Week in Ethereum News -The Latest Ethereum News and Upcoming Events This Week
Eth News and Links
Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta {1711331430501253})
Latest all core devs – consensus (ACDC) call video. Notes from Christine Kim:
Proposal to set default local block boost to 10%
Pectra upgrade (small fork targeting late 2024)
EIP7251 maxEB (increase max effective balance): added to Pectra
EIP7547 IL (inclusion lists): considered for inclusion in Pectra, review in 4 weeks, doing both maxEB + IL increases upgrade complexity and deprioritizes peerDAS
EIP7659 increase blob throughput proposal to increase to target of 8 & maximum of 16 blobs per block (up from 3/6) over 4 months
Light client proposals: EIP7658 light client data backfill & EIP7657 sync committee slashings
P2P proposals: network shards, IDONTWANT control message & deprecate mplex
EIP7251 maxEB (increase max effective balance):
Breakout call notes
EIP7547 IL (inclusion lists):
Breakout call video and notes: plan to finalize proof of concept (PoC) specs, begin client PoC implementations & interop on a devnet
Terence: changes to support blob transactions within existing IL design
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 30.59% is far too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
Execution layer: Geth 66% majority
Coinbase migrated to ~50% Nethermind
Geth vulnerability disclosed: all EL clients updated to safe RPC limits
Nethermind post mortem of January block processing issue
Consensus layer: Prysm 38% majority
Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe
Layer 1
Eric Conner & Mariano Conti campaign to raise the gas limit to 40M
Calldata.pics: live charts of calldata & blob usage
ethPandaOps:
Attacknet: inject faults into a devnet, uses Kurtosis & Chaos Mesh
Dencun upgrade analysis: open questions on reorg rate, attestation effectiveness & safely increasing blob parameters
Dencun diary: contributor reflections, future priorities & improvement suggestions
Client Releases
Consensus layer:
Lighthouse v5.1.2: hotfix for block lookup duplicate requests and to stop propagation of slashings for slashed attesters
Execution layer:
Erigon v2.59.0: post Dencun fixes
Reth v0.2.0-beta.3: fix critical in static files that could lead to inconsistent storage state
Research
Discouragement attack against centralized validator sets
Layer 2
Optimism fault proofs live on OP Sepolia testnet
EIPs/Standards
EIPs:
EIP7657: Sync committee slashings
EIP7658: Light client data backfill
EIP7659: Stepwise blob throughput increase
ERCs (application layer):
ERC7656: Generalized token-linked contracts
Stuff for developers
Etherscan contract verification updated: multichain verification with single API key and suggest name tags, labels & URL
OpenSea Seaport v1.6: adds Seaport hooks
555 NFT: onchain audio & SVG
Guide to implementing stateful invariant testing with Halmos
Ethernaut-cli (tool box): built on Hardhat tasks, AI requires OpenAI API key; beta
Ec (Rust library): convert bytes into minimal number of blobs
Lodestar Prover: middleware wrapper around light client for dapps
CTFs:
OpenZeppelin Ethernaut CTF 2024 challenges & solutions
Cyfrin Updraft adds web3 DevOps & Assembly & Formal Verification courses
Reminder: Goerli testnet sunsets Apr 17, most validators have shutdown, opportunity to research long-range attacks
Use Sepolia testnet for application layer testing
Security
Super Sushi Samurai $4.8M exploit on Blast via transferring to self to double balance, white hat
Dolomite $1.8M exploit of old contracts, revoke approvals
ParaSwap Augustus V6 contract vulnerability, white hat, revoke approvals
AirDAO LP drained via social engineering
Finding an ERC4626 vault reentrancy, $3M was at risk
Trail of Bits: weAudit (VSCode extension), collaborative note taking & highlight code regions
Ecosystem
Pascal Caversaccio: Ethereum cypherpunk manifesto
ETHGlobal London hackathon winners
Enterprise
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance new leadership team: Karen Scarbrough - Executive Director, Paul Brody - Chairperson and Vanessa Grellet joins board
Google search for an ENS address shows Ether balance
Job Listings
Waku is hiring! Protocol Engineer, Waku SDK Software Engineer & Researcher
IFT/Logos: ZK Researcher (Nomos); ZK Researcher (Vac) & ZK Engineer x2
Certora is hiring: Head of Product, SR-Rust, Compiler Developer & FV Wizard
Devcon: VeChain price, Production Magician & Volunteer Coordinator
👾OpenZeppelin seeks Security Researchers in Canada, Australia, LatAm & USA
TechOps are looking for DevOps. Work on projects such as MakerDAO.
ChainSafe seek a Head of Protocol Engineering
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 16.4 to 121.8 gwei, with 32.4 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 22.8 gwei
7k ETH net burn this week
ETHUSD: $3,107 - $3,757, currently $3,305
ETHBTC: currently 0.052 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
BlackRock USD institutional digital liquidity fund (BUIDL), stable token pays dividends in tokens monthly for qualified investors
Nexus Mutual bundled protocol cover, protection for multiple protocols under a single listing
Regulation/business/tokens
Ethereum is first (“profitable”) chain where burned transaction fees are greater than lifetime issuance
Fortune: SEC issues subpoenas regarding dealings with EF
EF removed warrant canary from website in Feb 26 commit: “received a voluntary enquiry from a state authority that included a requirement for confidentiality”
SEC sanctioned for bad faith conduct in DEBT Box case
Genesis $21M settlement with SEC for charges of unregistered offer & sale of securities
General
Polygon PoS added secp256r1 curve precompile (RIP7212)
GoFetch: side channel attack using data memory-dependent prefetchers in Apple silicon
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
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
Apr 12-14 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
Apr 19-21 – ETH Tallinn hackathon
Apr 23-May 7 – Gitcoin Grants 20
Apr 26-28 – ETHBoston conference & hackathon
May 3-5 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Sydney
May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
May 24-26 – ETHBerlin
May 31-Jun 2 – where to buy Ethereum Name Service hackathon & conference
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
May 31-Jun 5 – ETH Belgrade conference & hackathon
Jun 14 – EF EIP4844 data challenge deadline
Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels)
Jul 11-14 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Brussels
Jul 26-30 – EDCON Tokyo conference
Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline (virtual)
Aug 29-31 – ETHAccra hackathon
Sep 12-14 – how to buy Enjin Coin (Napoli)
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore
Oct 6-8 – ETHRome
Oct 18-20 – how to buy Aleph Zero & ETHGlobal San Francisco
Nov 12-15 – Devcon 7 - Southeast Asia (Bangkok)
Nov 15-17 – ETHGlobal Bangkok hackathon
