Week in Ethereum News, July 13, 2024
Eth News and Links
Multiple domains compromised, SEC drops Paxos BUSD case, Devcon ticket sales open, Alex Pertsev denied bail and Roman Storm granted trial delay
All core devs
All core devs – consensus (ACDC) #137:
Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade:
Pectra-devnet-1: aim to launch next week
EIP7594 PeerDAS:
peerdas-devnet-2 launching early next week with fixes from previous devnet
Decouple layers for blob count: max blob check on execution layer is redundant & can be removed, proposal for target blob count to be driven by consensus layer (needs to be included in execution layer block header)
Fork choice compliance testing presentation, model based test generation, test suite run with Teku
Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade, likely targeting Q1 2025
Marius Van Der Wijden: case against EOF in Pectra
Relaunch devnet with client fixes, proposal to use custody groups instead of subnets to decouple core & network layers and agreed consensus layer should send max & target blob counts in execution layer header
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 29%, still too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth ~55% majority
Consensus layer: Prysm 37%
Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe
Layer 1
Toni Wahrstätter: attestations analysis, node operator performance, best/worst validators, big block & blob impact and proposer timing games
Data Always: censorship resistance proposal, limit missed proposer income & increase localBlockValueBoost
Constantine v0.1: implementations of BLS signatures, BN254 & BLS12-381 precompiles and KZG polynomial commitments for blobs; bindings in C, Go, Nim & Rust
Péter Szilágyi: SSZ library implemented in Go
Research
Anders Elowsson: dynamic pricing auction of execution proposal rights, induces less new MEV & produces high aggregate MEV burn
Client Releases
Consensus layer:
Lodestar v1.20.0: lodestar/api package changes exported types, flag to use SSZ APIs with validator client and testnet bootnode ENRs updated
Execution layer:
Besu v24.7.0: adds eth_maxPriorityFeePerGas support and improvements to sync, peering & startup performance
Erigon v2.60.3: adds optional include precompiles flag to tracing
Geth v1.14.7: hotfix for concurrent map read/write bug in v1.14.6
Reth v1.0.1: full node performance improvements, ExEx backfill & RPC fixes
For Stakers
Stereum v2.2: multi-setup support and connection check to test network stability & connectivity
Layer 2
OP Stack Fjord upgrade, cheaper smart wallet passkey verification via RIP7212 secp256r1 precompile and 5-15% lower data availability costs via Brotli channel compression
L1 blob basefee spike on June 20 discussion and presentations on RIP7728 L1SLOAD precompile & RIP7740 preinstall deterministic deployment factories
Titan Builder eth_sendBlobs: send permutations of blob transactions from a single sender
EIPs/Standards
EIPs (Ethereum improvement proposals):
EIP7742: Uncouple blob count between CL and EL
RIPs (rollup improvement proposals):
RIP7740: Preinstall deterministic deployment factories
ERCs (application layer standards):
EIP.tools adds EIP-GPT, AI generated summary of an EIP/ERC
Stuff for developers
Web-solc: adapter to fetch/run specific version of Solidity compiler in the browser
RareSkills: guide to OpenZeppelin Contracts Initializable
ERC3770 (Rust): helper method for ERC3770 chain specific addresses
Nethermind Clear: formal verification framework for Yul code
Byteracing: maze solver in Solidity, try to make it more gas efficient
Security
Dough Finance $2M exploit via unvalidated calldata
Ecosystem
EthCC videos
RicMoo’s Firefly Pixie: open source hardware wallet
Job Listings
Nethermind: Senior Device Security Engineer, Senior DevOps Engineer AMER & APAC, Full Stack Lead APAC, Post-Grad Internship & Chief Marketing Officer
Aragon: Senior Smart Contract Developer
Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Onchain stats
Fees (via ultrasound.money):
Gas: 1.0 to 28.6 gwei, 3.6 gwei average; zero net issuance at 23.5 gwei
15k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,866 - $3,185, currently $3,133, all time high $4,878
ETHBTC: currently 0.054 (Flippening at ~0.164)
Notable at app layer
Multiple domains registered with Squarespace compromised including Compound Labs & Celer:
Google Domains users migrated to Squarespace should enable 2FA & remove excess contributor accounts
Fileverse dDocs: browser based word processor, end to end encrypted
Regulation/business/tokens
SEC formally notifies Paxos that it will not be charged for BUSD
SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 121: SEC allows some exceptions to balance sheet reporting, House failed to overturn Presidential veto of repeal
Republican party adopts very pro-crypto platform
Alex Pertsev denied bail to prepare for appeal
Roman Storm granted trial delay until December
General
Tayvano: example of a Lazarus attack, contact via socials and then compromise via GitHub repo
AT&T breach, data includes records of calls & texts of nearly all customers
Signal desktop stores decryption key in plain text file, encryption work started after backlash
END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News
Editor: @abcoathup
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Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-july-13-2024
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