Week in Ethereum News, September 18, 2021 - thanks to Celer for making this issue possible!

#ETH #Ethereum

Eth News and Links

Mainnet execution layer

• Upgrade Nethermind nodes to v1.11.2! Unsuccessful attack publishing ~550 blocks with invalid PoWs, small number of Nethermind nodes switched to invalid chain, all affected nodes reorged back to good chain

• Latest core devs call video. Notes from Tim Beiko:

  • PoW switch off difficulty to be hardcoded rather than computed

  • EIPs to include with difficulty bomb delay to be decided on next call; candidates: EIP3860 limit initcode, EIP3855 PUSH0 opcode and EIP3756 gas cap limit

• Erigon v2021.09.03: fixes and tx pool improvements

• Postmortem on August 27 minority chain split

• Geth sunsetting fast sync, in favor of snap sync

Proof of stake consensus layer

• Modelling impact of Altair upgrade, how staking rewards change

• Teku v21.9.1: stops including redundant attestations in blocks, fixes rare block creation exception.  Fully sync with Teku in less than 12 seconds

• Lighthouse v1.5.2: improves head vote rewards and on testnets improves Altair block processing times

• Lodestar client now capable of 100% effectiveness

• Security of BLS batch verification

Layer2

• Arbitrum grew $1.5 billion TVL in two weeks (now $2.6 billion at time of publishing)

• Arbitrum Sequencer offline for ~45 minutes due to large burst of transactions, new transaction submission stopped, though Arbitrum never went down

• The validator strategies (active, defensive and watchtower) that keep Arbitrum trustless

• Optimism EVM equivalence coming in October, so you can deploy your existing Solidity contracts on Optimism with same tooling

• Throughput limit doubled on Optimism to 200k transactions per day

• Protolambda’s Optimistic brainf***: experiment with alternative VMs in an open rollup infrastructure

• Blockchains as layers of specialization: execution (rollups), security (Ethereum) and data availability (data shards)

• Hop supports Arbitrum for USDC & USDT transfers between L2 and mainnet

• Why rollups are a superior long-term execution layer

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This newsletter is made possible thanks to Celer Network!

Celer Network is a layer-2 scaling platform that brings fast, secure and low-cost blockchain applications. Celer cBridge 1.0 is now live on mainnet. Users are now able to use cBridge to instantly transfer tokens across 10 different chains and optimistic rollups. 

Since launch, cBridge has witnessed doubling weekly volume growth and reached $120M total transaction volume today. Use at cbridge.celer.network

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Stuff for developers

• Remix IDE v0.18.0: GitHub integration, plugins activate other plugins

• OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.3.2: security patch for UUPSUpgradeable

• web3.js potential upcoming breaking change: web3.eth.getBlock baseFeePerGas changing from hex to BigNumber  

• Add and switch networks programmatically for your users

• Consolerr (Solidity library): log runtime variables in error messages

• Otterscan v2021.09.02: early access to Sourcify integration

• Guide to storing NFT metadata and SVG images on chain

• EmbeddedMultiCall: similar to Maker’s Multicall but without onchain deployment, written in Yul

• Beginner tutorial: create and sell/buy an ERC20

• CryptoHack courses: introduces players to modern cryptography fundamentals via curated challenges

• ENS looking for dapps to implement NFT as avatar for ENS names

Security

• SushiSwap’s Miso ~860 ETH exploit changed recipient of Kia Sedona NFT proceeds, supply chain attack of front end; funds were returned

• OpenZeppelin UUPS proxy post mortem, uninitialized implementation contracts could be self destructed bricking any proxy using it

• Yearn Vesting Escrow bug, escrow could be reinitialized and bricked after ownership renounced

• Yam Finance post mortem from minting 20 billion YAM in error

• Privacy in DeFi, many trackers on DeFi websites can record Eth addresses and can trivially link to Personally Identifiable Information

• Air dropped tokens with apparent high value revert on approve, directing to a website that sweeps highest held ERC20

