Week in Ethereum News, April 2, 2022 - thanks to SpeedRunEthereum for making this issue possible!

#ETH #Ethereum

Eth News and Links

Mainnet execution layer

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

  • shadow fork merge testing finds RAM & timeout issues 

  • difficulty bomb will need to be delayed if public testnet upgrades to PoS are not started by late April

  • Shanghai upgrade planning: append withdrawals in block headers, discussed if EIP1153 (transient storage opcodes) should be included

  • Goerli supply inflation discussion

• Besu v22.1.3: bonsai tries (“super pruning”) no longer experimental, enables faster read & improved storage performance

• Geth v1.10.17: prep for merge and upcoming state layout change

• Erigon v2022.03.02: MDBX upgrade, subscribe to events via websockets

• Erigon v2 video of plans to solve snapshot sync & granularity of history

• Analysis of selfdestruct usage after London upgrade

• Verkle tree explainer for app devs to understand the gas cost changes

Proof of Stake consensus layer

• No more supermajority staking client:

  • Prysm estimated usage down to ~62% 

  • Coinbase, Kraken & Binance estimated usage still over 70%

  • competent staking providers should run every client 

• Beacon APIs v2.2.0

• Nimbus full sync in 42 hours & trusted node sync in 7 hours

PoW switch off (the merge)

• Reminder of what to expect from the merge, fees go to block proposers, withdrawals in Shanghai, 12s block times, no fee reduction, stakers need to run EL client, transition trigger is TTD and don’t need ETH to run a node

• Details of how withdrawals spec has evolved: push-style withdrawals, managed by the consensus layer, processed by the execution layer

• Alchemy’s Kiln testnet faucet

EIPs/Standards

• EIP4944: NFT with wallet

• EIP4950: Entangled Tokens

• EIP4955: NFT metadata standard namespaces extension

• EIP4962: DEST Operation

Layer2

• Optimism calldata compression: how to decompress Layer 2 transactions

• Rollup centric future rather than cross-chain as bridges are single point of failure and introduce contagion risk for the destination chain

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Stuff for developers

• Foundry v0.2.0: faster compilation & testing, call traces, gas reports, interactive debugger, more cheatcodes, smarter fuzzer, TOML config and easy installation; Docker image

• Contract-template: Foundry template with GitHub actions configured

• Foundry-Yulp-Template: Yul+ contracts template, test using Foundry

• Solve ParadigmCTF's JOP challenge using Foundry call traces, cheatcodes and debugger

• Forta Hardhat plugin: add security/operational monitoring for contracts

• Solidity trivia, a thread by Patrick Collins

• Sourcify (source code verification) adds Sepolia testnet support

• Goerli ETH faucet using PoW

• MetaMask Snaps tutorial

• Share mnemonics using Shamir’s secret sharing

Security

• Ronin bridge $600 million exploit, 5 of 9 keys compromised, reportedly via social engineering, not discovered for 6 days; Kelvin’s explainer

• Revest Protocol ~$2 million exploit, reentrancy on ERC1155 minting, protocol soft locked, pause on transfers saved further loss of $1 million

• GearBox protocol vulnerability disclosed, path parsers gave different results, ~$10 million was at risk, fixed, $150k bounty paid

• Rari Capital: Fuse pool vulnerability disclosed, cross-asset reentrancy allowed assets to be borrowed for free, pools fixed via upgrade

• Guide to security incident war rooms: document, test, improve, repeat

Ecosystem

• Fortune correcting misconceptions about the merge: doesn’t create a new token, doesn’t lower fees and no set date

• Flashbots Protect fast mode: frontrunning protection with faster inclusion and more blockspace but can revert

• Vitalik’s retrospective on decisions not taken: simpler Proof of Stake, complex sharding, more EVM features, high level language VM or clone of existing VM and different supply distribution

Enterprise

• Budweiser USA hosted NFT Beerfest for token holders, physical Beer.eth cans (only 300 made)

• Visa creator program: accelerate creator businesses with NFTs

Application layer

• LooksRare integrates Etherscan chat for users to message addresses

• DeFi Saver stop loss options for MakerDAO Vaults

• Instadapp Lite single click strategies

• Polynomial Earn (options vaults) live on Optimism

• Verse (NFTs with built-in ERC20 exchange) in beta

• Element DAO: users & ecosystem contributors can claim non-transferrable governance token, GitHub/Discord claims via zk proofs [Evan is an advisor]

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Job Listings

• Status is Hiring! Libp2p Networking Engineer. All jobs!

• SideShift.ai is hiring a Solidity Engineer. Good job!

• EF’s Privacy & Scaling Explorations team: Technical Project Coordinator, ZKP Security Engineer, L2 Security Engineer & Marketing Ops Manager

• Hifi is hiring a Senior Solidity Engineer & Community/Social Media Manager

• Devcon needs a front-end web developer

• EF hiring Test Engineer to improve testing infrastructure & coverage

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

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Regulation/business/tokens

• Coinbase users in Canada, Singapore and Japan will need to provide recipient info when required by regulations

• EU committees voted to extend AML requirements to crypto, includes unhosted wallets & remove EUR 1000 floor, not final legislative stage

• US derivatives exchange CME Group adds options on Micro Ether futures

• Arthur Hayes: $10k prediction for ETH; switches to 75% ETH/25% BTC

General

• Vitalik: defense of maximalism [posted April 1]

• Chrome zero day exploit, attackers could inject own JavaScript

• KYC considered harmful: fake emergency data requests used to subpoena customer data

• Discord bookmarklet attack: JavaScript gets Discord auth token from local storage and sends via a webhook to the attacker

• Remco’s intro to approximation theory

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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-april-2-2022

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Dates of Note

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

• Apr 4 – DeFi22 conference for central bankers (Zurich - livestream only)

• Apr 7-9 – ETH Portland hackathon

• Apr 8-10 – DAOHacks (hackathon & summit)

• 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 – ETH NYC

• 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 6-9 – MCON 2 (Denver)

• Sep 12-14 – DappCon (Berlin)

• Oct 11-14 – Devcon 6 (Bogotá)

• Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco

• Dec 1-4 – ETHDownUnder (Sydney)

• Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei

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