Week in Ethereum News, May 28, 2022 - thanks to SpeedRunEthereum for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
PoW switch off (the Merge)
Mainnet-shadow-fork-6 transition to PoS on May 31
Ropsten testnet reached Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) before Ropsten beacon chain genesis:
miner added hash rate & lowered gas limit in malicious stress test
TTD being overridden to very large value to prevent merge
override TTD after Ropsten beacon chain genesis & Bellatrix upgrade to merge around June 8
Test the merge with Nethermind
Mainnet execution layer
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
two consensus layer Merge releases: Bellatrix followed by setting TTD
no decision on delaying difficulty bomb, discussed 2-4 month delay coupled with Paris execution layer Merge upgrade
short discussion on EIP4844 (proto-danksharding) & EIP2537 (BLS precompile)
Ropsten testnet Paris releases:
Geth v1.10.18: manually override TTD
Erigon v2022.05.08-alpha
Nethermind v1.13.1
Besu v22.4.2
OpenEthereum client (formerly Parity) deprecated
Speed up EIP4844 transaction validation (using KZG proofs), reduces verification time to 3.5ms
Understanding the crypto in Verkle trees: the difference between bandersnatch and banderwagon
Proof of Stake consensus layer
Beacon chain 7-block deep reorg: caused by mix of proposer boost upgraded & non-upgraded nodes and timing of late arriving block. Upgrade your nodes!
Ropsten beacon chain Bellatrix releases:
Teku v22.5.1
Nimbus v22.5.1
Lighthouse v2.3.0-rc.0
Prysm v2.1.3-rc.2
Checkpoint sync safety: get from trusted source and verify
Even Infura being hacked is not much of a risk, but you should still verify your checkpoint
Analysis of Swap-or-Not Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) proposal
Lido discussion on limiting share of stake on the beacon chain
EIPs/Standards
Layer2
zk-rollup proposal using Practical Verifiable Delay Encryption for MEV minimization
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Stuff for developers
Tim Beiko’s Merge reminder: DIFFICULTY opcode will return PREVRANDAO and 12s block times (minus missed slots) rather than ~13s
ethers js v5.6.8: update BN.js for hex string bug, doesn’t appear to occur in 256-bit numbers
ethers js cheat sheet
Foundry:
Forge Snippets for VS Code
signature database support
guide to using Foundry with Hardhat
ERC721A v4.0.0: removes OpenZeppelin Contracts dependency, upgradeable version uses EIP2535 (Diamonds)
MergeReward: contract pays first caller after the Merge by checking difficulty is bigger than 2^64
Remco’s Yul parser: Rust based
Web3.py customization options: middleware, custom methods, external modules and custom providers
dApp Starter using Typescript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, RainbowKit, ethers and wagmi
RainbowKit mint NFT demo: Next.js NFT minting front end
Hop airdrop sybil hunt: Union-Find graph algorithm to find connected subgraph components in O(1) time
StackExchange to create custom site design for Ethereum
Patrick McCorry’s crypto class resources (8 sessions)
Patrick Collins: web3 development using JavaScript (32 hours of video)
Security
MEV bot exploited for 8 ETH
Ecosystem
Ethereum roadmap deep dive: dank sharding, history & state management, MEV and the Merge
ETHGlobal HackMoney finalists
Enterprise
GameStop Wallet: Chrome browser extension, mainnet and LoopRing Layer 2
Application layer
Mirror Writing NFTs: sell and collect posts as NFTs on Optimism
Zora: create music (with album art), video and SVG NFTs
Uniswap $1 trillion cumulative trading volume
Fairmint (tokenized equity) open to all
Vitalik: evaluate automated stablecoins; can they wind down to zero users and can they charge a negative interest rate
Job Listings
Ethereum Foundation seek a generalist ecosystem developer
Trail of Bits Security Apprenticeship (3 months)
Ethereum Foundation need a People Operations Lead
Sourcify (source code verification) need a TypeScript Developer
Hiring Coordinator wanted by Ethereum Foundation
Reach developers experienced with Ethereum. $600 for four issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet, Arbitrum or Optimism. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
US Federal Reserve [PDF]: 12% of adults held/used crypto, 11% held as an investment, 2% used for payments and 1% sent to family/friends
UK financial regulator first crypto sprint
Stable coin dashboard
Seth Green’s Bored Ape stolen in phishing scam, ape used in upcoming animated show, claims to maintain IP ownership
General
US FTC: Twitter fined $150 million for using phone & email provided for security in targeted ads
US Department of Justice: good-faith security research shouldn’t be charged under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Caulk: lookup arguments in sublinear time, 100x faster than Poseidon
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-28-2022
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Jun 1 – applications close for OxPARC Halo2 Learning group
Jun 3 – Merge community call #4
Jun 8-23 – Gitcoin Grants Round 14
Jun 10 – Austin DeFi summit
Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague
Jun 20-23 – NFT.NYC
Jun 24-26 – ETH NYC
Jul 1 – Data Availability Sampling proposals due
Jul 6-8 – ETHBarcelona
Jul 8 – ETH Seattle summit
Jul 19-21 – EthCC 5 (Paris)
Aug 5-13 – ETH Seoul
Aug 8-10 – ETHToronto
Aug 11-14 – ETH LATAM (Buenos Aires)
Aug 19-21 – ETHMexicoCity
Aug 27-28 – DeFi Security Summit (Stanford)
Aug 28 – DeFi San Francisco summit
Aug 29-31 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford)
Sep 1-4 – ETHWarsaw (hackathon & conference)
Sep 2-4 – ETHSantiago
Sep 2-28 – ETHOnline
Sep 6-9 – MCON 2 (Denver)
Sep 12-14 – DappCon (Berlin)
Sep 27-29 – Ethereum SP (São Paulo)
Oct 7-9 – ETHBogotá
Oct 11-14 – Devcon 6 (Bogotá)
Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco
Nov 18-20 – ETHGlobal Web3 Weekend
Dec 1-4 – ETHDownUnder (Sydney)
Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei
Dec 2-4 – ETHIndia
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vitaliks stablecoin article and stablecoins.wtf dashboard are both nice