Week in Ethereum News

Stakers can increase gas limit to 36M

Eth R&D protocol call (All Core Devs)

Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade

Client testing call #16: Mekong testnet 98% participation, minor changes in pectra-devnet-5 spec and consensus layer client teams discussed gossip limit

Fusaka (Osaka + Fulu) upgrade

EOF implementers call #63: Solidity working on EOF as experimental feature and discussed metadata section

Layer 1

Toni Wahrstätter: increase gas limit to 36M, beyond 40M currently unsafe due to gossip limit, review again after Pectra upgrade
- Prysm cannot set gas limit through validator client currently
FOCIL breakout #1: consensus layer spec relatively stable, aim for devnet at end of January
L1 R&D workshops: notes from pre-Devcon workshops

Research

Execution Tickets evaluated using agent-based simulation: validator decentralization & MEV capture is promising but questions remain for builder centralization, off-chain agreements & multi-block MEV
EF academic grants round: summary of 39 completed & in progress results from 2022 grants

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 28.4%, still too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~43% & Nethermind ~36% (estimate based on 74% self reported data)
- Consensus layer: Prysm 35%
- Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe

Client Releases

Consensus layer:
- Nimbus v24.12.0: adds reading bootstrap nodes yaml
- Teku v24.12.0: block publishing performance improved
Execution layer:
- Besu v24.12.0: breaking changes including metric name updates
- Erigon v3.0.0-alpha6: default mode changed from archive to full node, adds minimal prune mode for low disk space users and performance improvements
- Nethermind v1.30.0: default gas limit increased to 36M and adds Taiko & Linea L2 support; v1.30.1: startup fix
- Reth v1.1.3: breaking API changes, adds NodePrimitives (primitive trait abstraction) to several components; v1.1.4: op-reth fix

Layer 2

RollCall #9 (L2 standards):
- Pectra upgrade: L2s don’t use or can work around fee history being removed and are ok with not including EIP7762 as they work around min blob base fee
- Overview of L2 execution common core project

EIPs/Standards

EIPs (Ethereum improvement proposals):
- EIP7839: Unified network configuration (EL to fetch config from CL at startup)
- EIP7840: Add blob schedule to EL config files
ERCs (application layer):
- ERC7837: Diffusive tokens
- ERC7838: Instruction specific address
- ERC7841: Cross-chain message format and mailbox

Stuff for developers

Ape v0.8.22 (Python contract framework): 2x faster checksumming, updated isolation and adds support for web3.py v7 & python v3.13
Heimdall-rs v0.8.5: adds LLM postprocessing to decompiler
CTFs:
- Secureum RACE #35: answers to 8 question Solidity quiz
Safe multisig transaction hashes (Bash script): adds support for offchain message hashes

Security

Clober (DEX) $500k exploit on Base via reentrancy
1inch resolver contract exploit via private key compromise
Radiant Capital October $50M exploit update, developer shared zipped PDF containing macOS malware received from impersonator of former contractor

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

Onchain stats

Fees (via ultrasound.money):
- Gas: 6.1 to 226.6 gwei, 18.7 gwei average; zero net issuance at 24.1 gwei
- 4.4k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $3,538 – $4,021, currently $3,921 all time high $4,878
ETHBTC: currently 0.039 (Flippening at ~0.164)

Ecosystem

Notable at app layer

General

END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News

(new/changes in bold)

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Week in Ethereum News
December 14, 2024