Week in Ethereum News January 6, 2024

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade (meta EIP7569)

Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Recap by lightclient. Notes from lightclient & Christine Kim:
- Testnet upgrade dates confirmed (assumes no issues): Goerli Jan 17, Sepolia Jan 30 & Holešky Feb 7
- Pectra (Prague + Electra): discussed small feature upgrade first vs focusing on Verkle (~18 months) and reviewed proposed EIPs
- Precompile address ranges: proposed EIP7587 (reserves 0x100-0x1ff for RIPs)

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 31.71% is far too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~84% supermajority, could possibly cause a chain split, estimated to cost billions of dollars
- Consensus layer: Prysm 41%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe

Layer 1

Client releases

Consensus layer:
- Nimbus v24.1.0: Goerli testnet Dencun upgrade and adds v3 blocks/{slot} Beacon API end-point
Execution layer:
- Erigon v2.56.0: Goerli testnet Dencun upgrade
- Nethermind v1.25.0-rc: Goerli testnet Dencun upgrade and OP Stack Canyon support

Research

Proposer selection with EIP7251 (increase max effective balance): probability remains the same for consolidated validators

MEV

Terence: timing games with blobs (post Dencun upgrade), may be more unpredictable
Timing.pics (dashboard of timing games): missed slots & bids selected by entity

Layer 2

EIPs/Standards

EIPs
- Informational EIP7587: Reserve precompile address range for RIPs
ERCs (application layer):
- ERC7586: Interest rate swaps
- ERC7588: Blob transactions metadata JSON schema

Stuff for developers

Reminder: Solidity developer survey 2023 closes January 7
Foundry multibuild: GitHub Action to test building project with range of Solidity versions
Overview of proxy contracts
Wagmi v2: TanStack Query support, connect multiple connectors, switch chains while disconnected and EIP6963 (multi injected provider discovery) support
Viem v2: low-level OP Stack actions & utilities and enhanced types
Secureum RACE #25: 8 question Solidity quiz & answers

Security

Gamma (liquidity management) $4.5M exploit on Arbitrum via price manipulation
Radiant (Aave v2 fork) $4.5M exploit of new USDC market on Arbitrum via known rounding issue

Ecosystem

Vitalik’s updated roadmap diagram
- single slot finality (SSF) to resolve PoS design weaknesses, significant progress on rollups & Verkle trees, scourge redesigned, state expiry a low priority and VDFs dead for now
Devcon Southeast Asia in Bangkok, November 12-15

Onchain stats

Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 7.9 to 329.4 gwei, with 19.8 gwei average
- Zero net issuance currently at 22.0 gwei
- 1.7k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,187 – $2,434, currently $2,246
ETHBTC: currently 0.051 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer

Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

Regulation/business/tokens

US tax code: receipt of $10k+ in crypto (for trade/business) to be reported to IRS within 15 days
SBF second trial dropped by DoJ, including charges for unlawful campaign contributions
Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo buy back after game not delivered, in exchange for waiving claims
UK users of centralized exchanges required to complete investor declaration

General

Orbit bridge $81M hack
Orange Spain internet outage, RIPE account hacked to misconfigure BGP routing & RPKI config

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(new/changes in bold)

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