Week in Ethereum News, March 12, 2022 - thanks to Starbloom Ventures for making this issue possible!

#ETH #Ethereum

Eth News and Links

Mainnet execution layer

• Execution Layer PoW switch off named Paris, site of first major community organized conference

• Nethermind's full pruning, run a pruned node with ~100Gb of storage

• Verkle tree single client testnet demo video

Proof of Stake consensus layer

• PoS implementers call video [first 15 mins]. Notes from Ben Edgington

• Latest What’s New in Eth2

• Kelvin open sources unedited Eth2 Book

• Nimbus v22.3.0: run as a Windows service, config file for command line options and lower CPU, bandwidth & memory usage

• Lodestar v0.34.1: make block proposing flow resilient to errors

• Lighthouse task list before PoW can be switched off

• Prysm quality approach: static analysis checks, unit & fuzz tests, common spec tests and code review; recommends trying a minority client for Kiln

• Wagyu Key Gen v1.2.0: supports generating keys for Kiln & Kintsugi testnets

• Paper on PoS fork choice attacks results in spec patch for an edge case in an equivocation balancing attack; protocol not vulnerable to avalanche attack

PoW switch off

• Kiln testnet launched, transitions to PoS next week.

  • Help test PoW switch off, the biggest change in Ethereum’s history

  • Get Kiln Ether, deploy contracts and send transactions  

  • The amount of testing impacts when PoW switch off is ready

  • Guide to run Geth+Teku, Geth+Lighthouse, Geth/Nethermind+Lodestar or Geth+Prysm

• Kiln v2.1 spec: optimistically import any post-merge block, add QoS for transition config endpoint and clarifications of Engine API spec

• Validator withdrawals meta-spec proposal using a push architecture

• merge-devnet-5 transitioned & switched off PoW, no issues found testing with zombie miners

EIPs/Standards

• EIP4881: Deposit Contract Snapshot Interface

• EIP4885: Subscription Token Standard for NFTs and Multi Tokens

• EIP4886: Proxy Ownership Register

• EIP4895: Beacon chain push withdrawals as operations 

Layer2

• Arbitrum gas pricing change adds momentum and targets 80% full so gas price changes faster but more gently

• DefersiFi adds bridge to Arbitrum

• Argent zkSync mobile wallet out of beta

• Argent X (StarkNet) v3: migrate assets such as briqs from v2

• StarkNet’s proposed account abstraction design

• Optimism’s proposed Cannon fault proof; Norswap’s Cannon explainer

• Optimism multi-client plan to decentralize & remove upgrade keys

• Vitalik’s explainer of the tradeoffs between EIP 4488 (simple calldata gas reduction) and EIP4844 (new data blob transaction type) to drastically lower transaction costs for rollups

---

This newsletter is made possible thanks to Starbloom Ventures!

Starbloom Ventures is an early-stage venture fund founded by Evan Van Ness to invest in the future of web3. 

Our first publicly announced investment is Karma, which is building an on-chain reputation system for web3 participants.  Check out the reputation leaderboards for ENS and Gitcoin delegates. 

---

Stuff for developers

• Hardhat for VS Code extension: Solidity code completion, code navigation, formatting and quick fix suggestions; public beta

• ethers.js update & v5.6.0: adds CCIP Read for ENS resolvers, ENS wildcard and Cloudflare Worker support

• WalletConnect v1.7.4: fix event listener registration

• Multicall3: aggregate results of multiple constant function calls

• PRBProxy v2.0.0 (multiple calls in one transaction): improved gas efficiency

• Chainalysis oracle for sanctions screening in Solidity and JavaScript

• Solwaifu: bytecode ERC20 for minimal gas use, unaudited

• Ethsig-rs: Cloudflare worker enables Sign In With Ethereum for services

• Run a local version of StarkNet Voyager block explorer

• web3-starknet-react: inspired by web3-react

• Damn Vulnerable DeFi (CTF) Foundry version

• evm-puzzles: interactive version, improved bytecode display and evm.codes playground links

