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

Eth News and Links

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade (meta {1703467616587140})

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

Testnet upgrade dates: Goerli Jan 17 (epoch 231680), then assuming no issues, single client releases for Sepolia Jan 30 (epoch 132608) & Holešky Feb 7 (epoch 29696)

Goerli shadow fork 1 analysis: 290 nodes across 4 continents with all clients except Erigon; blobs increased network usage by ~200kbps & block latency by ~300ms

Precompile address ranges: upper half of range reserved for L2s

Prague/Electra planning: discussed potential small upgrade then Verkle-only upgrade

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

🚨 Lido at 31.67% is far too close to 33.3% threshold

Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):

Execution layer: Geth ~84% supermajority, could possibly cause a chain split

Consensus layer: Prysm 41% & Lighthouse 34%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of liveness

Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe

Layer 1

EIP3074 (AUTH & AUTHCALL) nonce proposal to allow revocation

Verkle implementers call notes

evmone v0.11.0: full Cancun support

Blocknative transaction pool data archive, > 8TB of data, since November 2019

MEV

PBS Foundation pilot grants: infrastructure, research, data transparency & community education

bloXroute MEV-Boost relays rejecting blocks with OFAC transactions

MEV-Boost community call notes

For Stakers

L1 & L2 (Base) node on $189 ARM64 board, proof of concept

Client releases

Consensus layer:

Lodestar v1.13.0: logs info on connected service URLs, supports voluntary exits by remote signers and performance improvements

Teku v23.12.1: fixes minor bugs in v23.12.0, validator client not compatible with Lighthouse beacon nodes
Execution layer

Geth v1.13.8: hotfix for refusing to start after shutdown during sync; v1.13.7: eth_sendTransaction RPC improved for low-fee txs; v1.13.6: faster gas estimation with 1.5% error ratio & non-deterministic and logging changed to slog (Go logging framework)

Research

Timing games: impact of intentional vs unintentional delays, validators needing longer signature times (e.g. DVT) won’t be able to play timing games as efficiently

Layer 2

Arbitrum One Sequencer downtime & L1 gas pricing issue post-mortem

L2Beat’s risk analysis exit window: available time to exit L2 before an upgrade is executed

Gelato rollup deployment platform: choose OP Stack or Polygon CDK

Once an OG “ETH killer”: Lisk plans migration to OP Stack rollup

Manta Pacific stops publishing calldata to Ethereum; sidechain DA but done with minimal security

20% of mainnet gas is now used for L2 data

Stuff for developers

Hardhat v2.19.3: Solidity v0.8.23 support

Tip: Solidity v0.8.13-21 via-IR code generator can result in different but equivalent bytecode when using dependencies via symlinks, causing verification issues, fixed in v0.8.22

CreateX: contract deployer using CREATE/2/3, factory live on mainnet & L2s

Vyper LSP (Language Server Protocol): errors/warnings, auto-complete, code navigation & hover-over info

Ape v0.7.0: test account key pairs same HD path as Anvil/Hardhat and upgraded to Pydantic v2

Guide to decoding raw EVM calldata

Curta Golf: gas optimization competition, Par NFT for valid entry, King NFT for most optimized

Secureum
RACE # 24: {1703467616799016}

RACE # 0: {1703467616632809} [videos]

Stealth address (ERC5564) library implemented in Zig

Quint: specification language based on TLA

Kumavis: LavaMoat (Javascript supply chain security) and the Ledger supply chain attack

Security

NFT exploits:

NFT Trader (p2p trading) exploit via reentrancy of older contracts, some NFTs recovered

Flooring protocol (fractionalize NFTs) exploit via external multicall

Audit Wizard adds support to create/run Foundry tests for Proof of Concepts

Ecosystem

EF Q3 grantees share $9M in funding

Etherscan refresh NFT image & metadata

In_script_ions explainer: tokens stored in low cost calldata with offchain indexers

Hildobby: in_script_ions dashboard, 90% of Goerli testnet gas this week

Enterprise

EEA Ethereum business readiness report

Onchain stats

Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 20.1 to 289.8 gwei, with 47.7 gwei average

Zero net issuance currently at 21.9 gwei

19k ETH net burn this week

ETHUSD: $2,131 - $2,342, currently $2,314

ETHBTC: currently 0.053 (Flippening at ~0.16)

Notable at app layer

Sablier Airstreams: vesting airdrops via token streams, supports up to 50k recipients

3cities pay pages: payment to an address or ENS using mainnet & L2s

Protocol rewards: Mirror & Sound split fixed fees between creator, referrer & protocol

Coordinape CoLinks (Friend Tech fork) live on Optimism, professional social network

Job Listings

ZK circuits engineer sought by EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team

Regulation/business/tokens

$78M raised for Fairshake super PAC in Q4 to support pro-crypto leaders in 2024 US elections

Congress of Mexico approves decentralized justice as alternative dispute resolution mechanism

General

Rekt: return of ape season

Ledger replacing blind signing by June 2024 with Clear Signing (centralized registry)

Fake Calendly site asks to connect Twitter for account takeover

Privacy & Scaling Explorations: applied Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)

Trail of Bits: Forbidden attack on AES-GCM in secure enclaves to extract ECDSA private key

Upcoming Dates of Note

(new/changes in bold)
Jan 15 – EF’s Next Billion fellowship cohort 4 deadline
Jan 17 – Goerli testnet Dencun upgrade epoch 231680
Jan 30 – Sepolia testnet Dencun upgrade epoch 132608 (assuming no issues)
Feb 2-4 – ETH Cinco de Mayo hackathon (Cholula, Puebla)
Feb 3 – Ethereum Lima Day
Feb 7 – Holešky testnet Dencun upgrade epoch 29696 (assuming no issues)
Feb 23-Mar 3 – ETHDenver BUIDLWeek & hackathon
Mar 13-14 – ETHLatam (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Mar 15-17 – Pragma & ETHGlobal LondonMar 19-21 – ETH Canal (Panama City, Panamá)
Mar 21-24 – ETHTaipei conference & hackathon
Mar 27-30 – ETH Bucharest hackathon & conference
Mar 29-31 – ETH Seoul
Apr 5-26 – ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum (virtual)
Apr 5-7 – EthereumZuri.ch conference & hackathon
May 3-5 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Sydney
May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
May 24-26 – ETHBerlin
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels)
Jul 11-14 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Brussels
Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline (virtual)
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore
Oct 18-20 – Pragma & ETHGlobal San Francisco
Nov – ETHGlobal DevCon