Week in Ethereum News April 6, 2024

Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta EIP7600)

Latest all core devs – consensus (ACDC) call video. Recap from Alex Stokes. Notes from Christine Kim:
- Missed slots: Lighthouse & Prysm updated to allow Beacon API submission of blobs even if block observed on p2p
- Pectra upgrade (small fork targeting late 2024)
  - Electra included EIPs:
    - Pectra-devnet-0 spec EIP client implementation tracker
    - EIP6110 validator deposits onchain: mostly ready
    - EIP7002 execution layer triggerable exits: needs updating to handle partial withdrawals
    - EIP7251 maxEB: community input wanted on need for custom ceilings & EL initiated consolidations (touches EIP7002) at cost of added complexity
    - EIP7549 committee index outside attestation: may update for better packing efficiency
  - Electra candidates for inclusion:
    - EIP7547 IL (inclusion lists): EIP3074 compatibility issues
  - EIP7594 PeerDAS: work on in parallel to Electra, if going to be longer term could alternatively include EIP7659 to increase blob throughput
EIP7251 maxEB (increase max effective balance)
- Breakout call notes: custom ceilings, min activation balance constant, week subjectivity issues and concerns from Lido
EIP7547 IL (inclusion lists)
- Breakout call notes: potential solutions for validity & availability issues

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 29.68% finally drops below 30%, still too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth 63% majority
  - Stakefish migrated to 50% Nethermind
- Consensus layer: Prysm 38%
- Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
- Strategy to target largest concentrated actor with discouragement attack
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe

Layer 1

Reward curve with tempered issuance: trade-offs, security considerations and endgame

Client Releases

Consensus layer:
- Prysm v5.0.3: patch with enhancements & bug fixes
Execution layer:
- Reth v0.2.0-beta.5: fixes Merkle pipeline stage out of memory issue, adds pruner timeout and supports running on NFS volumes

Layer 2

EIPs/Standards

Stuff for developers

Solidity Developer Survey 2023 results:
- Hardhat usage at 33%, Foundry 32% & Remix 26%
- Solidity v0.8 usage at 82%
Guide to migrate from from hardhat-deploy to Hardhat Ignition
Tweak (Foundry fork): alter onchain verified contracts (e.g. add console.log) & replay historical transactions
Hayden asked should Uniswap v4 remove events & move to call traces for 1% gas saving on swaps
- Lefteris: need agreement & standardization for any alternative
Coinbase Solidity style guide
OpenSea ERC721C support: enforced creator royalties but restricted to OpenSea & Magic Eden
Fuzz-utils v0.2.0: generate Echidna/Medusa compatible fuzzing harnesses
Sigmund (CLI): collect function selectors from any contract
Swiss knife determine contract address using deployer address & nonce
SIWE AAbstractor: connect smart accounts to apps via Sign in with Ethereum
Viem experimental: support for draft EIP5792 (batch transactions with paymaster capability)
Noble-post-quantum (JavaScript): minimal implementations of ML-KEM, ML-DSA & SLH-DSA
Open Labels Initiative: framework & data model for EVM address labeling
CTFs:
- Secureum RACE #28: 8 question Solidity quiz & answers

Security

Geth DoS vulnerability disclosed, nodes with exposed RPC could be crashed by applying EIPs out of order during an eth_call, fixed in v1.13.13

Ecosystem

Vitalik: next steps in the Purge, precompiles, history (via EIP4444), log reform & moving to SSZ
Road to Devcon event calendar
Hackathon winners: ETHBucharest & ETHSeoul

Enterprise

Project Agorá: BIS & 7 central banks explore tokenization of cross-border payments

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

Onchain stats

Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 8.6 to 120.5 gwei, with 25.8 gwei average
- Zero net issuance currently at 22.7 gwei
- 2.8k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $3,224 – $3,641, currently $3,325
ETHBTC: currently 0.049 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer

Maker’s big bet on Ethena
- Aave proposes 0% LTV for Dai in response
Blob inscriptions fizzle out
Synthetix v3 live on Base, using USDC as collateral
Gitcoin Grants 20 applications open until April 16; open source software rounds: infrastructure, dev tooling, apps and hackathon alumni

Regulation/business/tokens

US vs Roman Storm: amicus briefs from Blockchain Association, Coin Center & DeFi Education Fund
SEC Commissioner Peirce: improving communication between public & SEC
Bank of England & FCA digital securities sandbox consultation, feedback by May 29

General

Vitalik: degen communism [posted April 1], chaos aligned with common good, e.g. memecoin issuance to charity, public goods funding, fork out concentrated players, land value taxes and Harberger taxes on IP
XZ Utils (compression library) backdoored, v5.6.0/1 impacted, found after logins via ssh 0.5s slower

END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News

(new/changes in bold)

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