Week in Ethereum News




Week in Ethereum News
February 5, 2022

Mainnet execution layer

  • Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
    • Stakers should be cognizant to have enough disk space in case of non-finality periods
    • Kiln devnet expected late next week, app devs & infrastructure providers should test on this prior to public testnets
    • Testnets in our post-PoW world: Goerli & Sepolia to continue, Ropsten & Rinkeby to be deprecated
    • Shanghai upgrade discussion on EIPs to include: EVM changes, account abstraction, reduction in rollup fees & removing self destruct
    • Preview of executable spec for execution layer
  • Vitalik’s proposal for blob transactions in same format as sharding to provide scaling relief for rollups, along with a simpler version

Proof of Stake consensus layer

  • Danny Ryan’s Finalized PoS update: engineering progressing for PoW switch off; no progress on client diversity, run a minority client to protect your ETH
  • Lighthouse v2.1.2: improves peer stability, Key Manager API support & optimized Docker images
  • Prysm v2.0.6: patch release, improved memory usage, JSON API fixes
  • Lodestar v0.34.0: optimization for non-finality periods, Bellatrix spec upgrades & fixes and remote signer support
  • Polynya: Danksharding explainer
  • Ben Edgington’s Upgrading Ethereum book Simple Serialize (SSZ) chapter

PoW switch off

  • Kiln v1 spec (pre-production sprint for PoW switch off): optimistic sync fixes, semantic changes to better handle reorgs
  • Geth close to being ready for PoW switch off, one major PR awaiting tests

EIPs/Standards

Layer2

  • L2Savings: shows Layer 2 transactions and estimated saving if these were made on mainnet
  • Sliding window for challenge process, allows significant decrease of the deadline for challenge-response and expands the deadline during congestion
  • Secure Asymmetric Frugal Exchange prototype for optimized batched cross-chain swaps, gas efficient transferring from Layer 2 to mainnet

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Stuff for developers

  • Foundry gas reports: gas usage report generated when running tests
  • Hardhat roadmap: opinionated, streamlined default experience, with ability to opt-out of defaults
  • Remix v0.21: migrated to React, updated backup & restore, added StarkNet plugin, removed Optimism plugin as no longer required
  • EthereumJS:
    • VM v5.7: opcode dynamic gas costs for debugging and easier state manager customization
    • Client v0.3: added RPC endpoints for logs, transaction receipt & transaction by hash and support for Sepolia testnet
    • TX v3.5: additional data integrity checks
  • Ethers.js v5.5.4: support invalid IPFS URI format
  • ExcessivelySafeCall: Solidity library to call untrusted contracts and prevent return bombing by specifying maximum bytes to copy
  • Cloaks: ERC721 with bid commit/reveal scheme, mint price is mean of bids; SPADES variant: revealers get discounted mint, public mint price increases per mint and decays per block 
  • Cairo Language Server: adds Cairo support to IDEs implementing Language Server Protocol such as VS Code, early preview
  • Cairo Math 64×61: fixed point 64.61 math library
  • Sign-In with Ethereum docs
  • Single use address guide, without the need for a private key (Nick’s method)
  • Alchemy NFT API on mainnet
  • 0x Protocol v4 NFT swaps, off-chain & on-chain listings, lowers gas costs, on Ropsten testnet
  • 3D interactive NFT using gITF (Graphics Language Transmission Format)
  • Tweet storm of building on-chain SVG NFT project
  • OpenSea’s guide to creating an NFT using Hardhat, IPFS & OpenZeppelin
  • Intro to web3 for web2 frontend devs

Security

  • Wormhole’s Solana/Ethereum bridge ~$300 million exploit, attacker spoofed guardian signatures after input wasn’t properly validated, 120k Wormhole ETH minted on Solana, 93k ETH bridged back to Ethereum
  • Qubit bridge post-mortem, code modified after audit, additional mitigations could have reduced risk
  • Index Coop Rari pool attempted attack, Uniswap V3 TWAP oracle manipulation prevented by arb bot, attacker lost 68 ETH
  • List of Smart Contract Vulnerabilities

Ecosystem

  • Vitalik’s reminder on shared security, rollups are just as secure as Ethereum mainnet, Validiums somewhat less secure, sidechains/independent layer 1s much less secure
  • NFT marketplaces should show transfer recipient information such as ENS, account name, previous transfers and NFTs held to prevent transfer errors
  • 0xPARC: ZK-Identity should be used to re-architect identity systems putting users in control of their data
  • Sign-in with Ethereum: concept of session keys, ephemeral keys for a user’s session, stored in the browser with very limited permissions

Enterprise

  • GameStop NFT marketplace to be powered by Immutable X, marketed as carbon neutral with no gas fees; $100 million for creator grants
  • Nike sues StockX for selling NFTs with unauthorized images of sneakers

Application layer

  • UMA optimistic oracle live on Optimism, Boba Network & Arbitrum
  • Thales migrated to Optimism
  • Rubic multichain swaps adds Arbitrum
  • Mean Finance v2 Dollar Cost Average protocol for tokens live on Optimism
  • Kuiper permissionless index tracking live on mainnet
  • Utopia Core: DAO payroll, payments & expenses using Gnosis Safe, public beta
  • Lit Protocol adds token gated Zoom meetings/webinars and WordPress 
  • Arcade NFT lending platform live on mainnet
  • Rarible adds floor bids for any NFT in a collection
  • Mirror Plugins: first plugin is minting ERC20 tokens

Job Listings

Reach developers experienced with Ethereum.  $600 for four issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet, Arbitrum or Optimism.  Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

Regulation/business/tokens

General

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.

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