Week in Ethereum News, March 2, 2024
Eth News and Links
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade (meta EIP7569)
Mainnet upgrades to Dencun March 13, epoch 269568, update your nodes
MEV-Boost v1.7: Dencun support
Devnet 12 will be deprecated after mainnet upgrades
Reminder: Goerli testnet deprecated, client & EF testing teams will start exiting validators April 17 (3 months after Goerli was upgraded)
Blobs:
EF EIP4844 data challenge: write a blob data analysis/viz post by June 14, up to $30k in prizes
Blob usage estimates: 4x growth before blob gas price is greater than 1 gwei
Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta EIP7600)
Future EOA &Account Abstraction breakout call video. Recap by Tim Beiko and notes by Dom:
Align short term EOA improvements with an agreed account abstraction end game
Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Recap & notes from Christine Kim:
Retroactive EIP proposals: EIP7610 (revert contract creation for non-empty storage) no expected issues with Verkle
Pectra upgrade (small fork targeting late 2024)
Continued discussion from future EOA breakout on possible improvements in Pectra
Potential EIP discussions (but no decisions on what to include):
EIP7623 (increase calldata cost)
EIP5920 (PAY opcode)
EIP7609 (transient storage pricing)
EIP7639 (stop serving pre-merge history)
EIP7642 (drop pre-merge fields)
Block confirmation rule engine API & JSON RPC changes
Osaka upgrade (meta EIP7607)
Verkle implementers call video & notes
Client Releases
Consensus layer:
Nimbus v24.2.2: hotfix for consensus violation issue on Deneb upgraded networks
Execution layer:
Geth v1.13.14: blob pool improvements & blob pool capacity reduced from 10GB to 2.5GB
Reth v0.1.0-alpha.21: fixes live sync critical bug
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 31.26% is far too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth 72% supermajority, could cause a chain split
Updated assumptions: unknown validators 100% Geth & unaccounted validators 80% Geth
Kiln migrated to 50.1% Nethermind
Coinbase migrating to 50% Nethermind & plans Erigon support
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
Marius Van Der Wijden: optional inclusion lists
ePBS (enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation)
Side benefits of ePBS: improved pipelining, enhanced incentives for blob inclusion, market & mechanism flexibility and inclusion list flexibility
Barnabe: allocate proposing rights rather than building rights
MEV
MEV research chatbot, requires GitHub or Google login
Research
Committee-enforced inclusion sets (COMIS) for censorship resistance
Layer 2
Blast (optimistic rollup) live
Based sequencing:
Sequencing & pre confirmations call video and notes: presentations on risks & concerns
RollCall (L2 standards) based sequencing breakout call video
Specification for a minimal key store rollup
EIPs/Standards
EIPs:
ERCs (application layer):
Stuff for developers
Remix v0.44: save deployed contracts and adds Sindri integration (compute zk proofs remotely)
Foundry:
Isolated mode for gas measurement
Base64 library (Solidity):
Vyper:
Vyper v0.4.0b1: import system overhauled, reusable Vyper modules and experimental venom IR
Guide to get started with Vyper modules
BALLS: DSL/Huff-preprocessor in Rust to generate optimized assembly
EVM from scratch: guide to create a mini EVM, work in progress
Slither v0.10.1: Solidity v0.8.24 & top level event support, new detector: Arbitrum out of order retryable tickets and limit results with include-paths option
OpenZeppelin Defender v2 general availability
EIP4844 blob dev usage guide, how to send blob transactions and query blobs
Mopro-cli: build & test Circom circuits from Rust, MVP
MACI v1.2: supports non-quadratic voting polls and adds EAS gatekeeper
Contribute to MACI v1.2 trusted setup ceremony by March 5
Security
Tornado Cash deposits using IPFS gateways likely have notes exposed & deposit is at risk, warning blog post may also be a trap
Seneca $6.4M exploit on mainnet & Arbitrum via arbitrary call, revoke any approvals, 80% of funds returned
SoK: security vulnerabilities in SNARKs, analysis of 141 implementation vulnerabilities
Ecosystem
Blocknative Ethernow: adds live dashboard of transactions & base fee
Enterprise
HackMD adds Sign-in with Ethereum
Job Listings
TechOps are looking for DevOps. Work on projects such as MakerDAO.
ChainSafe seek a Head of Protocol Engineering
Nethermind: Distributed Systems Dev Lead & Cryptography Researcher
Sr. Developer Relations Manager & Technical Writer at Powerloom
Solidity: C++ Software Engineer and Programming Language Researcher
Devcon: Community Supporter, Production Assistant & Volunteer Coordinator
Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 16.5 to 305.8 gwei, with 46.2 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 22.8 gwei
17.8k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $2,908 - $3,512, currently $3,453
ETHBTC: currently 0.055 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
Ondo global markets: tokens represent rights to securities held by broker-dealers
Astaria Intents (intent-based lending) live on Base
Arbitrum Arcade: 8 week promotion to try games on Arbitrum, starts March 11
Regulation/business/tokens
Gemini plan to return Earn users assets subject to bankruptcy approval & $37M fine to NY DFS
Fidelity All-in-One ETFs include 1-3% crypto allocation
Optimism RetroPGF3 learnings & reflections
General
US Whitehouse: use memory safe programming languages
End of service: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News
Editor: @abcoathup
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Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-march-2-2024
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Mar 4 – EF academic grants round application deadline
Mar 9 – ETH Salvador
Mar 13 – mainnet Dencun upgrade epoch 269568, (watch party)
Mar 13-14 – ETHLatam (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Mar 15-17 – ETHGlobal London hackathon
Mar 18 – ZK grants round application deadline
Mar 19-21 – ETH Canal (Panama City, Panamá) conference & hackathon
Mar 21-24 – ETHTaipei conference & hackathon
Mar 22-24 – ETHSamba (Rio)
Mar 27-30 – ETH Bucharest conference & hackathon
Mar 29-31 – ETH Seoul hackathon
Apr 5-26 – ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum virtual hackathon
Apr 5-7 – EthereumZuri.ch conference
Apr 12-14 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
Apr 16-18 – EY Global blockchain summit (London)
Apr 26-28 – ETHBoston conference & hackathon
May 3-5 – ETHGlobal Sydney hackathon
May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
May 24-26 – ETHBerlin hackathon
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHDublin hackathon & conference
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
Jun 3-5 – ETH Belgrade conference & hackathon
Jun 14 – EF EIP4844 data challenge deadline
Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels) conference
Jul 12-14 – ETHGlobal Brussels hackathon
Jul 26-30 – EDCON Tokyo conference
Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline virtual hackathon
Sep 12-14 – NapulETH (Napoli)
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore hackathon
Oct 6-8 – ETHRome
Oct 18-20 – ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon
Nov 12-15 – Devcon 7 - Southeast Asia (Bangkok)
Nov 15-17 – ETHGlobal Bangkok hackathon
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