• OpenZeppelin security guidelines for contract development

• Guide to using linear programming to calculate optimal parameters so as to determine maximum funds at risk when disclosing vulnerabilities

• Babel, Daian, Kelkar paper on quantifying economic security, including tool for doing so

Ecosystem

• SpruceID selected to develop Sign-in with Ethereum

• 80% of MetaMask users never make it to the edit gas screen

• Update Ledger firmware to v2 to use with latest MetaMask

• Eth.limo, alternative to eth.link to resolve .eth names on browsers

Enterprise

• Infura Transactions public release: meta transactions allow enterprises not to hold Ether, transaction management auto bumps gas fees 

• ConsenSys Quorum Proof of Authority network used for Palm NFTs

Application layer

• OpenSea iOS and Android app, view only, no SVG support yet

• OpenSea implements staff policies to not buy/sell promoted NFTs or use confidential information after staff member traded promoted NFTs

• Smol Puddle: ERC721 marketplace on Arbitrum, decentralized order book using Waku, unaudited alpha with no tests

• NFT Chain rule: a meme’s value is proportional to number of derivatives

• Uniswap Auto Router, splits trades across multiple pools, uses more data, factors gas costs and switches to V2 if better to get best trade

• Curve on Arbitrum

• Tracer Perpetual Pools on Arbitrum

• Ribbon v2 Vaults: decentralized and autonomous, comparable to v1 Vaults performance

• Gnosis Guild’s Zodiac toolsuite for DAOs: Exit (rage quit), Bridge, (time) Delay and Reality (formerly SafeSnap)  

• BrightDAO: token drop per person rather than per address using BrightID with ongoing faucets

• Myco digital social clubs as LLCs co-owned by contributors

• Dope Wars on a StarkNet zkRollup

Regulation/business/tokens

• Update of Gnosis Safe iOS app blocked by Apple due to NFT display

• Coinbase filed to register as a Futures Commission Merchant in the US, to allow it to offer futures and derivatives trading

• US infrastructure bill includes digital asset recipients to verify senders info and report to the government within 15 days

• Franklin Templeton raising for first blockchain fund

• Rolling SAFE: ongoing startup funding, and why Fairmint thinks it fulfills Paul Graham’s high resolution fundraising vision

General

• The Economist: Bitcoin is now a distraction, Ethereum upon which most DeFi applications are built, is reaching critical mass

• Vitalik in Time 100 most influential people of 2021

• Leave Travis CI: secure env variables injected into PR builds, no security disclosure

• Apple patches zero click iMessage bug, update iOS immediately

• CNBC duped into Litecoin pump and dump through fake press release which @Litecoin tweeted

• Decentralised CloudFlare using RLN and rich user identities

• Google and Apple cave to Russia and remove pro-Navalny app after threats to prosecute local employees

• Fflonk a Plonk variant, greatly reduces verifier cost by using Kate commitments to allow multiple polynomials in a commitment

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Job Listings

• OpenZeppelin hiring Open Source Developer

• Rarible is hiring: VP of Product and Product Manager

• yAcademy 1 month internships

• Nethermind 1-3 month internship program

Want to reach people experienced with Ethereum? List your job here. $345 per line (~75 character limit including spaces), payable in ETH (or 345 DAI or 345 USDC) to abcoathup.eth. Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

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Follow @WeekinEthNews to find out what the most clicked links are. Follow @evan_van_ness and @abcoathup to get most of the week’s news in real time.

Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-september-18-2021/

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Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

• Sep 24  – Gitcoin Grants Round 11 ends (support Week in Eth News)

• Sep 30 – NFT Fest Australia (virtual)

• Oct 1-3 – EthAtlanta enterprise-focused hackathon & keynotes

• Oct 18 – ENS online workshop

• Oct 20-21 – LisCon (Lisbon) sold out

• Oct 22-24 – ETH Lisbon hackathon

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OhNoEthereum via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Andrew B Coathup, @Khareem Sudlow