Eth News and Links
Mainnet execution layer
- Latest core devs call. Notes from Tim Beiko:
- EIP1559 – adding explicit constraints to prevent attacks using arbitrarily large transactions, new devnet Calaveras
- Unofficial London mainnet date now July 28 due to EIP1559 changes
- Gas DoS protection discussion – separate transaction pool to guard against execution attacks
- EIP3584 – add access lists to blocks
- EIP1559
- Setting expectations: legacy transactions are still valid, mechanism may need tweaking based on mainnet learning, wallets and gas APIs may need time to set optimal values
- Addressing community concerns
- Beiko’s list of EIP1559 resources
- EthereumJS releases (VM, Tx, Block and others) for London/EIP1559
- Erigon (formerly TurboGeth) adds pruning node options: <500GB with block history, ~100GB without block history
- Samczsun found a way for an attacker to make fast-synced Geth nodes fork off mainnet
EIPs/Standards
- EIP3589: Assembly NFT
Proof of stake consensus layer
- Danny Ryan’s Finalized PoS update: Altair upgrade specs stabilized, client teams focused on London/Altair upgrades, researchers are refining and testing merge spec
- Vitalik’s annotated spec for the Altair upgrade
- Lodestar (TypeScript client) update: light client prototype, out-of-memory resolved, 50–75% profitability compared to network average
- A guide to Ethereum PoS’s Simple Serialize (SSZ)
- Data visualization of staker behavior
- Kate commitments, an implementation perspective
Layer2
- Arbitrum mainnet beta is live, onboarding developers now, open access at least two weeks away, fees paid in ETH, Etherscan support in July
- Uniswap community support for Arbitrum deployment of Uniswap v3
- Nitro virtual channels to create a channel network
- Adamantium protocol from StarkWare is a flavor of Validium where a user can keep their own offchain data
- Faster finality in zkrollups using validity proof checkpoints
- zkSync upgrade: NFTs and swaps on testnet in advance of going live 2 weeks after upgrade (time locked)
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Stuff for developers
- Remix supports decoding custom errors
- WalletConnect Remix plugin: allows Remix Desktop to deploy on public networks and devs can mimic users paying on mobile
- Ape: framework for Web3 Python apps and smart contracts, alpha release
- JollyRoger dapp template with hot contract replacement: now uses svelte-kit with IPFS adaptor
- ERC20 tokens and modifiers to allow use for only MEV and no MEV
- Mariano Conti: live coding to create an ERC20 using Dapp tools
- Using Uniswap V3 in your contracts
- Transaction tracing with Ethernal: block explorer for private/local chains including Hardhat Network and Ganache
- Ethcode updates: load Solidity JSON, JSON tree view, Remix VS Code extension
- TrueBlocks dynamic traversers: account transaction history in 10 lines of C++
Security
- Mushrooms Finance theft of yield frontrunning vulnerability fix postmortem
- WildCredit unprotected initialize exploited for $600k – funds returned by front runner
- Binance Smart Chain attacks:
- ~$7m Burgerswap exploit: UniswapV2 fork with x*y=k check removed, could be trivially drained
- ~$6m Belt Finance exploit: price manipulation using bug in the strategy balance calculations
- Bunny forks attacked: AutoShark & Merlin
- Post-hack playbook: war rooms and crisis management
Ecosystem
- Flashbots v0.2: bundle merging allows miners to include multiple bundles per block
- ENS keyholders removed their ability to replace the .eth registrar
- History of apps gas usage data visualization
- Justin Drake: ETH deserves a Unicode character
Enterprise
- Gamestop creating blockchain division, announced with 1/1 NFT
Application layer
- mistX: gasless dex built on FlashBots; transaction fee charged as part of swap
- BackRunMe: use Bloxroute to send transactions privately and if the transaction creates a backrunning opportunity, then you get 25% share of the backrunning profit
- Gitcoin’s DAO for fund allocation, matching pools, and grant collusion; airdrop claimers select delegate prior to receiving tokens
- Non-transferrable (initially) governance token by Ribbon Finance to ensure only used for governance
- Selling music in the streaming era: (pre release) canon – 1/1, collectible – 1/n, streaming – 1/∞
- NFT multisender: send multiple ERC721/ERC1155 tokens in a transaction
- Pilot of weather index insurance with 10k smallholder farmers in Kenya
Regulation/business/tokens
- Packy McCormick’s Ethereum bull case: like owning a piece of the internet
- Carl Icahn on Bloomberg TV: “Ethereum has two things: you can use it as a payment system and you can use it as a store of value.”
- Goldman Sachs report: “Ether beats bitcoin as a store of value”
- Bankless: the Flippening is inevitable
- Second ETH ETF application with SEC from WisdomTree
- SEC sues Bitconnect promoters for selling unregistered securities
- UNI proposal to fund crypto policy/lobbying
General
- WSJ profile of Uniswap
- Paypal & Venmo to allow transfer to third party wallets
- $2 trillion volume for crypto exchanges in May
- Vitalik is in favor of real world elections on blockchains; confine to small experiments short term
- M1RACLES covert channel vulnerability in the Apple M1 chip
- Half-Double (Rowhammer variation) attack on RAM, that can bypass Target Row Refresh mitigation
- Cryptanalysis of an oblivious PRF from supersingular isogenies paper
Job Listings
- A leader in the NFT ecosystem, Immutable, are hiring a Head of Blockchain
- Livepeer is hiring a Protocol Engineer
- Ethereum.org are seeking a Community & Ecosystem Lead
- Nethermind: Hiring interns, software engineers, researchers & devops
Want your job listing 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-may-30-2021/
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
- May 31 – deadline to apply for Eth core dev apprenticeship
- June 3 – OpenZeppelin automate smart contract workflows workshop
- June 18 – July 9 – ETHGlobal – Hack Money 2021
- June 25-27 – Edcon (Shenzhen/online)
- July 10 – Road to Devcon Quest: Devcon Trivia Game
- July 28 – tentative date for London hard fork (Ropsten June 23, Goerli June 30, Rinkeby July 7)
- July 20-22 – EthCC4 (Paris)
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