Week in Ethereum News, September 18, 2021 - thanks to Celer for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Upgrade Nethermind nodes to v1.11.2! Unsuccessful attack publishing ~550 blocks with invalid PoWs, small number of Nethermind nodes switched to invalid chain, all affected nodes reorged back to good chain
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
PoW switch off difficulty to be hardcoded rather than computed
EIPs to include with difficulty bomb delay to be decided on next call; candidates: EIP3860 limit initcode, EIP3855 PUSH0 opcode and EIP3756 gas cap limit
Erigon v2021.09.03: fixes and tx pool improvements
Postmortem on August 27 minority chain split
Geth sunsetting fast sync, in favor of snap sync
Proof of stake consensus layer
Modelling impact of Altair upgrade, how staking rewards change
Teku v21.9.1: stops including redundant attestations in blocks, fixes rare block creation exception. Fully sync with Teku in less than 12 seconds
Lighthouse v1.5.2: improves head vote rewards and on testnets improves Altair block processing times
Lodestar client now capable of 100% effectiveness
Security of BLS batch verification
Layer2
Arbitrum grew $1.5 billion TVL in two weeks (now $2.6 billion at time of publishing)
Arbitrum Sequencer offline for ~45 minutes due to large burst of transactions, new transaction submission stopped, though Arbitrum never went down
The validator strategies (active, defensive and watchtower) that keep Arbitrum trustless
Optimism EVM equivalence coming in October, so you can deploy your existing Solidity contracts on Optimism with same tooling
Throughput limit doubled on Optimism to 200k transactions per day
Protolambda’s Optimistic brainf***: experiment with alternative VMs in an open rollup infrastructure
Blockchains as layers of specialization: execution (rollups), security (Ethereum) and data availability (data shards)
Hop supports Arbitrum for USDC & USDT transfers between L2 and mainnet
Why rollups are a superior long-term execution layer
This newsletter is made possible thanks to Celer Network!
Celer Network is a layer-2 scaling platform that brings fast, secure and low-cost blockchain applications. Celer cBridge 1.0 is now live on mainnet. Users are now able to use cBridge to instantly transfer tokens across 10 different chains and optimistic rollups.
Since launch, cBridge has witnessed doubling weekly volume growth and reached $120M total transaction volume today. Use at cbridge.celer.network
Stuff for developers
Remix IDE v0.18.0: GitHub integration, plugins activate other plugins
OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.3.2: security patch for UUPSUpgradeable
web3.js potential upcoming breaking change: web3.eth.getBlock baseFeePerGas changing from hex to BigNumber
Add and switch networks programmatically for your users
Consolerr (Solidity library): log runtime variables in error messages
Otterscan v2021.09.02: early access to Sourcify integration
Guide to storing NFT metadata and SVG images on chain
EmbeddedMultiCall: similar to Maker’s Multicall but without onchain deployment, written in Yul
Beginner tutorial: create and sell/buy an ERC20
CryptoHack courses: introduces players to modern cryptography fundamentals via curated challenges
ENS looking for dapps to implement NFT as avatar for ENS names
Security
SushiSwap’s Miso ~860 ETH exploit changed recipient of Kia Sedona NFT proceeds, supply chain attack of front end; funds were returned
OpenZeppelin UUPS proxy post mortem, uninitialized implementation contracts could be self destructed bricking any proxy using it
Yearn Vesting Escrow bug, escrow could be reinitialized and bricked after ownership renounced
Yam Finance post mortem from minting 20 billion YAM in error
Privacy in DeFi, many trackers on DeFi websites can record Eth addresses and can trivially link to Personally Identifiable Information
Air dropped tokens with apparent high value revert on approve, directing to a website that sweeps highest held ERC20
OpenZeppelin security guidelines for contract development
Guide to using linear programming to calculate optimal parameters so as to determine maximum funds at risk when disclosing vulnerabilities
Babel, Daian, Kelkar paper on quantifying economic security, including tool for doing so
Ecosystem
SpruceID selected to develop Sign-in with Ethereum
80% of MetaMask users never make it to the edit gas screen
Update Ledger firmware to v2 to use with latest MetaMask
Eth.limo, alternative to eth.link to resolve .eth names on browsers
Enterprise
Infura Transactions public release: meta transactions allow enterprises not to hold Ether, transaction management auto bumps gas fees
ConsenSys Quorum Proof of Authority network used for Palm NFTs
Application layer
OpenSea iOS and Android app, view only, no SVG support yet
OpenSea implements staff policies to not buy/sell promoted NFTs or use confidential information after staff member traded promoted NFTs
Smol Puddle: ERC721 marketplace on Arbitrum, decentralized order book using Waku, unaudited alpha with no tests
NFT Chain rule: a meme’s value is proportional to number of derivatives
Uniswap Auto Router, splits trades across multiple pools, uses more data, factors gas costs and switches to V2 if better to get best trade
Curve on Arbitrum
Tracer Perpetual Pools on Arbitrum
Ribbon v2 Vaults: decentralized and autonomous, comparable to v1 Vaults performance
Gnosis Guild’s Zodiac toolsuite for DAOs: Exit (rage quit), Bridge, (time) Delay and Reality (formerly SafeSnap)
BrightDAO: token drop per person rather than per address using BrightID with ongoing faucets
Myco digital social clubs as LLCs co-owned by contributors
Dope Wars on a StarkNet zkRollup
Regulation/business/tokens
Update of Gnosis Safe iOS app blocked by Apple due to NFT display
Coinbase filed to register as a Futures Commission Merchant in the US, to allow it to offer futures and derivatives trading
US infrastructure bill includes digital asset recipients to verify senders info and report to the government within 15 days
Franklin Templeton raising for first blockchain fund
Rolling SAFE: ongoing startup funding, and why Fairmint thinks it fulfills Paul Graham’s high resolution fundraising vision
General
The Economist: Bitcoin is now a distraction, Ethereum upon which most DeFi applications are built, is reaching critical mass
Vitalik in Time 100 most influential people of 2021
Leave Travis CI: secure env variables injected into PR builds, no security disclosure
Apple patches zero click iMessage bug, update iOS immediately
CNBC duped into Litecoin pump and dump through fake press release which @Litecoin tweeted
Decentralised CloudFlare using RLN and rich user identities
Google and Apple cave to Russia and remove pro-Navalny app after threats to prosecute local employees
Fflonk a Plonk variant, greatly reduces verifier cost by using Kate commitments to allow multiple polynomials in a commitment
Job Listings
OpenZeppelin hiring Open Source Developer
Rarible is hiring: VP of Product and Product Manager
yAcademy 1 month internships
Nethermind 1-3 month internship program
Want to reach people experienced with Ethereum? List your job 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
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-september-18-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
Sep 24 – Gitcoin Grants Round 11 ends (support Week in Eth News)
Sep 30 – NFT Fest Australia (virtual)
Oct 1-3 – EthAtlanta enterprise-focused hackathon & keynotes
Oct 18 – ENS online workshop
Oct 20-21 – LisCon (Lisbon) sold out
Oct 22-24 – ETH Lisbon hackathon
Did you get forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it weekly