Week in Ethereum News, May 13, 2023
Eth News and Links
Brief loss of finalization and first inactivity leak
Beacon chain stopped finalizing twice over the past 36 hours and had first inactivity leak
Consensus clients on lower spec hardware struggled to follow the chain after valid but untimely attestations were broadcast
Bottom line: blocks & transactions continued
For a short time, Ethereum devolved into the same probabilistic finality as PoW
Consensus client teams are working on patches
Lighthouse overtook Prysm as majority consensus client, reminder: no client should have more than a 33% share, switch to a minority client
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade
Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Summary by Tim Beiko. Notes from Tim Beiko and Christine Kim:
EIP4844: agreed to use big-endian for EL inputs/outputs and use RLP on EL & SSZ on CL via Engine API and discussion on state of KZG libraries
Meta discussion if Layer 2 focused EIPs need to go through core devs e.g. EIP6968
Cancun upgrade EIP candidates for inclusion to be discussed on next ACDE
KZG ceremony available to anyone with 32 mainnet transactions. Wait time is generally zero.
Layer 1
MEV unbundling attack variant disclosed with temporary mitigation
Evmone v0.10.0: Shanghai upgrade & EOF v1 support and performance improvements
List of projects from the third Ethereum Protocol Fellowship cohort
Client releases
Consensus layer:
Nimbus v23.5.0: fixes missed block proposals when using an external builder in v23.4, experimental Web3Signer extension to verify block properties
Research
Proposal to consolidate large stakes into fewer validators to reduce p2p messages
zkCasper: verify Casper FFG consensus proofs using SNARKs, increases security of light clients
ArbiNet: MEV transaction detection using Graph Neural Networks
Layer 2
Optimism transaction delays postmortem
EIPs/Standards
EIPs:
ERCs:
Stuff for developers
Solidity v0.8.20: adds Shanghai support & sets Shanghai as default EVM version, experimental AST import via Standard JSON
Change EVM version when deploying Solidity v0.8.20+ to Layer 2 or other networks if they don’t support Shanghai
Nomic Foundation Slang (Solidity compiler) alpha release, testers wanted
Foundry:
Etch cheat to debug deployed contract, add console.log & replace the code in a fork
Vulcan v0.1: dev framework for Foundry projects, aims for improved vm naming & test readability
pureConsole: Solidity library for console logging from pure functions
Protomerkle: Solidity library to build onchain merkle trees
YulExp2Huff: convert Yul arithmetic expressions to Huff equivalent
Wagmi v1: uses viem (rather than ethers), reduced bundle size, prepare hooks not mandatory and deterministic errors;
RainbowKit v1: supports wagmi v1 & viem, improved browser extension support
OpenZeppelin Contracts Wizard + Remix used to deploy a testnet memecoin in 27 seconds
Coherent mainnet dataset: CC0, 95% decoded logs/txs/traces, via Snowflake or API
PGP onchain keyserver, concept
Dappnet: portal for decentralized front ends, Chrome/Firefox/Brave on macOS, alpha
Security
Ecosystem
Validator exit queue was emptied of everyone wanting to withdraw
Ether supply is down 100k ETH in 30 days
Google search for an address shows Ether balance, doesn’t support ENS yet
Enterprise
EY OpsChain ESG: tokenized CO2 emissions & carbon credits, beta
Notable at app layer
Rune’s Maker endgame roadmap: rebranding, new stablecoin & governance token (1:1200 ratio)
Maker Spark Protocol: lend & borrow ETH, stETH, DAI & sDAI
Aragon Association refusing to transfer treasury to Aragon DAO
Cozy v2 (protection marketplace) live on Optimism, non-US, limited to $5M per protection set
Ethereum Attestation Service: attest & verify a file
Tessera (formerly Fractional) winding down
Karma delegate activity tracker to check DAO delegate performance
Job Listings
Snr React Native UI Dev at Status: All jobs
Solidity team need a highly skilled Developer Advocate
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit), payable to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
US Chamber of Commerce amicus brief in Coinbase SEC case
Biden gaslights that there is a special tax loophole for crypto
Former Coinbase product manager sentenced to 2 years jail in insider trading case
IRS $44 billion claims on FTX entities
General/crypto
Pseudorandom functions & permutations explainer
MSI private keys published by hackers, could be used to to sign malware
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-13-2023
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
May 19-23 – EDCON Montenegro
May 20-21 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
May 24-26 – Spaghett ETH (Naples) conference
May 26-28 – ETHDublin hackathon
Jun 2-4 – ETH Seoul
Jun 2-7 – ETH Belgrade conference & hackathon
Jun 9-11 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
Jun 23–25 – ETHGlobal Waterloo (changed from Toronto)
Jul 5-9 – ETHBarcelona conference & hackathon
Jul 17-20 – EthCC (Paris)
Jul 21–23 – ETHGlobal Paris
Aug 15-16 – ETHToronto & ETHWomen
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Aug 28-30 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford University)
Aug 30 – Sep 3 – ETHWarsaw conference & hackathon
Sep 1-3 – Ethcon Korea hackathon
Sep 10-12 – Ethereum Singapore hackathon & conference
Sep 11-13 – DappCon (Berlin)
Sep 15 – Protocol Berg (Berlin)
Sep 18-21 – ETH Montréal hackathon & conference
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Nov 17-19 – ETHGlobal Istanbul
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