Week in Ethereum News, September 30, 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 using EIP4788 mainnet address & manual deployment and plan to test MEV-Boost; KZG ceremony trusted setup expected next week
EIP7514 (max churn limit) to be tested on short lived devnet-10 with high number of validators
EIP4788 (beacon root) issues fixed from 3 audits: 0 timestamp & ring buffer size
Discussion on proposed EIP7503 (onchain privacy via reminting burnt ETH)
Devnet-9 launched
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 32.23% far too close to risky 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth ~80% supermajority, could possibly cause a chain split
Consensus layer: Prysm at 45%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Need more geographic diversity for both stakers & nodes, particularly outside of US/Can/EU
Layer 1
91% of blocks are via MEV-Boost relays controlled by just four entities
Censorship dashboard: OFAC compliance of validators, relays & builders
Mempool dumpster (transactions in Parquet & CSV): adds inclusion status & inclusion delay
Client releases for Holešky testnet
Consensus layer:
Lighthouse v4.5.0: experimental QUIC support
Lodestar v1.11.3
Nimbus v23.9.1
Prysm v4.1.0-alpha.1
Teku v23.9.1: Holešky testnet requires GLIBC v2.34 on Linux
Execution layer:
Besu v23.7.3
Geth v1.13.2: fixes for path db storage schema corner cases
Nethermind v1.21.0: executable renaming, throttling RPC calls, Trie recovery & sync time reduction
Reth v0.1.0-alpha.9: implements Cancun EIPs, revm state handling API reworked and pruning improvements; v0.1.0-alpha.10: Holešky
Research
Preparing for danksharding: data visualization on the propagation time of big blocks on mainnet
Relay-constructed inclusion list: proposal for censorship resistance in MEV-Boost
Framework for design of optimal dynamic fees for multiple resources
Layer 2
OP Stack: social decentralization & Fault Proof VM and dispute games
Roll-op: script to configure & deploy OP Stack network
EIPs/Standards
EIPs
EIP7525: Expire state of the inactive accounts
ERCs (application layer):
Stuff for developers
Holešky testnet launched for staking, infrastructure & protocol testing
Explorers: Etherscan, beaconcha.in & Otterscan
1000 holETH distributed to contract deployers (mainnet & Goerli testnet)
Faucets: pk910 PoW faucet & Etherscan’s Blockscan chat
Replacement for deprecated Goerli
Use Sepolia testnet for app layer testing
Remix v0.36.0: uses ChatGPT to explain a function, generate documentation & explain compiler errors, adds more quick fixes and support for Ephemery testnet
Hardhat v2.17.4: supports debug_traceCall
Branching Tree Technique examples: specification framework for writing structured Solidity tests
Solmate (contract library) adds ERC6909 (minimal multi-token interface) implementation
SSTORE gas:
OpenZeppelin ReentrancyGuard avoids resetting to zero to maximize gas refund
EVM uses SSTORE current vs final value and not intermediate values for reduced gas cost
Comparison of borrowing protocol architectures: MakerDAO, Compound, Aave, Euler & Yield
wagmi v2 alpha: TanStack Query support, connect multiple connectors, switch chains while disconnected and EIP6963 support
ERC4337 (account abstraction):
Permissionless.js: TypeScript library to interact with bundlers & paymasters, built on viem
Alchemy’s Rundler: ERC4337 bundler in Rust
Solidity Next.js starter v2: uses Hardhat, viem, wagmi, Tailwind CSS & RainbowKit
Ether binder beta, PHP utilities to interact with Ethereum, uses PHP 8.2
Curta CTF Philosopher's Stone writeup
Guide to using Cryo & Polars for data analysis
Banteg: create heatmap of ERC20 transfers
RareSkills: Circom tutorial
Security
SEAL 911 members saved $200k from Dice9win mid exploit
GMX (DEX on Arbitrum) price skew vulnerability disclosed, fixed with $1M bounty paid
Ecosystem
Dankrad: Ethereum values need to be protected by the community, they are not automatically guaranteed by economic incentives
EF data collection grants, applications close October 23, wish list includes projects for XATU (network monitoring), testnets and data collection
ERC4337 (account abstraction) adoption analysis: 687k wallets, 2M UserOps, majority of wallets used 5 times or less
ETHGlobal New York hackathon finalists
Enterprise
Bank of International Settlements Project Mariana: proof of concept for cross-border exchange of wholesale CBDCs using AMMs on Sepolia testnet
Buenos Aires digital identity: QuarkID wallet can be used to claim birth & marriage certificates, uses zkSync Era
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 5.5 to 74.1 gwei, with 10.7 gwei average
Negative issuance currently at 20.9 gwei
7.9k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $1,569 - $1,684, currently $1668
ETHBTC: currently 0.062 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
Arbitrum Odyssey relaunched, 7 week campaign for users to try apps & collect badges
Pudgy Toys: physical Pudgy Penguin plushies, sold in Walmart, licensing royalties shared with NFT holders, purchasers can claim a Forever Pudgy on zkSync
Nouns DAO burn proposal: incentivize spending the treasury otherwise excess ETH can be burnt
Paris Hilton promoting MareBear NFTs: Tamagotchis pets
Job Listings
Aave seek a UX Engineer and a Staff Rust Engineer
Senior Operations Security Expert wanted by EF
EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team seek a Technical Project Coordinator
ZK circuits engineer sought by EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit). Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
VanEck announced upcoming ETH futures ETF (EFUT)
Coinbase approved by Bermuda Monetary Authority to offer perpetual futures trading, non-US
New York & Boston Feds: stablecoin flight to safety dynamics resemble money market funds
Chase UK will decline crypto related payments
General
Exchange hacks: $200M for Mixin Network and $8M for HTX (formerly Huobi)
Sigmabus: efficient computation of elliptic curve group operations in generic SNARK circuits
Naysayer proofs: accept proofs optimistically and only check when necessary
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(new/changes in bold)
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