Week in Ethereum News, September 4, 2021 - thanks to Kwenta & Synthetix for making this issue possible!
Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
Consensus API discussion
Work in progress sync algorithm post PoW switch off
Fixed gas limit EIP debate
Erigon 2021.09.01-alpha: call tracing improved, bad.block flag changed to use block hash, fix for Ropsten testnet diversion
Nethermind v1.11.1: support for eth/66 (as eth/65 is being deprecated) and eth_feeHistory
Parallel EVM execution engine experiment: 120 tx block, 0 contention had 5x speedup, 100% contention + pessimistic had 17% slowdown
EIPs/Standards
Proof of stake consensus layer
Prater testnet upgrade to Altair: minor client-specific issues have been patched or under investigation
Client diversity needed to ensure safest transition from PoW to PoS; dominant client needs to be < 50%, ideally < 33%
Stakers get slashed for contradicting themselves, not for going offline or picking the wrong fork
Tips from staking on a Raspberry Pi 4 with consensus and execution clients on one device
Understanding attestation packing efficiencies: an anonymized look at the packing efficiency of different staking clients and pools
Stereum (beacon chain client installer) launcher v1.5
Layer2
Arbitrum beta, initial cap of 80k arbgas per second (equivalent of mainnet), token bridge restricted to approved tokens, 7 day exits
Celer cBridge adds support for Optimism for 3 minute exits; transfer between between mainnet, Optimism, Arbitrum and selected sidechains
StarkNet Alpha 2: composability, local testing and moved to Goerli; OpenZeppelin developing contracts library
Immutable X opens gas free NFT minting and trading
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Decentralized Perpetual Futures coming soon.
Stuff for developers
Update web3.js for EIP1559 support so you don’t cost your users money
Fe (EVM language) roadmap to production in 2021
Remix IDE v0.17.0: Solidity defaults to 0.8.7, EVM default is London, Hardhat console logs in Remix Terminal
Etherscan adds support for ERC1155 multi token standard
Guide to using SMTChecker to check Solidity contract invariants
Tenderly adds support for Vyper language
ts-essentials v8.1.0 (TypeScript): fixes for minor issues
fractional-rs (Rust): CLI & utilities for fractional.art, only supports bid
zk-ml: demo of private machine learning. Linear regression in a circom circuit and on chain encrypted data transfer with SNARKS
Guide to adding support for ENS in multi network apps
GitPOAP: code repository maintainers can award POAPs to contributors
Tutorial to create a staking dapp using scaffold-eth
Ideas and wish lists to inspire your web3 project
Security
Cream Finance exploit of 462m AMP and 2.8k ETH, ERC777 reentrancy on AMP token
xToken exploit with $4.5 million loss, incorrect require statement allowed function to be publicly callable
OpenZeppelin Contracts TimelockController vulnerability postmortem
DeFiYield’s database of DeFi scams, hacks and exploits
Writing Dafny proofs to formally verify beacon chain deposit contract
Act v0.1: formal specification language for high level descriptions of smart contracts
Ecosystem
First full day of negative issuance due to EIP1559 burn from NFT transactions
Tim Beiko on the evolution of the Ethereum scalability roadmap
EIP1559 didn't increase gas prices, NFTs did; set priority fee and max fee to not overpay
Overspending on gas fees reduced by EIP1559
Edcon 2021 videos
Flashbot searchers compete on MEV extraction efficiency, percentage of gas used by each bundle decreases over time
Etherscan token holdings page for a given address, beta release
MetaMask has over 10 million monthly active users
Enterprise
Baseledger testnet: designed for storing and managing baseline proofs, fixed transaction fees denominated and paid in fiat
Guide to deploying Quorum
Application layer
Loot explainer: adventurer items as on chain text, bottom up NFT as possible seed for gaming universe; every address has synthetic loot
1 million POAPs have been minted
Bored and Mutant Ape community receiving 3D models to use in metaverse
Animal coloring book generative NFT, onchain SVG colored on transfer
Trader: NFT trading with off-chain open order book, using social links
Doge NFT fractionalized as $DOG by PleasrDAO
NFT derivative floor perpetual, synthetics tracking the floor price of a project, mint by locking up an NFT from the project
Dfdao thesis: crypto-gaming governance is rapidly iterable, at bleeding edge of decentralized governance design
Synthetix V2x scope: L1 improvements and tech debt, Optimism migration, new mechanisms and governance
Regulation/business/tokens
BitConnect, founder and US promoter charged by US SEC alleging $2 billion fraud via unregistered offering of investments to retail
US SEC inquiring into DeFi including Uniswap Labs
Spurred by crypto-friendly Sen Toomey (R-PA), US Senate Banking Committee asking for public proposals on crypto regulation
University of Texas professor’s research suggests EOS ICO pumped via washtrading
Challenges to scale DAOs: legal clarity, limiting liability of stakeholders, hiring, compliance for workers and governance
How to vet crypto projects: evaluate the problem being solved, the team, audits, the community and what could go wrong technically
LarvaLabs (CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs and Meebits) signs with Hollywood agency for content deals
General
The story of the fallout from the NSA’s 2008 insertion of a backdoor into an encryption standard
Long (and surprisingly interesting!) read: History of bug bounties
The case for engineers to leave FAANG for crypto
Vitalik’s insider Q&A: excitement for zk-SNARKs, NFTs are most surprising use case, 8 cofounder regret and other insights
Job Listings
Mark Cuban is seeking a web3 developer. Send a front-end sample to apply
Dark Forest: Full-Stack Developer
Futureswap is hiring a Product Marketing Manager
Vac (Status) is looking for a smart contracts protocol engineer for Waku
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-4-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
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Sep 30 – NFT Fest Australia (virtual)
Oct 1-3 – EthAtlanta enterprise-focused hackathon & keynotes
Oct 20-21 - LisCon (Lisbon)
Oct 22-24 – ETH Lisbon hackathon
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