Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
- Geth releasing hotfix on August 24 for undisclosed high severity security issue
- Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko;
- London retrospective
- ~December upgrade for difficulty bomb delay and potentially constant tweaks for EIP1559, no new EIPs before PoW switch off
- Clients focusing on PoW switch off and internal improvements
- Erigon v2021.08.03: datadir parameter not backward-compatible and fix for trace_ RPC
- Nethermind v1.11.0: added trace_filter and JSON RPC over IPC
- Network capacity ~9% higher post London due to ice age delay, pre-London blocks not always being full and EIP1559 formula
- Visualization of estimated gas price 100k blocks before and after London upgrade, less volatility means fewer weekend downswings
- Node crawler alpha, drill down by client, version and operating system
EIPs/Standards
- EIP3722: Poster
Proof of stake consensus layer
- Lodestar (TypeScript) light client prototype: bandwidth and processing load reduced by ~99% of full client
- Pyrmont testnet upgraded to Altair; Pyrmont is being deprecated and users should switch to Prater testnet
- Teku v21.8.1: improved peer discovery, improved performance for load balanced beacon nodes and clearer sync progress logs
- Design space of Consensus API
- Using total difficulty threshold as hard fork anchor, a 7 day scheduled PoW switch off could be 4 days early
- Ledger adds staking with Lido (staking pool)
- Open the ports on your beacon chain nodes! Improve the network’s efficiency and reduce risk of censorship
Layer2
- Optimism developer onboarding criteria, testnet regenesis ~October, ETH may no longer be ERC20 compatible, will use Solidity compiler, EOAs no longer contract wallets and decrease gas usage
- 1inch Network live on Optimism
- Teleportr: low cost mainnet to Optimism ETH bridge, 0.02ETH limit
- Boba Network is rebranded OMGX Network (optimistic rollup based on Optimism)
- Protolambda tweetstorm: use execution-consensus API for rollups with minimal diff and full compatibility
- Warp: EVM to Cairo (StarkNet’s smart contract language) transpiler
- StarkWare’s shared prover (SHARP) reduces small apps’ layer 2 costs
This newsletter is made possible thanks to Celer!
Celer Network is a layer-2 scaling platform that brings fast, secure and low-cost blockchain applications. Celer cBridge v1.0 is now live on mainnet. Users are now able to use cBridge to instantly transfer tokens across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, with many more side chain and layer-2 chain integrations planned for in the near future. Anyone can run a cBridge node to join the cBridge Network and provide cross-chain and cross-layer liquidity while generating yields through transaction fees.
Stuff for developers
- web3.js v1.5.2: removed default of transactions to Type 0
- Remix IDE v0.16.2: Metamask v10.0.0+ support for type 2 transactions
- OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.3: modular on-chain governance based on Compound’s GovernorAlpha/GovernorBravo and ERC interfaces
- Guide to verifying a contract on Etherscan from OpenZeppelin
- Hardhat difference between Hardhat Network and other configured networks
- ts-essentials v8.0.0: updated for TypeScript v4
- ethers-flashbots (Rust): ethers middleware to send transactions as Flashbots bundles
- poseidon-tornado: Tornado Cash fork using Poseidon Hash
- Typescript-eth-starter: simple Greeter smart contract on localhost and Rinkeby with React stack
- Web3-Boilerplate: using RedwoodJS, Simple Wallet connector and useDapp
- Lambda School developing blockchain course to convert developers to crypto developers
Security
- samczsun disclosed vulnerability in SushiSwap’s Miso, ~$350million was at risk due to msg.value used in a loop via delegatecall; formal verification didn’t detect bug as formal spec missing a rule
- Tally voting bug, against votes sent as for votes due to faulty boolean check in Typescript, used with Uniswap, Fei, Gitcoin, and Idle proposals
- Liquid exchange had ~$90million moved from compromised warm wallets
- Scammer convinced user to show MetaMask sync with mobile QR via screen share, MetaMask improved warnings not to share this QR code
- Polygon denial of service vulnerability disclosed, uninitialized logic contract could be self destructed
- PolyNetwork hack, ongoing Q&A with hacker
Ecosystem
- MetaMask: how to set EIP1559 transaction priority video
- Tally web3 wallet being developed, first release to focus on open finance
- Etherscan shows green light bulb for Type 2 EIP1559 transactions
- Vitalik: moving beyond coin voting governance
Enterprise
- Draft Baseline standard
- Microsoft Argus paper on incentive system for anti-piracy campaigns
Application layer
- OpenFrontEnds DAO to create decentralized front ends for DeFi protocols
- iceCream: vested, non-transferrable, non-tradeable governance tokens
- Andre Cronje: liquidity mining rewards using options
- Beta Finance: lend, borrow and short sell selected tokens
- Proposal for power perpetuals (squeeth): perpetual derivative indexed to a power of the price of an underlying instrument such as Ether
- Cryptopunk images and attributes added on-chain
- NFT for biopharma research and IP rights sold to DAO to fund research
- OpenSea passed Etsy in volume, $1billion for August
Regulation/business/tokens
- US CFTC: ETH [is] a non-security commodity
- Bloomberg: 50 years after dropping the gold standard US needs to avoid expensive mistake of restrictive regulation for crypto
- Binance requiring KYC (including government ID and facial verification) for all users
- Props Loyalty Program ending and stopping issuing new Props Tokens due to constraints of US Regulation A+
- ImmutableX rewarding US users with ETH rather than protocol token due to US regulatory uncertainty
- Bloomberg’s Studio 1.0 interview with Vitalik, includes discussion on the metaverse and skepticism for DeFi on Bitcoin
- Coinbase to be first US publicly traded company to hold ETH on balance sheet
General
- Chris Dixons tweet storm blockchains are the new app stores
- Who owns the metaverse, terms of service of social media giants
- Cory Doctorow: copyright protects creativity, not effort
- Bluesky, started by Twitter to decentralize social media, being led by Jay Graber who recently advised reputation project linking Twitter to web3
- T‑Mobile data breach: 7.8million postpaid, 0.8million prepaid and 40million former/prospective customers impacted
- McEliece-1284 challenge broken in ~22 CPU years
- Cairo architecture and how Cairo proofs are created
- Cloudflare: Zero-Knowledge proofs for private web attestation with cross/multi-vendor hardware
- Aggregating hash-based signatures using STARKs
- Reinforced Concrete: fast hash function for ZKProofs and verifiable computation
- Dogecoin Foundation reestablished with Vitalik as board advisor
Job Listings
- Hiring a Front-End (or Full Stack) Engineer at Kwenta
- Ethereum Foundation: Test Engineer for consensus and execution layers
- Solidity is hiring a C++ dev
- WalletConnect looking for Javascript/Typescript devs
- Nethermind internship program
Want to reach people experienced with Ethereum? List your job here. $345 per line (~75 character limit including spaces), payable in ETH (or 345 DAI or 345 USDC) to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-august-21-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
- Aug 24 – Geth releasing hotfix
- Aug 27-29 – Edcon (online)
- Sep 15-17 – MetaCartel MCON Denver
- Sep 17-Oct 15 – ETHOnline hackathon
- Oct 1-3 – EthAtlanta enterprise-focused hackathon & keynotes
- Oct 22-24 – ETH Lisbon
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