Week in Ethereum News, November 11, 2023
Eth News and Links
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade
Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Recap by Tim Beiko. Notes from Tim Beiko and Christine Kim:
Goerli shadowfork 0 upgraded to Dencun (testing analysis)
Blob gas price in RPC: adding single blobGasPrice method & adding to feeHistory
EIP7545 (Verkle proof verification precompile) presented
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 31.48% is increasing towards 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth ~85% supermajority, could possibly cause a chain split
Consensus layer: Prysm 43% & Lighthouse 34%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of liveness
Geographic diversity needed for stakers & nodes, particularly outside of US/Canada/EU
Layer 1
Otterscan v2.2-ALPHA: improved Sourcify integration and UI improvements
Reth snapshots: public snapshots by merkle, sync a node in 6 hours
For Stakers
Stereum v2 (node launcher): install/manage node via UI
Client releases
Consensus layer:
Execution layer:
Nethermind v1.22.0: improved memory management (consumption reduced ~25%)
Research
Validator smoothing commitments: out of protocol solution to improve permissionless liquid staking protocols, node operators pay upfront to run validators for a minimum duration
Inclusion list framework to evaluate designs on censorship resistance metrics
MEV burn benefits: improves validator economics, lessens builder liquidity requirements, increases cost of censorship and improves resilience in a mass MEV event
Signature Merge: massive-scale signature aggregation using recursive SNARKs & PCD
Layer 2
OP Reth: Reth (execution layer client) can be used in OP Stack
Justin Drake: based rollup/validium preconfirmations of transaction execution, latencies on the order of 100ms
EIPs/Standards
EIPs
EIP7553: Separated payer transaction
ERCs (application layer):
Stuff for developers
Solidity v0.8.23: fixes invalid verbatim deduplication bug
Remix v0.37.0: adds Semaphore Circom template, auto-complete loads ERC files and translations in Spanish/French/Italian/Simplified Chinese
Secureum RACE #23: 8 question Solidity quiz & answers
Fe (language) bug bounty: Simple DAO
Proposal for Edge (EVM domain specific language), currently at specification stage
Superchain faucet: claim 0.05 testnet ETH for OP Stack testnets
500 testnet ETH (Sepolia & Holešky) claimable by Devconnect attendees using Zupass
Zupass Scaffold-ETH 2 starter kit
pcaversaccio’s Hardhat template: updated to ethers v6 & Hardhat configuration variables
VSCode Solidity inspector: adds support for .tree files
EVM tracing reference
TypeChain deprecated
Security
AAVE security incident, forks of v2/v3 should disable stable rate mode borrowing
MEV bot $2 million exploit via unprotected swap function
Raft 1.6k ETH exploit, 1570 ETH burnt, attacker lost 4 ETH
The Standard on Arbitrum $260k exploit via price manipulation
zkSync Era vulnerability disclosed, 50k USDC bounty paid
Ecosystem
Devconnect live stream for selected events
ETH Lisbon hackathon projects
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 9.9 to 323.6 gwei, with 28.9 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 21.7 gwei
6.6k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $1,829 - $2,133, currently $2,080
ETHBTC: currently 0.056 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
USDC & EURC v2.2: phased rollout, reduces gas costs & supports ERC1271
Coinbase Verifications: onchain user attestations for account & country verified by Coinbase, uses Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS)
Sablier UI dynamic streams: adds timelock, unlock-linear & unlock-cliff
CoW Swap programmatic orders: approve orders with a single signature, execute automatically
Notional v3 live on Arbitrum, adds variable rate lending/borrowing & leveraged liquidity strategies
Show Up (RSVP for events): request deposits on registration, attendees get paid for showing up
Bountycaster (bounties platform) live on Farcaster, beta
Gaslite Drop adds airdrop to X (Twitter) post replies, filter & token gate recipients
Sound magic upload: zero gas upload, only requires an email address
Optimism We ❤️ The Art: NFT creator contest (AI, generative, music & 1of1s), 1M OP in prizes
Job Listings
Aragon: Senior smart contract developer w EIP, auditing experience
Nethermind: Smart Contract Auditor, Smart Contract Auditor (Rust) & BizDev
Senior Operations Security Expert wanted by EF
ZK circuits engineer sought by EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team
Gnosis seek DevRels & Backend Devs
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit). Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
UK FCA & Bank of England proposals for regulating stablecoins
OFAC sanctioned Ekaterina Zhdanova for laundering & moving funds on behalf of Russian elites
SEC facing challenges hiring crypto specialists due to prohibition of holding
Open problems in DAOs for researchers
DAO decentralization: Voting-Bloc Entropy (VBE) decentralization metric & a practical Dark DAO
General
Exchange hacks: $126M for Poloniex
ApeFest attendees report eye/skin issues, likely caused by UV lights
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-november-11-2023
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Nov 13-19 – Devconnect (Istanbul), update 2
Nov 15-21 – DCxPrague (Devconnect satellite event in Prague)
Nov 15-29 – Gitcoin Grants 19
Nov 16-19 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Istanbul
Nov 18 – Ethereum Costa Rica
Nov 30 – Road to Devcon grants deadline (max $1k for local meetups)
Dec 4 – ETHVenice
Dec 6-7 – Columbia CryptoEconomics workshop (New York)
Dec 8-10 – ETHGlobal ETHIndia (Bangalore)
Sign up to receive this newsletter weekly