Week in Ethereum News, May 20, 2023

Eth News and Links

Brief loss of finalization and first inactivity leak 

• Prysm’s finality issue postmortem: 

  • Valid attestations with old target checkpoint weren’t processed optimally

  • Delay in finalization for 4 epochs & 9 epochs (with inactivity leak)

  • 28 ETH in penalties & 55 ETH in missed validator revenue 

  • Block space dropped but gas prices weren’t higher than daily highest

• Ben Edgington & Superphiz: finality issue discussion [video]

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade

• Latest consensus layer devs call video. Notes from Christine Kim:

  • Discussions on PRs for Deneb, removing merge conditions, adding confirmation rule and non-expiring signed voluntary exits

• EIP4844:

  • Latest EIP4844 implementer call video. Notes from Terence

  • KZG ceremony available with no waiting to anyone with 32 mainnet transactions

• Proposal for ordering Cancun & Prague opcodes in a more coherent layout

Layer 1

• Proto’s consensus.actor: interactive map of attester performance using Nimbus Era files

• Validator withdrawal/exit queue monitoring

• Lambda consensus client planned, to be developed in Elixir by LATAM team

• Geth team brain dump on implementing light clients

Client releases

• Consensus layer:

  • Nimbus v23.5.1: improves 3rd party validator clients/beacon node compatibility and adds incremental pruning

  • Prysm v4.0.4: fix for finality issue

  • Teku v23.5.0: fix for finality issue

• Execution layer:

  • Erigon v2.43.1: fixes

For Stakers

• Lido v2 live:

  • Withdrawals; no service should have more than 22% of stake (Lido has ~33%)

  • Staking router (allows permissionless onboarding of node operators)

• Timeserver diversity discussion

• Lost validator seed phrase on Ledger had private keys generated using custom app

Research

• Justin Drake: MEV burn add-on to enshrined PBS, smooth & redistribute MEV spikes

Layer 2

• Aztec rollup circuit proving time sped up, Nullifier Tree (used to prevent actions being repeated) reduced from 2^254 leaves to 2^32

EIPs/Standards

• EIPs:

  • EIP7039: Scheme-handler discovery option for wallets

  • EIP7044: Perpetually valid signed voluntary exits

  • EIP7045: Increase max attestation inclusion slot

Stuff for developers

• Solidity immutable variables can be initialized multiple times or left uninitialized

• Remix v0.33: adds scientific notation for input, refactored WalletConnect plugin, updated Etherscan verification plugin, generate docs from file explorer and Sol2UML zoom 

• Foundry: 

  • Scopelint: formatter & linter for Solidity & TOML and spec generation from tests

  • ScopeLift Foundry template

  • Tip: fuzz settings in inline comments

• VS Code Solidity plugin: language server rewrite includes code completion, go to definition, find references, hover info; Solparse upgrades; download code & ABI from Etherscan

• Solidity try/catch edge cases

• Solc (Solidity compiler) calling conventions

• Fundraise: Solidity contract for memecoin presales with soft/hard caps, unaudited

• Ether deck: extensible multisig in Huff, unaudited

• Pyrometer: verifies Solidity functions perform as expected via showing how variables change, beta

• 4byte.directory maintenance moving to beaconchain.in team

• Contract diff: mainnet and layer 2 support, multifile support, split & unified modes and summaries

• Next.js app router + TypeScript + ConnectKit Sign in with Ethereum example

• CTFs:

  • Curta Last One Standing solution

  • Dragonfly CTF solution

• Base Camp: contract development guide for beginners using Remix & deploying to Base testnet

• RareSkills contract security guide

Ecosystem

• ETHGlobal Lisbon hackathon finalists

Enterprise

• Visa: experiments with ERC4337 account abstraction on Goerli testnet

Notable at app layer

• Compound v3 live on Arbitrum

• Pimlico ERC20 paymaster for ERC4337 account abstraction live on mainnet, Arbitrum & Optimism

• DeFiReturns v2 launches with actual returns, with or without rewards, for ~10 major DeFi protocols

---

Job Listings

• 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

---

General/crypto

• Ledger’s planned KYC’d account recovery leads to a furious blowback during which they admit that a malicious firmware update can steal your crypto despite prior assurances that they couldn’t

• Argentina suspending custodial crypto accounts as a result of IMF deal

---

Follow @WeekinEthNews to find out what the most clicked links are. Follow @abcoathup and @evan_van_ness to get most of the week’s news in real time.

Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-20-2023

---

Upcoming Dates of Note

(new/changes in bold)

• 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

• Aug 16-19 – Ethereum Argentina (Buenos Aires)

• 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

• Sep 22–24 – ETHGlobal New York

• Oct 5-6 – ETHMilan conference

• Oct 6-8 – ETHRome hackathon

• Oct 6–27 – ETHOnline (ETHGlobal) virtual

• Oct 27–29 – ETH Miami festival + hackathon

• Nov 3-5 – ETH Lisbon hackathon

• Nov 3-5 – ETHBrno

• Nov 13-19 – Devconnect (Istanbul)

• Nov 17-19 – ETHGlobal Istanbul

Sign up to receive this newsletter weekly