Week in Ethereum News, July 31, 2021 - thanks to Nexus Mutual for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Tim Beiko’s All Core Devs update: update nodes for London, upgrade viewing parties, EIP3675 changes and PoW switch off road map
JSON RPC changes for EIP1559: adds 0x02 transaction type and baseFeePerGas block header field
Erigon 2021.07.05-alpha: Docker builds follow XDG spec
Geth workshop videos
SHA256 optimization for Merkle Roots: ~30% speed up of hashing
Erigon on Raspberry Pi 4: full validation node on <$250 hardware
EIPs/Standards
Proof of stake consensus layer
Lodestar validating on mainnet, beacon chain now has 5 mainnet clients
Danny Ryan’s Finalized PoS update: mainnet validators must upgrade their execution clients
Latest What’s New in Eth2
PoS implementers call (video not uploaded). Notes from Ben Edgington
Teku v21.7.0: optional upgrade, subcommand added to migrate to leveldb without a full resync and fixed file handle leak
Lido staking pool roadmap to trustless staking
Measuring staking decentralization: 31 parties would need to collude to control 51% of the beacon chain, 8 parties to collude to control 33%
Proof of concept QT-based block/node explorer
Attacking Gasper without adversarial network delay
Layer2
Synthetix synth exchanges live on Optimism using Kwenta alpha
Tenderly adds Optimism support
Sorare migrated to Starkware for scaling
StarkEx v3.0: Layer1 vaults for DeFi pooling & decentralized AMM, single STARK proof for multiple independent dApps
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Stuff for developers
Ethers.js playground
Remix IDE v0.15.0: Slither integration, URLs for opening files and Gists in Remix
web3.js v1.5.0: EIP1559 support and documentation updates
Nethereum (.Net library) v4.0.0: EIP1559 support
Fe v0.7.0-alpha: runtime checks, custom revert errors, bytes type removed and multi line string support
MyCrypto’s TypeScript strategy for EIP1559 fee estimation
EthTx: transaction decoder website and open source Python library
Smart-contract-inspector: state variable viewing library and demo website
Using delegatecall safely
Contract creation in bytecode explainer
Engineering lessons from hunting Optimism L1->L2 deposit bug
How to prepare to win an online hackathon
Austin Griffith’s quick start for developers new to Ethereum
Security
Securing Proof of Personhood services against puppeteer attack
Tincho’s ChainSwap exploit Proof of Concept
Sablier recipient cancellation vulnerability disclosed
MyCrypto’s NFT bugs and exploits: CryptoPunks v1, Meebits trait minting and MoonCatRescue locked funds
Ecosystem
Ethereum launched six years ago
Flashbots bundles were recently included in ⅔ of blocks
Blockscan by Etherscan: search for an address or transaction hash on mainnet, testnets, layer2 networks and sidechains
CryptoFees.info adds protocol grouping to view all their fees
Revoke.cash adds viewing and revoking of ERC721 allowances
Enterprise
EY tested TaxGrid cross-border withholding tax solution, stakeholders included government departments of UK, Netherlands and Norway; uses ZK proofs, ERC20 and ERC721 tokens on a private permissioned network
Application layer
Thales (Synthetix spin-off) live on mainnet: on-chain binary options
Ondo Finance: fixed rate managed loans for risk-adjusted exposure to yield, ~$5m capped launch, exercise caution
Time-Weighted AMM design for large orders, on-chain equivalent of TWAP order
Fractional Art: fractional ownership for high value NFTs using ERC20 tokens
Stoner Cats animated tv series sold ~3k ETH of NFTs with ~1.5k ETH in gas fees; $800k lost on out of gas errors (Disclosure: given a cat for contract feedback)
EthBlockArt minting price discovery mechanism
MATT auctions to maximize artist revenue, capped collection size reflects demand and reduces speculation
JPG: NFT curation protocol live with Deep Time exhibition
Proof of Humanity: use yield on ETH to buy and burn UBI tokens
Regulation/business/tokens
Uniswap.org interface removed tokens such as derivatives due to perceived regulatory pressure; Uniswap protocol and alternative interfaces unaffected
Proposed US infrastructure bill would require KYC for every address
US Senator Elizabeth Warren said in committee hearing: “crypto puts the [financial] system at the whims of some shadowy faceless group of super coders and miners”
DAO Treasury management using options, stablecoins and indices, borrowing against the treasury and range tokens
Simon de la Rouviere: NFT economies, creators vs collectors and collection sizes
Draft NFT licences, exclusive and non-exclusive variants
Five narratives for Ethereum with valuation models
General
Fortune: DeFi takes on Wall Street; magazine cover art by pplpleasr
Bring Your Own Algorithm, choose how you experience the metaverse
Cloudflare: AWS’s egregious egress
Vitalik: against overuse of the Gini coefficient measure of inequality
Job Listings
Ethereum Foundation: Test Engineer for consensus and execution layers
Synthetix: 2 Solidity engineers to work direct with Kain Warwick in Sydney
Nethermind internship program
Want to reach people experienced with Ethereum? List your job here. $345 per line (~75 character limit including spaces), payable in ETH (or 345 DAI or 345 USDC) to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
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-july-31-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Aug 1 - applications close for Secureum auditing bootcamp
Aug 4 (or 5) - London hard fork
Aug 12 - applications close for EF small grants for events
Aug 13 - Sign in with Ethereum RFP extended deadline
Aug 17 - applications close for written pieces on public goods projects
Aug 27-29 - Edcon (Shenzhen/online)
Oct 1-3 - EthAtlanta enterprise-focused hackathon & keynotes
Oct 22-24 - ETH Lisbon
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