Eth News and Links
Shapella (Shanghai + Capella) upgrade
- Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Notes from Tim Beiko & Christine Kim:
- Empty block handling bug found on Zhejiang testnet, since patched by Geth, doesn’t impact Sepolia testnet upgrade timeline
- withdrawal-devnet-7: upgraded to Shapella with 600k validators and 360k BLS changes, only stopped finalizing for 1 epoch in a harsher setup than mainnet
- withdrawal-mainnet-shadowfork-2 to test MEV-Boost
- 0 blob EIP4844 transactions banned for now
- Discussions on SSZ in block header, CL minimal presets (test configs), standardizing transaction pool API and approach to deprecate SELFDESTRUCT
- builder-specs v0.3.0: add Capella support
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade
- KZG Ceremony:
- 47,000+ contributors, 4000+ in the lobby, 23 days left in first general contribution period
- Coinbase adds call to action to their products
- Latest EIP4844 implementers call video. Notes from Terence: blobs to be decoupled from blocks
- SSZ breakout video call: discussion on Union vs normalized transaction representation, plan to prototype in next 2 weeks to decide approach to take
Layer 1
- Visualization of MEV-boost block flow from builder to validator via relayer
- Flashbots: design for MEV-Share, users send transactions to a matchmaker to match with searchers who pay users for using their transactions
Client releases
- Consensus layer:
- Execution layer:
- Besu v23.1.0: move to Java 17 LTS, performance improvements & Bonsai robustness
- Geth v1.11.0: Shanghai upgrade support, added Pebble database as LevelDB replacement (requires resync), removed puppeth & mobile development libraries and deprecated personal RPC namespace; v1.11.1: patch for empty block processing in Shanghai upgrade
- Nethermind v1.17.0: Shanghai upgrade for Sepolia testnet & performance improvements
Research
- Censorship resistance using delayed reveal, forward inclusion lists or parallel auctions
For Stakers
- Jim McDonald: withdrawals explainer and changing withdrawal credentials
- Guide to preparing a voluntary exit message in advance of scenarios such as death or stolen/lost node
Layer 2
- zkEVMs race to be first to mainnet:
- zkSync Era (zkSync v2) opens project onboarding before alpha launch
- Polygon zkEVM announce beta launch on March 27
- Optimism delays Bedrock upgrade vote to resolve issues from bounty contest
- Coinbase finally adds send & receive for ETH & DAI on Arbitrum
- Patrick McCorry: decentralizing a rollup needs to ensure one honest party can send all potential decisions to the contract bridge when the system is under attack by an adversary
- EF Layer 2 grants round recipients, $948k to 22 projects
EIPs/Standards
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Stuff for developers
- Foundry:
- forge-std v1.4.0: invariant test helpers included by default, Create2 helpers and flag to disable fallback to default public RPC
- Guide to invariant testing with Foundry, example using WETH
- ignore Solidity warnings with the ignored_error_codes config option
- organize unit tests using a state tree
- Seaport v1.3: zone checks after token transfers fix, prevent filtering native tokens & more efficient bulk listings
- NFT Exponential Dutch Auction (NFTEDA) Solidity for exponential price decay
- Alchemy: walk through of an account abstraction design, explains why ERC4337 is so complex
- Solhint v3.4.0: adds rules for named parameters in mappings and banning console.sol & global imports
- Solplate: generate boilerplate Solidity contract using Rust script
- Fe language bounty challenges: two challenges added
- Guide to using SMTLIB2 representation of a contract with an SMT Solver
- samczsun’s ABI Tools: decode/encode transaction data
- ABI Data: API to fetch & cache contract ABI’s from Etherscan
- Quix NFT marketplace open sourced, Next.js/React frontend and Django backend
- yGenius: connecting a knowledge base to GPT using gpt_index library
- Yuga Labs Dookey Dash skill-based mint game cheats and bots
Security
- Dexible $1.5m exploit, approved tokens could be transferred
- dForcenet funds returned after exploiter’s IP & device info identified
- Balancer Merkle Orchard logic error disclosed, $3.2m was at risk, 50 ETH bounty paid
- Beanstalk logic error disclosed, $3.1m was at risk, $181k bounty paid
- SCSVS v2: updated contract security checklist
Ecosystem
- Half of blocks were from non-censoring relays
Enterprise
- Starlight v1 zApp transpiler
- Baseline Profile architecture explainer
Application layer
- NFT marketplaces:
- Blur airdrop caused surge in gas prices
- Blur updated creator royalty policy to enforce full royalties only if OpenSea blocked
- OpenSea dropped fees to zero (for an unspecified time) and made royalties optional (0.5% minimum) unless on-chain enforced, marketplaces with the same policies won’t be blocked
- Overtime (sports markets) expands to Arbitrum
- UMA oSnap: DAOs can execute off-chain Snapshot voting using UMA’s optimistic oracle
- RabbitHole v2 (learn to earn): users complete quests & mint tradable NFTs to claim rewards
Job Listings
- Certora is hiring a Senior Enterprise Sales Rep.
