Week in Ethereum News, October 14, 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:
Devnet 9 testing continues, MEV-Boost testing started (need to test with blobs)
Devnet 10 ideally launches next week, once KZG setup in CL specs/clients and devnet 9 testing complete
Discussions on priorities/timeline for EOF & Verkle, whether to ever include EOF and L1/L2 EVM divergence
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 31.89% has reduced again but still far too close to 33.3% threshold
Arbitrum delegates voted against incentives for Lido
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth ~84% supermajority, could possibly cause a chain split
Consensus layer: Prysm at 45%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Blockprint (CL client diversity analysis) updated to include accuracy data
Geographic diversity needed for stakers & nodes, particularly outside of US/Can/EU
Layer 1
Péter Szilágyi (Geth): proposal for eth/69 to improve transaction propagation, no hard fork required
Proposal for time restricted transaction execution, add a minStartTime field to transactions
Verkle Tree cryptography implemented in Zig
For Stakers
Beacon chain churn limit increased to 13 per epoch (Dencun EIP7514 reduces to 8 for deposits)
~9k solo stakers: estimate based on deposit addresses interacting with smart contracts
Client releases
Consensus layer:
Teku v23.10.0: attestation duty calculation performance improvements
Execution layer:
Besu v23.10.0: Layered transaction pool now default
Erigon v2.52.0: fixes
Otterscan v2.1.0 alpha: adds indexer for withdrawals per address
Geth v1.13.3: updates Pebble to fix occasional IO/CPU runaway
Research
Vitalik’s proposed staking design changes to give delegators power to choose nodes & participate in consensus, improving decentralization & reducing consensus overhead
Minimum viable issuance (only issue ETH that is strictly needed for security): benefits & drawbacks
PEPC-Boost: out of protocol relay design which auctions top-of-block & rest-of-block separately
Commitment-Satisfaction Committees: leverage attesters to enforce commitments for PEPC
Proposal for optional validator identification metadata
Layer 2
L2BEAT Build Your Own Rollup: simplified sovereign rollup for education purposes
EIPs/Standards
EIPs
ERCs (application layer):
Optimism’s RetroPGF Round 3 applications are open
Applications for Optimism’s RetroPGF Round 3 are open!
In this round 30 million OP will be allocated to the builders, artists, creators, and educators who have demonstrated their impact in building the Optimism Collective.
Apply now, applications close October 23
Stuff for developers
Hardhat-viem (plugin): use Viem library in new & existing Hardhat projects
Foundry test summary: use summary flag for concise table of test results
P256Verifier: Solidity contract for P256 signature verification, deployed on mainnet
Vyper:
Huff:
Huff playground: Huff equivalent of evm.codes
Tstore huff template: use tload & tstore opcodes (in Dencun upgrade) via verbatim helper
Ethers.js v6.8.0: updated to latest noble crypto libraries
Alchemy account kit: toolkit for ERC4337 account abstraction
Swiss Knife send tx: UI to deploy contract bytecode
Call this: transaction builder UI with shareable link, uses WhatsABI
ZK Hunt: RTS-like onchain PvP game built using MUD and circom
Security
Wise Lending exploit front run by MEV searcher c0ffeebabe
Threshold tBTC vulnerabilities disclosed, DoS vector and redemption mechanism design flaw
Ecosystem
ETHRome hackathon winners
Enterprise
BlackRock used tokenized money market fund as collateral in OTC derivatives trade on JPMorgan’s Onyx
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 4.3 to 47.7 gwei, with 7.4 gwei average
Negative issuance currently at 21.3 gwei
10.5k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $1,529 - $1,646, currently $1,549
ETHBTC: currently 0.058 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
Farcaster (social network) now permissionless on Optimism
Warpcast cryptoless signups on iOS
Job Listings
eBay Web3 team seeking Lead Solidity Engineer
ZK circuits engineer sought by EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team
Senior Operations Security Expert wanted by EF
EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team seek a Technical Project Coordinator
Aave seek a UX Engineer and a Staff Rust Engineer
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit). Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
SEC not appealing Grayscale ruling for spot Bitcoin ETF
General
Tornado Cash compliance tool users please help the defense of Alex Pertsev in the Netherlands
HTX (formerly Huobi) stolen funds returned
Contribute to Unirep (private & non-repudiable reputation system) ceremony
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.
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Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Oct 21 – Ethereum México
Oct 23 – Optimism’s RetroPGF Round 3 application deadline
Oct 22-24 – ETH Hong Kong
Oct 27-29 – ETH London hackathon
Oct 27-29 – ETH Miami festival & hackathon
Oct 28-30 – Paradigm CTF
Oct 31 – Road to Devcon grants deadline (max $1k for local meetups)
Nov 3-5 – ETH Lisbon hackathon
Nov 13-19 – Devconnect (Istanbul)
Nov 16-19 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Istanbul
Nov 18 – Ethereum Costa Rica
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