Week in Ethereum News
March 30, 2024

Eth News and Links

Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta EIP7600)

  • Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video.Β  Notes from Tim Beiko & Christine Kim:
    • Missed slots: blocks gossiped with missing blobs, circuit breaker to local building not triggered, base fee variability due to EIP1559 being block rather than time based
      • bloXroute post mortem: resolved by disabling propagation of blocks containing blobs via their distribution network
    • State & history growth:
      • Paradigm research: history is 10x state growth
      • Continue work on EIP4444 (history expiry) & provide downloadable history so can stop serving on p2p
    • Retroactive EIPs: agreed to include EIP7610 (revert contract creation for non-empty storage) and EIP7523 (deprecate empty accounts)
    • Pectra upgrade (small fork targeting late 2024)
      • EIP2537 BLS precompile: gas cost benchmarks
      • Candidate for inclusion:
        • EIP7547 IL: design issue with account abstraction & options to mitigate
      • Potential EIP updates (no decisions yet, client teams to review, aim to decide scope at ACDE in 2 weeks)
        • EIP5920 PAY opcode
        • EIP7609 decrease cost of TSTORE/TLOAD
        • EIP2935 save historical block hashes in state
        • EIP7545 Verkle proof verification precompile
        • EOF (Ethereum Object Format)
        • RIP7212 secp256r1 precompile
        • EIP7664 Access-Key opcode
        • EIP6493 SSZ transaction signature scheme 
  • EIP7251 maxEB (increase max effective balance):
  • EIP7547 IL (inclusion lists):

Osaka + F starname upgrade (meta EIP7607)


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Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

Layer 1

Client Releases

  • Consensus layer:
    • Lighthouse v5.1.3: hotfix for duplicate lookup requests and to run fork choice after all block imports
    • Prysm v5.0.2: optimizations, UX improvements & bug fixes; defaults to local block if external builder less than 10% additional value
    • Nimbus v24.3.0: additional beacon API support, reduces CPU usage & improves resilience; defaults to local block if external builder less than 10% additional value
    • Teku v24.3.1: reduces CPU & bandwidth usage; defaults to local block if external builder less than 10% additional value
  • Execution layer:
    • Erigon v2.59.2: patch for MDBX size/performance regression introduced in v2.58.0
    • Reth v0.2.0-beta.4: performance & storage improvements

Research

Layer 2

EIPs/Standards

Stuff for developers

Security

Ecosystem

  • Vitalik: Ethereum after blobs, L1 progress less disruptive for apps, scaling work in the background, apps need to be built for 2020s Ethereum workflow (e.g. on L2, private & with account abstraction)
  • EIP7503 (zk wormholes) explainer: mechanism for privacy-preserving transfers
  • Hackathon projects: ETHTaipei & ETHSamba
  • Optimism Retro Funding (expanded from public goods) experimenting with impact juries & metrics based evaluation for focused rounds: onchain builders, OP Stack, governance & dev tooling

Enterprise

  • Google search for an address shows balance on Arbitrum One & OP Mainnet as well as mainnet

Job Listings

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


Onchain stats

  • Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 11.2 to 105.5 gwei, with 26.5 gwei average
    • Zero net issuance currently at 22.6 gwei 
    • 3k ETH net burn this week
  • ETHUSD: $3,303 – $3,664, currently $3,523
  • ETHBTC: currently 0.05 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer

  • Blobs being used for inscriptions, activating blob fee market
  • Splits multichain: single view of activity across mainnet & Layer 2
  • Privacy & Scaling Explorations: Anon Aadhaar v2 adds selective disclosure & simplified nullifier
  • Crypto: The Game (onchain Survivor) season 2 starts April 2, players/jury represented as NFTs

Regulation/business/tokens

General

  • Vitalik: memecoins for public goods & creating games/fun

END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News

Editor: @abcoathup
Follow @WeekinEthNews for the most clicked links
Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-march-30-2024


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