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Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta EIP7600)
- 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
- Execution layer: Geth 66% majority
- 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:
- 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: Community Supporter, 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
Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit). Pay using 3cities. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail
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
END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News
Editor: @abcoathup
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Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-march-23-2024
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
- Mar 27-30 – ETH Bucharest conference & hackathon
- Mar 29-31 – ETH Seoul hackathon
- Apr 5-26 – ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum virtual hackathon
- Apr 5-7 – EthereumZuri.ch conference
- Apr 12-14 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
- Apr 16-18 – EY Global blockchain summit (London)
- Apr 19-21 – ETH Tallinn hackathon
- Apr 23-May 7 – Gitcoin Grants 20
- Apr 26-28 – ETHBoston hackathon & conference
- May 3-5 – ETHGlobal Sydney hackathon
- May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
- May 24-26 – ETHBerlin hackathon
- May 31-Jun 2 – ETHDublin hackathon & conference
- May 31-Jun 2 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
- May 31-Jun 5 – ETH Belgrade hackathon & conference
- Jun 14 – EF EIP4844 data challenge deadline
- Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels) conference
- Jul 12-14 – ETHGlobal Brussels hackathon
- Jul 26-30 – EDCON Tokyo conference
- Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline virtual hackathon
- Aug 29-31 – ETHAccra hackathon
- Sep 12-14 – NapulETH (Napoli)
- Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore hackathon
- Oct 6-8 – ETHRome
- Oct 18-20 – ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon
- Nov 12-15 – Devcon 7 – Southeast Asia (Bangkok)
- Nov 15-17 – ETHGlobal Bangkok hackathon
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