• EVM golf challenges by the Ethernaut

• NFT randomness: algorithms & techniques for less predictable minting

• Contract memory explainer

• DevPill.me: blockchain development guide

Security

• Bacon Protocol $1 million reentrancy exploit, bug was found in patch

• The Idols Marketplace vulnerability, rescued ~58 ETH & NFTs that were at risk, reported by samczsun

• EF vulnerability disclosures for execution & consensus layer clients

• Optimism self destruct inflation postmortem

Ecosystem

• 10 million ETH in staking deposit contract

• Wen Merge?  Superphiz predicts June

• Etherscan labels Gnosis Safe contracts created by proxy factory

Enterprise

• Stripe adds crypto support: on/off ramps, KYC & identity verification, fraud prevention and carbon offsetting

Application layer

• Yuga Labs (BAYC) acquires CryptoPunks & Meebits, plans to give NFT holders commercial rights

• Gem (NFT marketplace aggregator) integrates LooksRare

• Quixotic (Optimism) & Stratos (Arbitrum) NFT Launchpad, no-code NFTs for free to mint projects

• Andre Cronje terminating front ends April 3; Yearn unaffected

• DefiSaver’s automated MakerDAO vault payback to avoid liquidation for mStable, Rari and Yearn yield farming strategies

---

Job Listings

• Status is hiring! Communications Director & Creative Strategist. All jobs

• Devcon needs a front-end web developer

• EF’s Privacy & Scaling Explorations team seek a ZKP Security Engineer, L2 Security Engineer and a Marketing Ops Manager

• eVerse is hiring a lead blockchain engineer for its social video platform

• Mark Cuban seeks a web3 front-end developer. Send a work sample to apply.

• Nomic Foundation hiring Rust Tech Lead & Ethereum Tech Lead

Reach developers experienced with Ethereum.  $600 for four issues (~75 character limit), payable in ETH/DAI/USDC to abcoathup.eth on mainnet, Arbitrum or Optimism.  Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

---

Regulation/business/tokens

• US President Biden’s crypto executive order: asks Treasury to make policy recommendations, mitigate systemic & illicit use risks, promote US leadership, equitable & safe access and explore CBDC

• US FINCEN: large scale sanctions evasion using crypto not practicable

• UK FCA orders shutdown of crypto ATMs as none are registered

• Ormeus Coin promoters charged with fraudulent securities offerings

• EmpowerCoin, ECoinPlus & Jet-Coin owners/operators charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering

• Analysis of DEX aggregators

General

• Twitter available via Tor

• The Verge: The many escapes of Justin Sun

• Vitalik: barycentric evaluation tutorial

---

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-march-12-2022

---

Dates of Note

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

• Mar 11-20 – Ethereum Rio

• Mar 15 – deadline for ETH University student project grants

• Mar 15 – Cryptocurrency Class starts (virtual) 

• Mar 16 – submission deadline for Underhanded Solidity Contest

• Mar 17-18 – ETH Austin summit

• Mar 24 – Gitcoin Grants Round 13 ends (support Week in Eth News)

• Mar 29-31 – ETHDubai

• Apr 7-9 – ETH Portland hackathon

• Apr 18-25 – Devconnect (Amsterdam)

• Apr 22 – deadline for EF academic grants round

• Apr 22-24 – ETHAmsterdam

• May 20 – US Fed CBDC discussion paper feedback deadline

• Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague

• Jun 20-23 – NFT.NYC

• Jun 24-26 – ETHNewYork

• Jul 8 – ETH Seattle summit

• Jul 19-21 – EthCC 5 (Paris)

• Aug 19-21 – ETHMexicoCity

• Aug 27-28 – DeFi Security Summit (Stanford)

• Aug 29-31 – Science of Blockchain Conference (Stanford)

• Sep 12-14 – DappCon (Berlin)

• Oct 11-14 – Devcon 6 (Bogotá)

• Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco

• Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei

Did you get forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it weekly

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