- Cyfrin.io is hiring senior security engineers $190k-$300k.
- Shell Protocol team is hiring senior Solidity devs & more, remote or Hawaii
- Request Network is hiring a Community & Communication Manager
- Community Lead for ethereum.org sought by Ethereum Foundation
Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet or Layer 2. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
Regulation/business/tokens
- US SEC:
- Terraform Labs & Do Kwon charged with securities fraud
- Paxos issued with Wells notice claiming BUSD is a security
- Blockchain Association filed amicus brief for SEC claims that 9 tokens are securities in alleged insider trading lawsuit
- proposal for investment advisers to custody assets only with qualified custodians, Commissioner Peirce concerned for impact on crypto
- ex-NBA player Paul Pierce charged for token promotion without disclosing payment & making misleading statements
- New York Department of Financial Services ordered Paxos to stop minting BUSD
- Alex Pertsev remains in jail in the Netherlands, next hearing in late April
General/crypto
- Zero-value token transfer phishing attacks (poison transactions)
- Ordinals (Bitcoin NFTs) using Emblem Vault to trade on Ethereum via OpenSea
- Apple WebKit 0-day, malicious web content could lead to arbitrary code execution
- NameCheap third party email gateway was sending phishing email
- Sangria: folding scheme for PLONK
- Why zk-rollups are advantaged over alt-zk L1s
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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-february-18-2023
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
- Feb 24 – Mar 1 – ETHDenver BUIDLWeek
- Feb 27 – deadline for EF academic grants round
- Feb 28 – Sepolia testnet upgrades to Shapella
- Mar 2-5 – ETHDenver Hackathon
- Mar 10-29 – Scaling Ethereum (ETHGlobal) virtual
- Mar 15-16 – ETHDubai
- Mar 16-18 – ETH Porto
- Mar 28-30 – Ethereum Rio
- Apr 12-14 – NFT NYC
- Apr 14-16 – ETHGlobal Tokyo
- Apr 14-16 – ETHZurich conference & hackathon
- Apr 21-25 – EthTaipei hackathon & conference
- Apr 27-30 – Istanbul ETH Privacy conference & hackathon
- May 5-7 – ETHMalaysia conference & hackathon
- May 5-7 – ETHTallinn hackathon
- May 9-10 – NFT Tallinn conference
- May 19-23 – EDCON Montenegro (changed from Vienna)
- May 20-21 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
- May 24-26 – Spaghett ETH (Naples) conference
- May 26–28 – ETHGlobal Istanbul
- Jun 2-4 – ETH Seoul
- Jun 23–25 – ETHGlobal Toronto
- Jul 5-7 – ETHBarcelona
- Jul 17-20 – EthCC (Paris)
- Jul 21–23 – ETHGlobal Paris
- Aug 16-19 – Ethereum Argentina (Buenos Aires)
- Sep 22–24 – ETHGlobal New York
- Oct 6–25 – ETHOnline (ETHGlobal) virtual
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