidity Engineer & Marketing Lead
Certora seeks SR SW Eng, Security Res, Security Eng & Community Manager
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
Ethereum Q4 financial results by Bankless, ETH annualized net issuance at 0.46%, $154 billion TVL in DeFi, $5.6 billion TVL in Layer 2
USDC supply on Ethereum surpasses USDT
Neufund shutting down due to lack of support from European regulators
Pudgy Penguins community vs founders, potential acquisition, community wrapping NFTs to avoid royalties going to founders
Coinbase acquiring FairX (US regulated derivatives exchange), plans to offer crypto derivatives in US
Proposed bill to prohibit US Fed from issuing CBDC directly to individuals
Class-action lawsuit filed against PoolTogether by ex-staff of US Senator Warren for allegedly allowing purchase of illegal lottery ticket
Fees paid to use Ethereum in 2021 10x fees paid to use Bitcoin
General
Don’t use antipattern of raw secrets on the web, data is vulnerable and normalizes users entering secrets
The Onion’s guide to web3
Wikipedia editors for most expensive artworks list discuss whether NFTs should be classified as art
Decentralization matters: Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot froze user account FreeHongKong
Marak, developer of colors.js and faker.js added infinite loop in apparent protest for corporations not giving back to the open source community
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-january-15-2022
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Feb 15 - Apr 5 – Cryptocurrency Class (virtual)
Feb 17 – Schelling Point (Denver)
Feb 18-20 – ETHDenver
Mar 14-17 – Eth Rio
Mar 17-18 – ETH Austin summit
Mar 29-31 – ETHDubai
Apr 7-9 – ETH Portland hackathon
Apr 22-24 – ETHAmsterdam
May 3-8 – spaghettETH (Milan)
Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague
Jun 16-19 – ETH Miami summit & hackathon
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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