Week in Ethereum News, May 28, 2022 - thanks to SpeedRunEthereum for making this issue possible!

#ETH #Ethereum

Eth News and Links

PoW switch off (the Merge)

• Mainnet-shadow-fork-6 transition to PoS on May 31

• Ropsten testnet reached Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) before Ropsten beacon chain genesis:

  • miner added hash rate & lowered gas limit in malicious stress test

  • TTD being overridden to very large value to prevent merge

  • override TTD after Ropsten beacon chain genesis & Bellatrix upgrade to merge around June 8

• Test the merge with Nethermind

Mainnet execution layer

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

  • two consensus layer Merge releases: Bellatrix followed by setting TTD

  • no decision on delaying difficulty bomb, discussed 2-4 month delay coupled with Paris execution layer Merge upgrade

  • short discussion on EIP4844 (proto-danksharding) & EIP2537 (BLS precompile)

• Ropsten testnet Paris releases:

  • Geth v1.10.18: manually override TTD

  • Erigon v2022.05.08-alpha

  • Nethermind v1.13.1

  • Besu v22.4.2

• OpenEthereum client (formerly Parity) deprecated

• Speed up EIP4844 transaction validation (using KZG proofs), reduces verification time to 3.5ms

• Understanding the crypto in Verkle trees: the difference between bandersnatch and banderwagon

Proof of Stake consensus layer

• Beacon chain 7-block deep reorg: caused by mix of proposer boost upgraded & non-upgraded nodes and timing of late arriving block.  Upgrade your nodes!

• Ropsten beacon chain Bellatrix releases:

  • Teku v22.5.1

  • Nimbus v22.5.1

  • Lighthouse v2.3.0-rc.0

  • Prysm v2.1.3-rc.2

• Checkpoint sync safety: get from trusted source and verify

  • Even Infura being hacked is not much of a risk, but you should still verify your checkpoint

• Analysis of Swap-or-Not Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) proposal

• Lido discussion on limiting share of stake on the beacon chain 

EIPs/Standards

• EIP4353: interface for staked NFTs

• EIP5107: Name-bound Tokens

Layer2

• zk-rollup proposal using Practical Verifiable Delay Encryption for MEV minimization

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Stuff for developers

• Tim Beiko’s Merge reminder: DIFFICULTY opcode will return PREVRANDAO and 12s block times (minus missed slots) rather than ~13s

• ethers js v5.6.8: update BN.js for hex string bug, doesn’t appear to occur in 256-bit numbers

• ethers js cheat sheet

• Foundry: 

  • Forge Snippets for VS Code

  • signature database support

  • guide to using Foundry with Hardhat

• ERC721A v4.0.0: removes OpenZeppelin Contracts dependency, upgradeable version uses EIP2535 (Diamonds)

• MergeReward: contract pays first caller after the Merge by checking difficulty is bigger than 2^64

• Remco’s Yul parser: Rust based

• Web3.py customization options: middleware, custom methods, external modules and custom providers

• dApp Starter using Typescript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, RainbowKit, ethers and wagmi

• RainbowKit mint NFT demo: Next.js NFT minting front end 

• Hop airdrop sybil hunt: Union-Find graph algorithm to find connected subgraph components in O(1) time

• StackExchange to create custom site design for Ethereum

• Patrick McCorry’s crypto class resources (8 sessions)

• Patrick Collins: web3 development using JavaScript (32 hours of video)

Security

• MEV bot exploited for 8 ETH

Ecosystem

• Ethereum roadmap deep dive: dank sharding, history & state management, MEV and the Merge

• ETHGlobal HackMoney finalists

• Sync mainnet in under 24 hours on a $189 ARM board

Enterprise

• GameStop Wallet: Chrome browser extension, mainnet and LoopRing Layer 2

Application layer

• Mirror Writing NFTs: sell and collect posts as NFTs on Optimism

• Zora: create music (with album art), video and SVG NFTs

• Uniswap $1 trillion cumulative trading volume

• Fairmint (tokenized equity) open to all

• Vitalik: evaluate automated stablecoins; can they wind down to zero users and can they charge a negative interest rate

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Job Listings

• Ethereum Foundation seek a generalist ecosystem developer

• Trail of Bits Security Apprenticeship (3 months)

• Ethereum Foundation need a People Operations Lead

• Sourcify (source code verification) need a TypeScript Developer

• Hiring Coordinator wanted by Ethereum Foundation

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

• US Federal Reserve [PDF]: 12% of adults held/used crypto, 11% held as an investment, 2% used for payments and 1% sent to family/friends

• UK financial regulator first crypto sprint

• Stable coin dashboard

• Seth Green’s Bored Ape stolen in phishing scam, ape used in upcoming animated show, claims to maintain IP ownership

General

• US FTC: Twitter fined $150 million for using phone & email provided for security in targeted ads

• US Department of Justice: good-faith security research shouldn’t be charged under Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

• Caulk: lookup arguments in sublinear time, 100x faster than Poseidon

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Permalink for this week’s issue: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-may-28-2022

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Dates of Note

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

• Jun 1 – applications close for OxPARC Halo2 Learning group

• Jun 3 – Merge community call #4

• Jun 8-23 – Gitcoin Grants Round 14

• Jun 10 – Austin DeFi summit

• Jun 10-12 – ETHPrague

• Jun 20-23 – NFT.NYC

• Jun 24-26 – ETH NYC

• Jul 1 – Data Availability Sampling proposals due

• Jul 6-8 – ETHBarcelona

• Jul 8 – ETH Seattle summit

• Jul 19-21 – EthCC 5 (Paris)

• Aug 5-13 – ETH Seoul

• Aug 8-10 – ETHToronto

• Aug 11-14 – ETH LATAM (Buenos Aires)

• Aug 19-21 – ETHMexicoCity

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

• Aug 28 – DeFi San Francisco summit

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

• Sep 1-4 – ETHWarsaw (hackathon & conference)

• Sep 2-4 – ETHSantiago

• Sep 2-28 – ETHOnline

• Sep 6-9 – MCON 2 (Denver)

• Sep 12-14 – DappCon (Berlin)

• Sep 27-29 – Ethereum SP (São Paulo)

• Oct 7-9 – ETHBogotá

• Oct 11-14 – Devcon 6 (Bogotá)

• Nov 4-6 – ETHSanFrancisco

• Nov 18-20 – ETHGlobal Web3 Weekend

• Dec 1-4 – ETHDownUnder (Sydney)

• Dec 2-4 – ETHTaipei

• Dec 2-4 – ETHIndia

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