Week in Ethereum News, May 30, 2021 - thanks to NEAR for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Latest core devs call. Notes from Tim Beiko:
EIP1559 - adding explicit constraints to prevent attacks using arbitrarily large transactions, new devnet Calaveras
Unofficial London mainnet date now July 28 due to EIP1559 changes
Gas DoS protection discussion - separate transaction pool to guard against execution attacks
EIP3584 - add access lists to blocks
EIP1559
Setting expectations: legacy transactions are still valid, mechanism may need tweaking based on mainnet learning, wallets and gas APIs may need time to set optimal values
Beiko’s list of EIP1559 resources
EthereumJS releases (VM, Tx, Block and others) for London/EIP1559
Erigon (formerly TurboGeth) adds pruning node options: <500GB with block history, ~100GB without block history
Samczsun found a way for an attacker to make fast-synced Geth nodes fork off mainnet
EIPs/Standards
EIP3589: Assembly NFT
Proof of stake consensus layer
Danny Ryan’s Finalized PoS update: Altair upgrade specs stabilized, client teams focused on London/Altair upgrades, researchers are refining and testing merge spec
Vitalik’s annotated spec for the Altair upgrade
Lodestar (TypeScript client) update: light client prototype, out-of-memory resolved, 50–75% profitability compared to network average
A guide to Ethereum PoS’s Simple Serialize (SSZ)
Data visualization of staker behavior
Kate commitments, an implementation perspective
Layer2
Arbitrum mainnet beta is live, onboarding developers now, open access at least two weeks away, fees paid in ETH, Etherscan support in July
Uniswap community support for Arbitrum deployment of Uniswap v3
Nitro virtual channels to create a channel network
Adamantium protocol from StarkWare is a flavor of Validium where a user can keep their own offchain data
Faster finality in zkrollups using validity proof checkpoints
zkSync upgrade: NFTs and swaps on testnet in advance of going live 2 weeks after upgrade (time locked)
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Stuff for developers
Remix supports decoding custom errors
WalletConnect Remix plugin: allows Remix Desktop to deploy on public networks and devs can mimic users paying on mobile
Ape: framework for Web3 Python apps and smart contracts, alpha release
JollyRoger dapp template with hot contract replacement: now uses svelte-kit with IPFS adaptor
ERC20 tokens and modifiers to allow use for only MEV and no MEV
Mariano Conti: live coding to create an ERC20 using Dapp tools
Transaction tracing with Ethernal: block explorer for private/local chains including Hardhat Network and Ganache
Ethcode updates: load Solidity JSON, JSON tree view, Remix VS Code extension
TrueBlocks dynamic traversers: account transaction history in 10 lines of C++
Security
Mushrooms Finance theft of yield frontrunning vulnerability fix postmortem
WildCredit unprotected initialize exploited for $600k - funds returned by front runner
Binance Smart Chain attacks:
~$7m Burgerswap exploit: UniswapV2 fork with x*y=k check removed, could be trivially drained
~$6m Belt Finance exploit: price manipulation using bug in the strategy balance calculations
Post-hack playbook: war rooms and crisis management
Ecosystem
Flashbots v0.2: bundle merging allows miners to include multiple bundles per block
ENS keyholders removed their ability to replace the .eth registrar
History of apps gas usage data visualization
Justin Drake: ETH deserves a Unicode character
Enterprise
Gamestop creating blockchain division, announced with 1/1 NFT
Application layer
mistX: gasless dex built on FlashBots; transaction fee charged as part of swap
BackRunMe: use Bloxroute to send transactions privately and if the transaction creates a backrunning opportunity, then you get 25% share of the backrunning profit
Gitcoin’s DAO for fund allocation, matching pools, and grant collusion; airdrop claimers select delegate prior to receiving tokens
Non-transferrable (initially) governance token by Ribbon Finance to ensure only used for governance
Selling music in the streaming era: (pre release) canon - 1/1, collectible - 1/n, streaming - 1/∞
NFT multisender: send multiple ERC721/ERC1155 tokens in a transaction
Pilot of weather index insurance with 10k smallholder farmers in Kenya
Regulation/business/tokens
Packy McCormick's Ethereum bull case: like owning a piece of the internet
Carl Icahn on Bloomberg TV: “Ethereum has two things: you can use it as a payment system and you can use it as a store of value.”
Goldman Sachs report: “Ether beats bitcoin as a store of value”
Bankless: the Flippening is inevitable
Second ETH ETF application with SEC from WisdomTree
SEC sues Bitconnect promoters for selling unregistered securities
UNI proposal to fund crypto policy/lobbying
General
Paypal & Venmo to allow transfer to third party wallets
$2 trillion volume for crypto exchanges in May
Vitalik is in favor of real world elections on blockchains; confine to small experiments short term
M1RACLES covert channel vulnerability in the Apple M1 chip
Half-Double (Rowhammer variation) attack on RAM, that can bypass Target Row Refresh mitigation
Cryptanalysis of an oblivious PRF from supersingular isogenies paper
Job Listings
A leader in the NFT ecosystem, Immutable, are hiring a Head of Blockchain
Livepeer is hiring a Protocol Engineer
Ethereum.org are seeking a Community & Ecosystem Lead
Nethermind: Hiring interns, software engineers, researchers & devops
Want your job listing here? $345 per line (~75 character limit including spaces), payable in ETH (or 345 DAI or 345 USDC) to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-30-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
May 31 – deadline to apply for Eth core dev apprenticeship
June 3 – OpenZeppelin automate smart contract workflows workshop
June 18 – July 9 – ETHGlobal – Hack Money 2021
June 25-27 – Edcon (Shenzhen/online)
July 10 - Road to Devcon Quest: Devcon Trivia Game
July 28 – tentative date for London hard fork (Ropsten June 23, Goerli June 30, Rinkeby July 7)
July 20-22 – EthCC4 (Paris)
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