Week in Ethereum News -The Latest Ethereum News and Upcoming Events This Week

Eth News and Links

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade

Latest all core devs – execution (ACDE) call video. Summary by Tim Beiko. Notes from Tim Beiko and Christine Kim:

SELFDESTRUCT removal impact analysis: EIP6780 (SELFDESTRUCT only in same tx) is low impact and will be in Cancun; EIP6913 SETCODE not in Cancun for now

EIP4844 discussions: excess_data_gas, use big endian for precompile, remove SSZ EIPs, draft devnet 6 spec (last EIP4844 specific devnet before Dencun devnets)

Proposed ordering of Cancun & Prague opcodes being added to execution specs

Final candidates for inclusion in Cancun: EIP4788 (beacon block root in EVM), EIP2537 (BLS precompile), EIP5656 (MCOPY), EIP5920 (PAY) & EIP7069 (revamped CALL instructions); no more EIPs to be considered for Cancun

Consensus-specs v1.4.0-alpha.0: Deneb updates & attnets revamp

KZG ceremony nears 100k contributions, now available to accounts with 16 mainnet transactions

Layer 1

Ben Edgington: deposits & withdrawals, new chapter from Upgrading Ethereum book

Geth team: what happens if a supermajority EL client has a bug?

Verkle overlay tree conversion method implemented

Client releases

Consensus layer:

Lighthouse v4.2.0: validator client faster to detect & avoid beacon nodes with offline execution layer

Prysm v4.0.5: attestation aggregation improvements

Execution layer:

Geth v1.12.0: PoW removed, GraphQL numeric values encoded as hex strings

Nethermind v1.18.2: sync process accelerated

For Stakers

Eth-wizard v0.9.7: validator setup on Ubuntu/Windows with MEV-Boost

Research

Path to enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation: top-down via Two-Block HeadLock (variant of two-slot PBS) and bottom-up via optimistic relay

Timing games: proposer may delay block proposal to maximize MEV but still be early enough to be included

Layer 2

Distributed Sequencer Technology: proposal for progressive decentralization of L2 sequencers using Distributed Validator Technology

Layer N zk fraud proofs: hybrid approach only requires a proof to be generated when there is possibility of fraud

EIPs/Standards

EIPs:

EIP7069: revamped CALL instructions

ERCs:

ERC7050: NFT creator provenance

ERC7053: Interoperable digital media indexing

ERC7066: ERC721 lockable

Stuff for developers

OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.9.0: Governor with Timestamps support for Optimism & Base, ERC4626 inflation attack protection, default admin rules for AccessControl, improved EIP712 signature interoperability via EIP-5267 and ERC777 deprecated

Solc contract metadata explainer: IPFS hash of JSON metadata + Solidity version

Foundry:

Foundry pre v1 update highlights

Forge-std v1.5.6: new cheatcodes and pure console log

tip: console logging supports format specifiers e.g. %s and %d

abi-to-sol v0.7: generate embeddable output (e.g. no pragma, no license identifier)

Guide to finding precision loss vulnerabilities using fuzz testing

Cicada: private on-chain voting using homomorphic time-lock puzzles

Vyper v0.3.8: transient storage keyword, ternary operators, raw_revert builtin, shift operators, configurable send() gas stipend and use PUSH0

Ape v0.6.9: easier testing via Pytest fixtures, Python v3.11 support and use_network marker

Uniswap live on Sepolia testnet

enstate.rs: simultaneous ENS queries with caching, in Rust

Safer: sign & submit transactions to a Safe multisig using Foundry _script_s

Curta CTF Baby it’s me solution

Code specification overview: focus on plain english, state machines, diagramming, interfaces, placeholder tests and optionally formal definitions

Echidna v2.2.0: multicore fuzzing & optimized coverage collection, up to 20x faster fuzzing

Security

Tornado Cash governance captured by attacker using SELFDESTRUCT + CREATE2

Ecosystem

Vitalik: overloading Ethereum’s social consensus is high-risk, app devs & Layer 2s need to find alternatives to achieve their security goals, there will be no bailouts

Nick Fett: restaking is overhyped

Optimism’s RetroPGF round 2 learnings

ETHDam hackathon projects

ETHGlobal autonomous worlds hackathon finalists

Notable at app layer

Maker voting to raise DSR to 3.33%

Levon: get a credit score for a Maker vault, beta

Kain: state of Synthetix

TAI (controlled peg stablecoin) live on mainnet

Astaria (NFT-backed lending) live on mainnet, beta

Safe multisig adds ERC1271 message signing support (used for OpenSea signing)

Utopia: Safe multisig gasless swaps, beta

Flashbots Bundler: UI for token rescues from compromised addresses

Job Listings

Protocol Engineer (DeFi) sought by Tunnel Vision Labs

Solidity team need a highly skilled Developer Advocate

Devconnect Istanbul: Production Assistant and Volunteer Coordinator

Regulation/business/tokens

US Fed: 10% of adults used crypto in 2022
Dan Elitzer: DeFi primitives should have no governance, no upgradeability and no oracles

General/crypto

Taylor warns of targeted spearphishing
KeePass vulnerability, master password can be retrieved from memory
Poseidon hash Merkle Trees implemented in FPGA hardware

Upcoming Dates of Note

(new/changes in bold)
Jun 2-4 – ETH Seoul
Jun 2-6 – ETH Belgrade conference & hackathon
Jun 9-11 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
Jun 22–25 – ETHGlobal Waterloo (changed from Toronto)
Jul 5-9 – ETHBarcelona conference & hackathon
Jul 17-20 – EthCC (Paris)
Jul 21–23 – ETHGlobal Paris
Aug 15-16 – ETHToronto & ETHWomen
Aug 16-19 – Ethereum Argentina (Buenos Aires)
Aug 28-30 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford University)
Aug 30 - Sep 3 – ETHWarsaw conference & hackathon
Sep 1-3 – Ethcon Korea hackathon
Sep 10-12 – Ethereum Singapore hackathon & conference
Sep 11-13 – DappCon (Berlin)
Sep 15 – Protocol Berg (Berlin)
Sep 18-21 – ETH Montréal hackathon & conference
Sep 22–24 – ETHGlobal New York
Oct 5-6 – ETHMilan conference
Oct 6-8 – ETHRome hackathon
Oct 6–27 – ETHOnline (ETHGlobal) virtual
Oct 27–29 – ETH Miami festival + hackathon
Oct 28–30 – ETH Lisbon hackathon
Nov 3-5 – ETH Lisbon hackathon
Nov 13-19 – Devconnect (Istanbul)
Nov 17-19 - ETHIstanbul (EthGlobal)