Week in Ethereum News July 27, 2024

Spot ETH ETFs launched in US and support Roman Storm legal defense

All core devs

• All core devs – consensus (ACDC) #138:
  
  • Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade:
    
    • Pectra-devnet-1 launched, multiple issues being debugged
    • Request types:
      
      • ExecutionPayloadEnvelope proposal: broad support to move request data needed for state transition outside structure that CL clients prune
      • Unify request objects proposal: intend to move forward
    • SSZ StableContainer: no strong push for inclusion, focus on existing Pectra EIPs before considering increasing scope
    • EIP7594 PeerDAS:
      
      • Simplification proposal to drop peer sampling phase from Pectra
      • Discussion on when to activate (currently separate epoch to Pectra)
    • BeaconBlocksByRange v3 proposal

Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade, likely targeting Q1 2025

• PeerDAS breakout #4:
  
  • Teams focused on client stability, optimization & refactoring before launching peerdas-devnet-2
• EOF taxonomy diagram

Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH

• Lido at 29.05%, still too close to 33.3% threshold
• Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
  
  • Execution layer: Geth ~55% majority 
  • Consensus layer: Prysm 35%
  • Any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
• Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe

Layer 1

• EIP7732 ePBS:
  
  • Terence: builder bidding strategies under ePBS market space rules

Research

• Toni Wahrstätter: EIP7716 anti-correlation penalties for diseconomies of scale
• Block builder concentration analysis

Client Releases

• Execution layer:
  
  • Erigon:
    
    • v2.60.5: improvements & fixes
    • v3.0.0-alpha1: all-in-one (execution layer + Caplin consensus layer) node
  • Nethermind v1.27.1: fix improperly enabled pre-warming blocks on OP Stack chains

EIPs/Standards

• EIPs (Ethereum improvement proposals):
  
  • EIP7747: EVM modular arithmetic extensions
  • EIP7748: State conversion to Verkle Tree

Stuff for developers

• Foundry Anvil adds EIP7702 support
• Eclair: Solidity interpreter, focused on contract interactions
• Guide to improving Foundry testing using fuzzing & invariant testing
• RareSkills:
  
  • Solidity try/catch guide, handling low-level call failure
  • Beacon proxy pattern explainer
• Tips:
  
  • Solidity arrays & memory
  • Solady LibString for string concatenation
• Sandwich-resistant AMM: application-layer approach to mitigate atomic sandwich attacks
• Trevm: typestate interface to revm
• Viem v2.18: adds ERC-4337 Account Abstraction extension

Security

• MonoSwap $1.3M stolen on Blast via phishing of developer
• Spectra $550k exploit via arbitrary call to any address

Enterprise

• Toyota research into mobility accounts based on ERC4337 account abstraction

Job Listings

• Aragon: Senior Smart Contract Developer
• EF Protocol Support: generalist to help with ACD, EPF, SoP & more
• EF seek a European/Civil Law qualified Legal Counsel
• Nethermind: Senior Device Security Engineer, Senior DevOps Engineer AMER & APAC, Full Stack Lead APAC, Post-Grad Internship & App Security Engineer

Job listings: $600 for 4 issues (75 char limit).  Pay using 3cities.  Questions? abcoathup at-gmail

Onchain stats

• Fees (via ultrasound.money):
  
  • Gas: 1.1 to 46.7 gwei, 4.5 gwei average; zero net issuance at 23.6 gwei 
  • 15k ETH net issuance this week
• ETHUSD: $3,099 – $3,538, currently $3,265, all time high $4,878
• ETHBTC: currently 0.048 (Flippening at ~0.164)

Notable at app layer

• Coinbase: free conversion from USDT on Tron to USDC on Base for parts of Latin America, Africa & Asia
• Atari X Asteroids live on Base, mint to play
• Zora Sparks: changing display units to 1/1000000 ETH (Szabo)

Regulation/business/tokens

• Spot ETH ETFs launched in US:
  
  • ETF flow dashboard
• UK Financial Conduct Authority fined Coinbase £3.5M for user onboarding with restrictions in place

General

• Support Roman Storm legal defense via Juicebox fundraiser
• Vitalik: circle STARKs (implemented in Stwo & Plonky3)

END OF SERVICE: plan to deprecate Week in Ethereum News

Editor: @abcoathup
Follow @WeekinEthNews for the most clicked links
Permalink: https://weekinethereumnews.com/week-in-ethereum-news-july-27-2024

(new/changes in bold)

• Jul 29-30 – EDCON Tokyo conference 
• Aug 2-4 – Ethereum Argentina conference & hackathon
• Aug 7-9 – Science of Blockchain Conference (New York)
• Aug 15-17 – Ethereum Uruguay hackathon & conference
• Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline virtual hackathon
• Aug 29-31 – ETHAccra hackathon
• Sep 5-8 – ETHWarsaw conference & hackathon
• Sep 9-15 – ETHSafari (Kenya)
• Sep 12-14 – NapulETH (Napoli)
• Sep 13-14 – Ethereum México
• Sep 20-22 – ETHCapeTown hackathon
• Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore hackathon
• Sep 26-27 – ETHMilan conference
• Oct 4-6 – Ethereum Kuala Lumpur conference & hackathon
• Oct 4-6 – ETHRome hackathon
• Oct 17-19 – ETHSofia conference & hackathon
• 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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