Week in Ethereum News

Eth News and Links

PoW switch off (the Merge)

• Mainnet-shadow-fork-6 transition to PoS on May 31
• Ropsten testnet reached Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) before Ropsten beacon chain genesis:
  • miner added hash rate & lowered gas limit in malicious stress test
  • TTD being overridden to very large value to prevent merge
  • override TTD after Ropsten beacon chain genesis & Bellatrix upgrade to merge around June 8
• Test the merge with Nethermind

Mainnet execution layer

• Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:
  • two consensus layer Merge releases: Bellatrix followed by setting TTD
  • no decision on delaying difficulty bomb, discussed 2-4 month delay coupled with Paris execution layer Merge upgrade
  • short discussion on EIP4844 (proto-danksharding) & EIP2537 (BLS precompile)
• Ropsten testnet Paris releases:
  • Geth v1.10.18: manually override TTD
  • Erigon v2022.05.08-alpha
  • Nethermind v1.13.1
  • Besu v22.4.2
• OpenEthereum client (formerly Parity) deprecated
• Speed up EIP4844 transaction validation (using KZG proofs), reduces verification time to 3.5ms
• Understanding the crypto in Verkle trees: the difference between bandersnatch and banderwagon

Proof of Stake consensus layer

• Beacon chain 7-block deep reorg: caused by mix of proposer boost upgraded & non-upgraded nodes and timing of late arriving block.  Upgrade your nodes!
• Ropsten beacon chain Bellatrix releases:
  • Teku v22.5.1
  • Nimbus v22.5.1
  • Lighthouse v2.3.0-rc.0
  • Prysm v2.1.3-rc.2
• Checkpoint sync safety: get from trusted source and verify
  • Even Infura being hacked is not much of a risk, but you should still verify your checkpoint
• Analysis of Swap-or-Not Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) proposal
• Lido discussion on limiting share of stake on the beacon chain 

EIPs/Standards

• EIP4353: interface for staked NFTs
• EIP5107: Name-bound Tokens

Layer2

• zk-rollup proposal using Practical Verifiable Delay Encryption for MEV minimization

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Stuff for developers

• Tim Beiko’s Merge reminder: DIFFICULTY opcode will return PREVRANDAO and 12s block times (minus missed slots) rather than ~13s
• ethers js v5.6.8: update BN.js for hex string bug, doesn’t appear to occur in 256-bit numbers
• ethers js cheat sheet
• Foundry: 
  • Forge Snippets for VS Code
  • signature database support
  • guide to using Foundry with Hardhat
• ERC721A v4.0.0: removes OpenZeppelin Contracts dependency, upgradeable version uses EIP2535 (Diamonds)
• MergeReward: contract pays first caller after the Merge by checking difficulty is bigger than 2^64
• Remco’s Yul parser: Rust based
• Web3.py customization options: middleware, custom methods, external modules and custom providers
• dApp Starter using Typescript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, RainbowKit, ethers and wagmi
• RainbowKit mint NFT demo: Next.js NFT minting front end 
• Hop airdrop sybil hunt: Union-Find graph algorithm to find connected subgraph components in O(1) time
• StackExchange to create custom site design for Ethereum
• Patrick McCorry’s crypto class resources (8 sessions)
• Patrick Collins: web3 development using JavaScript (32 hours of video)

Security

• MEV bot exploited for 8 ETH

Ecosystem

• Ethereum roadmap deep dive: dank sharding, history & state management, MEV and the Merge
• ETHGlobal HackMoney finalists
• Sync mainnet in under 24 hours on a $189 ARM board

Enterprise

• GameStop Wallet: Chrome browser extension, mainnet and LoopRing Layer 2

Application layer

• Mirror Writing NFTs: sell and collect posts as NFTs on Optimism
• Zora: create music (with album art), video and SVG NFTs
• Uniswap $1 trillion cumulative trading volume
• Fairmint (tokenized equity) open to all
• Vitalik: evaluate automated stablecoins; can they wind down to zero users and can they charge a negative interest rate

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Job Listings

• Ethereum Foundation seek a generalist ecosystem developer
• Trail of Bits Security Apprenticeship (3 months)
• Ethereum Foundation need a People Operations Lead
• Sourcify (source code verification) need a TypeScript Developer
• Hiring Coordinator wanted by Ethereum Foundation

Reach developers experienced with Ethereum.  $600 for four issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet, Arbitrum or Optimism.  Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

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Regulation/business/tokens

• US Federal Reserve [PDF]: 12% of adults held/used crypto, 11% held as an investment, 2% used for payments and 1% sent to family/friends
• UK financial regulator first crypto sprint
• Stable coin dashboard
• Seth Green’s Bored Ape stolen in phishing scam, ape used in upcoming animated show, claims to maintain IP ownership

General

• US FTC: Twitter fined $150 million for using phone & email provided for security in targeted ads
• US Department of Justice: good-faith security research shouldn’t be charged under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
• Caulk: lookup arguments in sublinear time, 100x faster than Poseidon

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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-28-2022

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Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

• Jun 1 – applications close for OxPARC Halo2 Learning group
• Jun 3 – Merge community call #4
• Jun 8-23 – Gitcoin Grants Round 14
• Jun 10 – Austin DeFi summit
• Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague
• Jun 20-23 – NFT.NYC
• Jun 24-26 – ETH NYC
• Jul 1 – Data Availability Sampling proposals due
• Jul 6-8 – ETHBarcelona
• Jul 8 – ETH Seattle summit
• Jul 19-21 – EthCC 5 (Paris)
• Aug 5-13 – ETH Seoul
• Aug 8-10 – ETHToronto
• Aug 11-14 – ETH LATAM (Buenos Aires)
• Aug 19-21 – ETHMexicoCity
• Aug 27-28 – DeFi Security Summit (Stanford)
• Aug 28 – DeFi San Francisco summit
• Aug 29-31 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford)
• Sep 1-4 – ETHWarsaw (hackathon & conference)
• Sep 2-4 – ETHSantiago
• Sep 2-28 – ETHOnline
• Sep 6-9 – MCON 2 (Denver)
• Sep 12-14 – DappCon (Berlin)
• Sep 27-29 – Ethereum SP (São Paulo)
• Oct 7-9 – ETHBogotá
• Oct 11-14 – Devcon 6 (Bogotá)
• Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco
• Nov 18-20 – ETHGlobal Web3 Weekend
• Dec 1-4 – ETHDownUnder (Sydney)
• Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei
• Dec 2-4 – ETHIndia

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