Week in Ethereum News, Nov 29, 2020 - this issue made possible by Trail of Bits!
proof of stake launch Dec 1!
Eth News and Links
Eth1
Nethermind v1.9.39 - update if you’re using Nethermind for your eth2 staking
A writeup of some Nethermind (written in .NET core) performance improvements
EthereumJS VM v5 - now a monorepo, supports all forks, all written in TypeScript, all APIs work with JavaScript Promises
Latest core devs call. Beiko’s notes: hashing through what goes in Berlin fork; SSZ out. In line with the past, most likely Berlin will be EIPs 2929, 2930, 2718, 2565, 2315.
EVM384 update: 384-bit arithmetic in EVM. Final pairings done, runtime better than wasm and almost as fast as Rust.
Alexandria state network update: PoC ready by end of year to serve the header chain
EIPs/Standards
ERC3135: exclusive claimable token
Proof of Stake launch
We are way over the minimum stake necessary to launch (60% more at time of writing). Proof of stake chain launches Dec 1 at 12pm UTC
if you’re staking, make sure you have the latest release: Lighthouse, Nimbus, Prysm, Teku (the latest release could change between now and then!) and join the discord for your client. Discord links to make sure you stay up to date
Somer Esat’s staking guides with Ubuntu updated for mainnet: Lighthouse, Nimbus, Prysm, Teku.
Use "ntp" with the setting "tinker panic 5" in ntp.conf
Vitalik’s stats on genesis block validators
Given the genesis block we can now calculate the absolute minimum return stakers will receive (because there’s a 4 validators per epoch limit to how quickly new stakers can join)
Proof of Stake plans
A proposal to put mainnet state (“eth1) on the beacon chain
Ideas around withdrawal: dirt simple withdrawal, simple withdrawals, excess balance transfers
Layer2
Loopring zkrollup smart contract wallet, available in an Android app and with rewards for holding balances on their rollup
Hermez’s massive migrations mechanism to prevent rollup centralization
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Stuff for developers
Using redwoodjs to create an Eth app because redwood is built for graphQL
Random number generation in Solidity with Chainlink’s VRF tutorial
OpenZeppelin Contracts v3.3, adds timelock, supports Solidity v0.6 and v0.7
A guide for devs new to Ethereum. Also check out the Eth dev onboarding session on Dec 4
Security
Answers and explanations for all Damn Vulnerable DeFi challenges
More Damn Vulnerable DeFi walkthroughs (#2-4) from Peter Kacherginsky
A full postmortem from 88mph on the bug that let an attacker steal 100k, and the bug that allowed them to steal it back using Taichi to avoid getting frontrun
Ecosystem
Flashbots: an org gaimed at democratizing miner-extractable value. They’re building tools to understand MEV and a geth fork PoC to auction transaction ordering
Ethereum Foundation gives $2.4m to q3 grant recipients
Eth123, an ecosystem portal from Sparkpool
Enterprise
Polish city concludes trial with SmartKey’s Ethereum-enabled locks so emergency services can enter without permission
Application layer
Coinbase’s Dai price got pushed upward causing $85m in liquidations from Compound farmers who were overleveraged
Aave hits a billion in flashloans, all in 2020
Ideamarket is on rinkeby testnet; Twitter accounts on bonding curves where the interest from deposits goes to the owner of the twitter account
GnosisDAO to govern Gnosis's treasury and products that will incorporate futarchy as its governance mechanism
2020 American presidential election? Prediction markets were right
Week in Andre Cronje: Deriswap, an attempt to consolidate liquidity. To that end, a blizzard of mergers and acquisitions: Cream v2, Pickle, Cover. Andre’s explanation of each of those three
Regulation/business/tokens
Ehrsam: governance minimization
Mintable doing NFT-governed DAO to thwart flashloans
Chinese federal government seizes billions from Plustoken scam
Trump’s spy chief asks SEC to be more crypto-friendly to counter China
General
Cloudflare post mortem on the Byzantine fault that caused cascading failures and substantial outage
Ziggy: a quantum-secure STARK signature scheme
Job Listings
Aztec's hiring! Join ZK’s cutting edge with the private L2 from PLONK’s creators
0x looking for devs of all types and a Matcha marketing manager
Chainlink Labs has 40+ openings across all departments
Nexus Mutual: experienced Solidity dev in Euro timezones
Trail of Bits is hiring blockchain security devs & cryptography analyst
Want your job listing here? $250 per line (~75 character limit including spaces), payable in ETH (or 250 DAI or 250 USDC) to evan.ethereum.eth. Questions? thecryptonewspodcast at-gmail
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-november-29-2020/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Dec 1 - Proof of stake launch
Dec 2 - Gitcoin CLR matching round starts
Dec 4 - New to Ethereum dev onboarding
Dec 22 - Deadline to apply for proof of stake community grants
Feb 5-12 - ETHDenver (virtual)
Mar 2-4 - EthCC4 (Paris)
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