Week in Ethereum News

Eth News and Links

Layer 1

• Latest consensus layer call video. Notes from Ben Edgington & Christine Kim:
  • Full & partial withdrawals to be processed in a single queue-less pipeline
  • EIP4844 (proto-danksharding) to be developed on top of withdrawals
  • Block value to be added to EngineAPI to allow comparing MEV-Boost vs locally built blocks
  • MEV-Boost update
• MEV-Boost:
  • Analysis of MEV-Boost blocks: private transactions (non-public mempool) are 3.8% of MEV-Boost blocks
  • Censorship resistance: define & measure censorship, use collective enforcement (e.g. crLists) and prepare User Activated Soft Fork to force exit & penalize censoring validators
  • Flashbots builder needs to charge a fee to increase diversity
  • Bulk data export for Flashbots relay
• Inclusion.watch: 79% probability of Tornado transactions being included in a block within a minute

For stakers

• Pintail: analysis of validator returns: third party block builders are the majority and outperform validators who build their own blocks
• Guide to migrate validator keys between two machines
• Proposal for stakers testnet: ephemeral testnet dedicated for testing staking setups

Research

• Verkle Tree retrieval using IPFS snapshots proof of concept shows possible offline conversion route for transition to Verkle Trees

Client releases

• Execution Layer:
  • Besu v22.10.0: fixes and improvements for staking and resilience
  • Erigon v2.29.0: logging to files and upstreamed Otterscan patches
  • Geth
    • latest: improves profitability of local block building
    • v1.10.26: snap sync improvements
  • Nethermind v1.14.5: rollback of v1.14.4 unnecessarily activating snap sync on synced nodes

Layer 2

• Vitalik’s proposed rollup milestones to maturity: 
  • Stage 0 (full training wheels): on-chain transactions, full rollup node, operator cannot freeze/steal user assets by censoring and no active fraud/validity proof
  • Stage 1 (limited training wheels): running fraud/validity proof with security council override and upgrade timelock greater than fraud proof period
  • Stage 2 (no training wheels): two or more distinct fraud/validity provers, security council can adjudicate if there is a bug & provers disagree and upgrade timelock greater than 30 days

EIPs/Standards

• EIP5850: Complex numbers stored in bytes32 types
• EIP5851: Zero-Knowledge KYC certificates
• EIP5865: NFT avatar
• EIP5875: Opcode for transaction number

---

This newsletter is made possible thanks to Starbloom Ventures!

Starbloom Ventures is a first round venture fund founded by Evan Van Ness to invest in the future of web3.

---

Stuff for developers

• App devs should use Sepolia testnet rather than Goerli testnet due to Goerli supply issues
• forge-std v1.0.0 (Foundry test library): bound updated with edge biasing, stdChains variable,  ERC20/165/721/1155/4626 interfaces, assumeNoPrecompiles helper and vmSafe interface
• Remix project site: online IDE, desktop IDE, VS Code extension, Remixd CLI and plugins
• Paul R Berg’s Solidity tips
• Solidity-template: Foundry for unit tests & Hardhat for integration tests
• Waffle v4 (JavaScript based testing framework): improved matchers and deprecated Jest in favor of Mocha
• Challenges/CTFs
  • EKOparty CTF challenges
  • Optimizor Club SQRT challenge: solutions 1 & 2
  • RareSkills gas puzzles: Mint 150 NFTs & ERC165
  • Huff (language) challenges
• OpenZeppelin merkle-tree: JavaScript library to generate merkle trees & proofs
• Web3.py multithreading patterns
• blockies-nft generated on-chain in Solidity
• ETHGlobal guides

Security

• Dappnode $165k exploit, private key generated using fork of Profanity
• Rubic $200k exploit, admin private key compromised
• BribeV2 vulnerability disclosed, patched in BribeV3 (aka yBribe)

Ecosystem

• Vitalik’s updated roadmap diagram: adds single slot finality as Merge milestone, Verge endgame of fully SNARKed Ethereum and the Scourge transaction inclusion
• Goerli testnet supply issues discussion; proposed testnet lifecycle, launch new testnet every 2 years with lifespan of maximum 5 years
• ETHLisbon hackathon winners and list of projects
• Ethereum.org learning quizzes

Enterprise

• Israel finance ministry piloting issuance of government bonds using VMware
• Visa FIFA World Cup goal generated art NFTs

Application layer

• OpenSea copymint detection system and malicious URL detection & post-theft resale prevention
• Art Gobblers (art factory) live on mainnet
• Nouns Builder: no code creation of on-chain art DAOs
• Gearbox v2 (composable leverage) live

---

Job Listings

• Avantgarde Finance seeking Full Stack Dev in Web3/DeFi to build on Enzyme
• EF Robust Incentives Group seek a research scientist
• Ethereum Foundation seek a generalist ecosystem developer
• EF are hiring a code integration tester

Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet or Layer 2. Pay with one click using 3cities.  Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

---

Regulation/business/tokens

• Vitalik on regulation
• Hong Kong government policy statement: risk-based guardrails, public consultation on regulations and pilot green bond tokenisation & e-HKD

General

• MakerDAO co-founder Nikolai Mushegian found dead in Puerto Rico
• OpenSSL v3.0: two high severity vulnerabilities fixed

---

Follow @WeekinEthNews to find out what the most clicked links are. Follow @abcoathup and @evan_van_ness to get most of the week’s news in real time.

Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-november-5-2022

---

Upcoming Dates of Note

(new/changes in bold)

• Nov 7 – Clr.fund LatAm round starts
• Nov 11-13 – ETHBrno (Czech Republic)
• Nov 25-27 – ETH Vietnam
• Dec 1 – Columbia cryptoeconomics workshop (New York)
• Dec 2-4 – ETHIndia (ETH Global)
• Dec 5 – EF Layer 2 grants deadline
• Mar 2-5 – ETHDenver

Sign up to receive this newsletter weekly