Week in Ethereum News, March 30, 2024 - sponsored by Pashov Audit Group
Eth News and Links
Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta EIP7600)
Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Notes from Tim Beiko & Christine Kim:
Missed slots: blocks gossiped with missing blobs, circuit breaker to local building not triggered, base fee variability due to EIP1559 being block rather than time based
bloXroute post mortem: resolved by disabling propagation of blocks containing blobs via their distribution network
State & history growth:
Paradigm research: history is 10x state growth
Continue work on EIP4444 (history expiry) & provide downloadable history so can stop serving on p2p
Retroactive EIPs: agreed to include EIP7610 (revert contract creation for non-empty storage) and EIP7523 (deprecate empty accounts)
Pectra upgrade (small fork targeting late 2024)
EIP2537 BLS precompile: gas cost benchmarks
Candidate for inclusion:
EIP7547 IL: design issue with account abstraction & options to mitigate
Potential EIP updates (no decisions yet, client teams to review, aim to decide scope at ACDE in 2 weeks)
EIP5920 PAY opcode
EIP7609 decrease cost of TSTORE/TLOAD
EIP2935 save historical block hashes in state
EIP7545 Verkle proof verification precompile
EOF (Ethereum Object Format)
RIP7212 secp256r1 precompile
EIP7664 Access-Key opcode
EIP6493 SSZ transaction signature scheme
EIP7251 maxEB (increase max effective balance):
Breakout call video & notes
Inactivity leak under maxEB: ejection balance should remain as 16 ETH
EIP7547 IL (inclusion lists):
Osaka + F starname upgrade (meta EIP7607)
Verkle:
Implementers call video & notes
This newsletter is sponsored by Pashov Audit Group!
What if you can get a good security review from elite security researchers without spending a single penny?
We offer a FREE pre-audit review on your code.
Our review will check for common vulnerabilities and suggest best practices to ensure that your codebase will get the most out of an audit.
We bet that this free service is better than some that cost 5 figures on the market.
We will be offering this service forever, but if you ping in the following 72hrs after the newsletter is out, you get a guaranteed high priority for reviewing your code. Reach out - t.me/pashovkrum
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 30.11% is far too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth 66% majority
Consensus layer: Prysm 38% plurality
Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe
Layer 1
Erigon++: Silkworm (C++ block execution, RPC & p2p using evmone) running inside Erigon, enabled by command line flag(s), experimental
MEV-Boost min-bid provides 7% of censorship resistance: changing to opt-out is simpler alternative to inclusion lists
Client Releases
Consensus layer:
Lighthouse v5.1.3: hotfix for duplicate lookup requests and to run fork choice after all block imports
Prysm v5.0.2: optimizations, UX improvements & bug fixes; defaults to local block if external builder less than 10% additional value
Nimbus v24.3.0: additional beacon API support, reduces CPU usage & improves resilience; defaults to local block if external builder less than 10% additional value
Teku v24.3.1: reduces CPU & bandwidth usage; defaults to local block if external builder less than 10% additional value
Execution layer:
Erigon v2.59.2: patch for MDBX size/performance regression introduced in v2.58.0
Reth v0.2.0-beta.4: performance & storage improvements
Research
Vitalik: extend anti-correlation incentives to support decentralized staking
Out-of-protocol blob inclusion pre-confirmations to mitigate blob contention & censorship
Layer 2
Base gas target increased to 3.75mgas/s, planning increase to 5 mgas/s next week
Polygon zkEVM outage: synchronizer didn’t detect mainnet reorg, emergency state approved by Security Council to upgrade network
Based sequencing & pre-confirmations call video & notes
EIPs/Standards
EIPs:
EIP7664: Access-Key opcode
Vitalik’s draft EIPs:
ERCs (application layer):
Stuff for developers
Remix v0.46.0: defaults Remix VM EVM version to Cancun & Solidity compiler to v0.8.25
