Week in Ethereum News, October 16, 2021 - thanks to Celer for making this issue possible!
Week in Ethereum News, October 16, 2021 - thanks to Celer for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
Aim for code to switch off PoW forever to be ready by Feb 2022
Arrow Glacier upgrade around 8 Dec (block 13,773,000) delays difficulty bomb to around June 2022 (offset 10,700,000) with buffer for longer rollout of PoW switch off if needed and/or large hash rate changes
OpenEthereum client is deprecated and won’t support PoW switch off
Calculating the difficulty bomb offset for Arrow Glacier upgrade
Geth v1.10.10: bug fixes
Erigon v2021.10.03: state cache on remote RPC daemons
EIPs/Standards
Proof of stake consensus layer
Pithos public testnet (switch off PoW):
Joining instructions
Video of setup on new Ubuntu installation
Recap of Amphora week in Greece, execution and consensus layer client teams major milestone to switch off PoW forever
Annotated beacon chain spec
Consensus layer specs v1.1.3
Beacon chain API spec v2.1
Nimbus v1.5.1: users of v1.5.0 need to update, fix for deposit contract sync issue
Vitalik’s two-slot proposer/builder separation proposal for beacon chain
Stereum 1.8 (beacon chain client installer): update for security fixes from audit
Péter’s minority client: orchestrator to only accept a state change if majority of multiple execution/consensus clients agree
Layer2
Demo of Uniswap v2 fork (Solidity contracts & dapp) on zkEVM testnet
zkSync Reddit AMA
Arbitrum Nitro upgrade preview: runs on WASM, replaces custom EVM emulator with Geth, estimated 20-50x execution speed increase
zkevm-circuits v0.0.1: first release, implements PUSHX, POP, ADD, SUB, LT, GT opcodes
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Stuff for developers
Replit (web based IDE) adds Solidity support: no setup, built in testnet, contract live editing (hot reloading), shareable dapps and contracts
Hardhat VSCode extension coming in 2022
EthernautDAO challenges: complete challenges whilst learning Solidity and web3 development
Jolly Roger: updated dapp template using Hardhat, Svelte and The Graph
Storage layout discovery in ERC20 contracts by brute force using Hardhat
Prysmatic Labs’ software design principles applied to Go
EthTx v.0.3.1: improved proxy processing, uses 4byte directory for unknown signatures, ENS aware
topic0: database of hashes to event log signatures, for log decoding, extracted from Sourcify verified contracts
RICKS NFT fractionalization implementation, but with deterministic buyout, on-demand auction and a staking pool
Guide to designing NFT launches: focus on unexploitable fairness, avoid race conditions and consider cost-efficiency; reference implementation
Circom v2.0 (zero-knowledge circuit compiler), rewritten in Rust, 10x faster compilation
rk4-starknet (Cairo): Runge-Kutta 4th Order Method, precursor to on chain physics engine
MACI v1: contracts and zk circuits to build collusion resistant voting and quadratic funding platforms; v1 has improved developer experience and lower gas costs for users
Security
Indexed Finance ~$16 million exploit, approximated value of two pools was manipulated, MEV bot made two ~$2 million arbs
Lido and RocketPool deposit frontrunning postmortem
Tincho from OpenZeppelin: strategies for safer governance systems
Recovery of funds sent to mainnet contract address on Arbitrum
Ecosystem
Legacy transactions overpay $1-3 million a day, ~40% of transactions
ENS updates NFT images, supports avatar as background image, using new metadata service
MetaMask opens .eth ENS websites with forward slash suffix e.g. vitalik.eth/
Phishing site opens fake MetaMask popup tab
GasNow style gas estimation, with heatmap and compatible API
ETHOnline 2021 videos
Enterprise
CAA signs 0xb1 NFT collector for partnerships with blue chip brands
Application layer
DeFi v2.0: experiments in protocol controlled liquidity as an alternative to liquidity mining (DeFi v1.0)
volmex.finance v1 live on Arbitrum
Futureswap V4 beta on Arbitrum, trades 90% cheaper, executing in ~0.05 seconds
dYdX Solo on mainnet winding down, close only mode from Nov 1
Pods on-chain options protocol live on mainnet
Fuse allows permissionless pools
USM stable token: minimalist ERC20 system, ownerless and immutable, consisting of a stable token and a volatile token
Umbra stealth address payments out of beta, setup now single transaction
Gnosis Safe live on Arbitrum
Blitnauts released into public domain (CC0)
TikTok’s first NFT is Curtis Roach’s Bored in the House
Sotheby's Metaverse curated NFT marketplace
Job Listings
Senior Engineer @Gitcoin - build the future of public goods funding!
Lodestar (consensus client) hiring TypeScript protocol engineer
Team Lead for the Ecosystem Support Program at the Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum Foundation: Research Intern, read/think/write with Josh Stark
Reach people experienced with Ethereum. $420 for two issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
a16z agenda for policy makers: how to win the future (PDF deck), jurisdictional harmonization, protocol standards, regulatory sandboxes/safe harbors, 21st century regulation, clear tax rules, unlock DAOs, digital infrastructure strategy and align with sustainability
Coinbase’s digital asset policy proposal, single US regulator, transparency via disclosure requirements, protect against fraud & market manipulation, promote efficiency, resiliency, interoperability and fair competition
US SEC Commissioner Peirce’s take on Wild West and crypto regulation, what do the people (beneficiaries of regulation) want
US CFTC orders Tether to pay $41 million over claims that USDT was fully backed by USD
Guide to incorporating a web3 company
Divergence Ventures farmed for retroactive airdrop of DeFi project they invested in, funds were returned
Steam updates onboarding rules to not allow apps that issue or exchange crypto/NFTs
Coinbase NFT late 2021, initially US only, 2 million email addresses on waitlist
General
Snowden: CDBCs will ransom our future
Ben Thompson: Death and birth of technological revolutions
Proving the security of Schnorr multi/threshold signatures
Follow @WeekinEthNews to find out what the most clicked links are. Follow @evan_van_ness and @abcoathup to get most of the week’s news in real time.
Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-october-16-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Oct 18 – ENS online workshop (applications closed)
Oct 20-21 – LisCon (Lisbon)
Oct 22-24 – ETH Lisbon hackathon
Oct 25 - Dec 13 – Gitcoin DAO Global hackathon (virtual)
Oct 27 – Beacon chain upgrade to Altair epoch 74240
Oct 28-29 – ETH Portland hackathon
Dec ~8 – Arrow Glacier upgrade, block 13,773,000
Nov 1-4 – NFT.NYC sold out
Mar 28-30 – ETHDubai
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