Week in Ethereum News May 18, 2024

Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade, small fork targeting late 2024

Osaka + F starname upgrade

Dankrad Feist: benefits of Verkle, increase block size 10x, simplify node architecture, reduce sync time, reduce node cost & enable path to light nodes

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 28.6% still too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
- Execution layer: Geth ~55% majority
  - Lido 46.6% Geth at end of Q1
  - Kiln went Geth free, 100% Nethermind
- 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

Data Always: timing games as a service viz
Piper Merriam: storing large SSZ objects in Portal Network to archive Ethereum’s state data
Nethermind (execution layer client) scaling roadmap via optimizations, Paprika, parallelization & compiling bytecode to native

Research

Client Releases

Consensus layer:
- Lodestar v1.18.1: hotfix to disable flood publishing for local block builders with orphaned/missed block proposals
Execution layer:
- Besu v24.5.1: snap sync server (early access) and receipt storage size reduced
- Erigon v2.60.0: last planned v2 release, fixes logs pruning issue in v2.59

Layer 2

Degen & Apex rollups stopped posting batches for more than 24 hours after config change, first batches triggered reorgs
User-defined penalties: proposal for preconf crypto-economic security

EIPs/Standards

EIPs:
- EIP7706: Separate gas type for calldata
- EIP7707: Incentivize access list provisioning
- EIP7708: ETH transfers emit a log

Stuff for developers

Hardhat v2.22.4: adds BigInt task argument type
Guide to Hardhat Ignition deployment using Ledger
Foundry roadmap of planned 2024 features
Heimdall-rs v0.8.0: decompilation & decode improvements and more modular code base
Wagmi adds Vue support
Betherscan (browser extension): adds data fields to Etherscan, including block header RLP, contract storage root, EOA nonce and transaction signature (v, r, s)
ERC5189 (account abstraction via endorsed operations) bundler: execute account abstraction transactions (e.g. ERC4337)
Vitalik: proposal for MACI with votes offchain by default

Security

Sonne Finance (Compound v2 fork) ~$20M exploit on Optimism via known donation attack
- $6.5M saved
Predy Finance ~$0.5M exploit on Arbitrum via a callback

Ecosystem

Vitalik: improving permissionlessness & decentralization in short/mid term, MEV, liquid staking & node hardware
Ethereum Protocol Fellowship cohort 5 applications open
EF Q1 grantees share $11M in funding
Etherscan contract statistics of most called functions & language versions

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

Onchain stats

Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 2.3 to 45.9 gwei, with 5.9 gwei average
- Zero net issuance currently at 23.3 gwei
- 13k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,874 – $3,116, currently $3,096
ETHBTC: currently 0.046 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer

Rune: Dai endgame, NewStable (USD pegged with real world asset collateral) & PureDai (floating peg with decentralized collateral)
Words3 infinite live on Redstone, scrabble with fluctuating price letter tiles

Regulation/business/tokens

Tornado Cash developer Alex Pertsev sentenced to 64 months in prison for money laundering
US Senate voted to repeal anti-crypto SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 that precluded banks offering crypto custody
“Low carb crusader” brothers charged with wire fraud & conspiracy to commit money laundering
- Reminder: MEV-Boost relay exploit on April 3, 2023 & low carb crusader disclosure

General

P-256 hash-seed still hasn’t been found, RIP7212 secp256r1 precompile being added by rollups
RLN-v3 adds epoch-based message rate-limiting scheme
Notes on collaborative zkSNARKS

END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News

(new/changes in bold)

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