BidDog (Solidity): auction managed AMM, AGPL-3.0
Gaslite Drop deploy ERC20 token using Bytecode20 (currently can’t verify on Etherscan)
web3.py WebSocketProvider in v7 beta
Lattice MUD v2 (game framework): adds Store (runtime defined storage) & World (contract framework)
Curta CTF number heist solution
EthPandaOps Xatu dataset available in Parquet format for mainnet and Sepolia & Holešky testnets
Security
Munchables $62M exploit on Blast by rogue dev, funds returned to multisig
Prisma Finance $11.6M exploit via unvalidated input, revoke delegate approvals
Curio $113k exploit on mainnet via flawed voting power access control
Baseline on Blast vulnerability disclosed
Ecosystem
Vitalik: Ethereum after blobs, L1 progress less disruptive for apps, scaling work in the background, apps need to be built for 2020s Ethereum workflow (e.g. on L2, private & with account abstraction)
EIP7503 (zk wormholes) explainer: mechanism for privacy-preserving transfers
Optimism Retro Funding (expanded from public goods) experimenting with impact juries & metrics based evaluation for focused rounds: onchain builders, OP Stack, governance & dev tooling
Enterprise
Google search for an address shows balance on Arbitrum One & OP Mainnet as well as mainnet
Job Listings
Nethermind Mechanism Designer, Protocol Research Manager, Research Engineer
Devcon: Community Supporter, Production Magician & Volunteer Coordinator
Certora is hiring: Head of Product, SR-Rust, Compiler Developer & FV Wizard
🔥OpenZeppelin seeks Security Researchers in Canada, Australia, LatAm & USA
Waku is hiring! Protocol Engineer, Waku SDK Software Engineer & Researcher
IFT/Logos: ZK Researcher (Nomos); ZK Researcher (Vac) & ZK Engineer x2
Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 11.2 to 105.5 gwei, with 26.5 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 22.6 gwei
3k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $3,303 - $3,664, currently $3,523
ETHBTC: currently 0.05 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
Blobs being used for inscriptions, activating blob fee market
Splits multichain: single view of activity across mainnet & Layer 2
Privacy & Scaling Explorations: Anon Aadhaar v2 adds selective disclosure & simplified nullifier
Crypto: The Game (onchain Survivor) season 2 starts April 2, players/jury represented as NFTs
Regulation/business/tokens
Alex Pertsev's 2 day trial completed in Netherlands, verdict expected May 14
SBF sentenced to 25 years
KuCoin charged with bank secrecy act & unlicensed money transmission offenses
Beba (apparel) sued SEC, claims free airdrop is not a securities transaction
ETH correlation analysis in spot ETH ETF filing: strong correlation between spot & futures market
General
Vitalik: memecoins for public goods & creating games/fun
END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News
Editor: @abcoathup
Follow @WeekinEthNews for the most clicked links
Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-march-30-2024
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
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 19-21 – ETH Tallinn hackathon
Apr 20-21 – ETHDubai conference & hackathon
Apr 23-May 7 – Gitcoin Grants 20 (applications open Apr 2-16)
Apr 26-28 – ETHBoston hackathon & conference
May 3-5 – ETHGlobal Sydney hackathon
May 10-11 – ETH Bratislava conference & 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
May 31-Jun 5 – ETH Belgrade hackathon & conference
Jun 14 – EF EIP4844 data challenge deadline
Jun 21-23 – ETHKyiv hackathon & conference
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
Aug 23-26 – ETHTokyo hackathon & conference
Aug 29-31 – ETHAccra hackathon
Sep 5-8 – ETHWarsaw conference & hackathon
Sep 9-15 – ETHSafari (Kenya)
Sep 12-14 – NapulETH (Napoli)
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore hackathon
Oct 4-6 – ETHRome
Oct 17-19 – ETHSofia hackathon & conference
Oct 18-20 – ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon
Nov 12-15 – Devcon 7 - Southeast Asia (Bangkok)
Nov 15-17 – ETHGlobal Bangkok hackathon
Sign up to receive this newsletter weekly