Week in Ethereum News July 13, 2024

Multiple domains compromised, SEC drops Paxos BUSD case, Devcon ticket sales open, Alex Pertsev denied bail and Roman Storm granted trial delay

All core devs

All core devs – consensus (ACDC) #137:
- Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade:
  - Pectra-devnet-1: aim to launch next week
  - EIP7594 PeerDAS:
    - peerdas-devnet-2 launching early next week with fixes from previous devnet
    - Decouple layers for blob count: max blob check on execution layer is redundant & can be removed, proposal for target blob count to be driven by consensus layer (needs to be included in execution layer block header)
- Fork choice compliance testing presentation, model based test generation, test suite run with Teku

Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade, likely targeting Q1 2025

Marius Van Der Wijden: case against EOF in Pectra
PeerDAS breakout #3:
- Relaunch devnet with client fixes, proposal to use custody groups instead of subnets to decouple core & network layers and agreed consensus layer should send max & target blob counts in execution layer header

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 29%, still too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~55% majority
- Consensus layer: Prysm 37%
- Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe

Layer 1

Toni Wahrstätter: attestations analysis, node operator performance, best/worst validators, big block & blob impact and proposer timing games
Data Always: censorship resistance proposal, limit missed proposer income & increase localBlockValueBoost
Constantine v0.1: implementations of BLS signatures, BN254 & BLS12-381 precompiles and KZG polynomial commitments for blobs; bindings in C, Go, Nim & Rust
Péter Szilágyi: SSZ library implemented in Go

Research

Anders Elowsson: dynamic pricing auction of execution proposal rights, induces less new MEV & produces high aggregate MEV burn

Client Releases

Consensus layer:
- Lodestar v1.20.0: lodestar/api package changes exported types, flag to use SSZ APIs with validator client and testnet bootnode ENRs updated
Execution layer:
- Besu v24.7.0: adds eth_maxPriorityFeePerGas support and improvements to sync, peering & startup performance
- Erigon v2.60.3: adds optional include precompiles flag to tracing
- Geth v1.14.7: hotfix for concurrent map read/write bug in v1.14.6
- Reth v1.0.1: full node performance improvements, ExEx backfill & RPC fixes

For Stakers

Stereum v2.2: multi-setup support and connection check to test network stability & connectivity

Layer 2

OP Stack Fjord upgrade, cheaper smart wallet passkey verification via RIP7212 secp256r1 precompile and 5-15% lower data availability costs via Brotli channel compression
RollCall (L2 standards) #6:
- L1 blob basefee spike on June 20 discussion and presentations on RIP7728 L1SLOAD precompile & RIP7740 preinstall deterministic deployment factories
Titan Builder eth_sendBlobs: send permutations of blob transactions from a single sender

EIPs/Standards

EIPs (Ethereum improvement proposals):
- EIP7742: Uncouple blob count between CL and EL
RIPs (rollup improvement proposals):
- RIP7740: Preinstall deterministic deployment factories
ERCs (application layer standards):
- ERC7737: Custom data access model
- ERC7738: Permissionless script registry
- ERC7739: Readable typed signatures for smart accounts
- ERC7741: Authorize operator (via EIP712 secp256k1 signatures)
EIP.tools adds EIP-GPT, AI generated summary of an EIP/ERC

Stuff for developers

Web-solc: adapter to fetch/run specific version of Solidity compiler in the browser
RareSkills: guide to OpenZeppelin Contracts Initializable
ERC3770 (Rust): helper method for ERC3770 chain specific addresses
Nethermind Clear: formal verification framework for Yul code
Byteracing: maze solver in Solidity, try to make it more gas efficient

Security

Ecosystem

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

Onchain stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 1.0 to 28.6 gwei, 3.6 gwei average; zero net issuance at 23.5 gwei
- 15k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,866 – $3,185, currently $3,133, all time high $4,878
ETHBTC: currently 0.054 (Flippening at ~0.164)

Notable at app layer

Multiple domains registered with Squarespace compromised including Compound Labs & Celer:
- Google Domains users migrated to Squarespace should enable 2FA & remove excess contributor accounts
Fileverse dDocs: browser based word processor, end to end encrypted

Regulation/business/tokens

SEC formally notifies Paxos that it will not be charged for BUSD
SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 121: SEC allows some exceptions to balance sheet reporting, House failed to overturn Presidential veto of repeal
Republican party adopts very pro-crypto platform
Alex Pertsev denied bail to prepare for appeal
Roman Storm granted trial delay until December

General

Tayvano: example of a Lazarus attack, contact via socials and then compromise via GitHub repo
AT&T breach, data includes records of calls & texts of nearly all customers
Signal desktop stores decryption key in plain text file, encryption work started after backlash

END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News

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