Week in Ethereum News
October 28, 2023

Eth News and Links

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade

  • Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Notes from Tim Beiko and Christine Kim:
    • Mainnet: upgrade likely to be 2024 (minimum 2 week gap between each testnet upgrade)
    • Goerli testnet: upgrade late November (at the earliest), CL clients not ready yet
    • Devnet 10: normal & stress testing analysis, tested EIP7514 (max churn limit)
    • Devnet 11: launch early next week, test all clients with MEV pipeline
    • Goerli shadow fork: launch early next week
    • Discussed EIP7523 (empty accounts deprecation) 
  • Proposed Deneb simplification to attach the block header & an inclusion proof on each blob sidecar

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

Layer 1

  • Verkle Kaustinen testnet back online, upgraded to Shapella, proof witnesses include post state and adds Lodestar CL client

Client releases

  • Consensus layer:
    • Prysm v4.1.1: patch to fix using REST API with external builder and experimental state deadlock
  • Execution layer:
    • Besu v23.10.1: UX, memory and RPC performance improvements
    • Erigon v2.53.2: fixes
    • Nethermind v1.21.1: hotfix for invalid block production

Research

Layer 2

  • First monthly RollCall (Layer 2 protocol & EVM standardization) call video:
    • intros, Rollup Improvement Proposals (RIPs), EIP7212 (secp256r1 precompile) as first RIP, Devconnect discussion topics and EIP7530 (EVM profiles)

EIPs/Standards

  • ERCs split from EIPs
  • EIPs
    • EIP7542: eth/69 – available-blocks-extended protocol
    • EIP7543: EVM decimal math (opcodes)
    • EIP7545: Verkle proof verification precompile
  • ERCs (application layer):
    • (Informational) ERC7544: Security flaws in ERC20 transfer patterns (tokens sent to contracts can be lost)
    • ERC7546: Upgradeable clone (proxy pattern)

Stuff for developers

  • Solidity v0.8.22:
    • Adds unchecked loop increments, Yul optimizer rematerializes zero literals, experimental support to import EVM Assembly JSON and event definition at file level
    • EVM versions before Constantinople deprecated
  • Hardhat:
    • Ignition: declarative contract deployment with support for recovery
    • Hardhat-verify v2: adds Sourcify verification, enable via config
  • OpenSea Shipyard: NFT libraries & implementations
  • Fe (language) v0.25.0: fe test adds print logs and filter to only run specific tests 
  • evm.storage: supports unverified contracts using bytecode-generated layouts
  • EVM Glue: EVM assembler in Rust
  • Uniswap universal router decoder & encoder in Python
  • halo2-repl: write zk circuits using JavaScript in browser-based REPL for Halo 2

Security

Ecosystem

Onchain stats

  • Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 5.3 to 97.5 gwei, with 18.8 gwei average
    • Zero net issuance currently at 21.6 gwei 
    • 2.1k ETH net issuance this week
  • ETHUSD: $1,595 – $1,845, currently $1,777
  • ETHBTC: currently 0.053 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer


Job Listings

Job listings: $600 for four issues (75 character limit).  Questions? abcoathup at-gmail


Regulation/business/tokens

General


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