Ethereum biweekly: Ecosystem and projects’ updates, opinion and research articles
10th December — 24th December. Holiday edition ◊
Muir Glacier upgrade happening on Jan 1, 2020. Aragon Court pre-activation begins Jan 7. Tornado.cash v2 has been released. Sablier is live on mainnet. Kyber rethinks token model. First DEX went live using Loopring. Fidelity will support Ethereum in 2020.
Dear Ethereans, welcome to the holiday edition of Ethereum biweekly! We have a lot of news about the Ethereum ecosystem for you as usual.
Are you ready for Muir Glacier? The Ethereum network will be undergoing a scheduled upgrade at block number 9,200,000, which is predicted to occur on Wednesday, January 1st, 2020. The exact date is subject to change due to variable block times and timezones. Don’t forget to upgrade your node before December 30th, 2019 to account for the variable block times.
During these two weeks, teams were working assiduously. Community calls took place: Core Devs Meeting, Eth2 Implementers call. Danny Ryan has posted another eth quick update regarding eth2 — the biggest news is that Phase 0 will undergo a spec audit from Least Authority. The Sigma Prime team published Lighthouse Update #20 in which they went through the lessons they learned from running their first public eth2 phase 0 testnet. The Prysmatic Labs team released a bunch of updates from including a network stability overview and a heft update on merged code, pull requests, and issues. Nethermind v1.3.8 released with significantly better peer connections stability, can now sync a full node in a few hours. They also have a Beam Sync prototype. EthereumJS VM v4.1.2 supports Muir Glacier.
Blockchains are slow but the Ethereum ecosystem moves fast! These weeks, many updates on projects build on Ethereum appeared: Aragon 0.8.6 is out just in time for the Holidays! The Aragon Network DAO has deployed the Aragon Network Juror pre-activation contract. The Court pre-activation period is now scheduled to start on January 7th. Tornado Cash version 2 now live. This version contains a number of major features including ERC20 token support. Parity Ethereum v2.5.12-stable and v2.6.7-beta released: Muir Glacier support included for the next Ethereum hard fork. Parity Technologies team has also announced that the Parity Ethereum codebase and maintenance will be transitioned to a DAO ownership and maintainer model. TXRX eth2 research team formed. The Gnosis Safe multisig is now available for public use with a much improved UX and is packed full of features. First DEX went live using Loopring. Liquidity is now flowing into 0x v3. Maker raised $27.5m by selling MKR tokens to Dragonfly Capital and Paradigm last week to fund its expansion into the Asian markets. In line this goal, OKEx has integrated the Dai Savings Rate. The Maker team also published an update on how the control of the MKR token contract will be transferred to the Maker governance system. You can now use MetaMask and Ledger & Trezor devices as Guardians in the Argent mobile wallet app. Set Protocol integrated Compound’s cTokens so sets earn interest. Synthetix is now using Chainlink oracles. Kyber Network team published their protocol upgrade and 2020 plans: Katalyst is a major protocol upgrade for the Kyber Network that aims to drive participation and align ecosystem incentives. Gitcoin grants round 4 announced. MetaCartel Ventures, a for-profit DAO focused on DApp development, was introduced. Sablier, a protocol for “real-time finance” that enables continuous, autonomous and trustless payments is now live. Coinbase partners with DustAid to facilitate Crypto Donations to the NSPCC and others this Christmas. The Decentraland Security Advisory Board was introduced. Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is now supported in the Dether App. You can now use Unlock Protocol to pay for Forbes articles using ETH. Nike received a patent to tokenize shoes on Ethereum. And many more!
The ConsenSys Codefi team published a blog post outlining their principles for robust and include token ecosystems as well as outlining the Activate Platforms standards. Check out also the network activity, Ethereum statistics, DeFi analytics, and more facts and figures from the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem throughout 2019 in their “Ethereum by the Numbers — The Year of 2019” article. Such a sapid reading!
These weeks, Vitalik Buterin wrote two posts on ethresear.ch on sharding: “A meta-execution environment for cross-shard ETH transfers” and “FRI as erasure code fraud proof”. Aditya Asgaonkar explored cross-shard communication in Eth2.0 in his latest article. Background on eth1 very long-term sustainability problems and options were published as well as December call digest. Jim McDonald blogged on “Exploring staking keys” and “Understanding Ethereum staking deposits”. Maker Foundation team members Mariano Conti, head of smart contracts, and Cyrus Younessi, head of the risk, join the Into the Ether podcast to discuss multi-collateral Dai. Taylor Monahan of MyEtherWallet featured on Epicenter. Kain Warwick, the Founder of Synthetix Network, the synthetic asset facility on Ethereum, explored the nuances and obstacles Synthetix has in front of it on POV Crypto. And worth mention, in a recent episode of The Scoop, Fidelity president Tom Jessop said that the firm has “done a lot of work on Ethereum” when asked if they would soon offer custody for the digital currency. More to follow!
Ethereans, the 2010s come to an end, but the progress of Ethereum never stops! Seems like Ethereum 2.0 is so close that you can smell it at this point, right? Happy holidays, everyone!
Development
“The technical side of Ethereum’s efficacy is 100% an engineering exercise”
- Vitalik Buterin
GitHub metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Protocol updates
Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #77 [2019–12–13]
- Istanbul updates, if any
- Muir Glacier Updates
- Testing updates
- Eligibility for Inclusion (EFI) EIP Review
- EIP-1559
- EIP-1962
- EIP-1057
5. EIPIP (EIP Improvement Proposal) Meeting
6. Review previous decisions made and action items
7. Next call
Lots of EIP1559 (fee market change) discussion now that it has been implemented. Decided to go forward with EIP2384 for Muir Glacier, anyone can propose changes afterwards. Also lots of talk about 1962 precompile calls.
Ethereum Muir Glacier Upgrade Announcement:
The Ethereum network will be undergoing a scheduled upgrade at block number 9,200,000, which is predicted to occur on Wednesday, January 1, 2020. The exact date is subject to change due to variable block times and timezones.
Please upgrade your node before Wednesday, December 30, 2019 to account for the variable block times.
Ethernodes.org has kindly provided Istanbul node statistics and a countdown timer located at https://ethernodes.org/muir_glacier.
Etherscan.io has provided a countdown timer located at https://etherscan.io/block/countdown/9200000.
You can monitor the network upgrade in real-time at http://forkmon.ethdevops.io/ (it will be updated shortly before the fork).
What is Muir Glacier?
Muir Glacier is the name given to this network upgrade. Previous network upgrades have been given other names such as Istanbul, Costantinople, and Spurious Dragon.
As an Ethereum user or ether holder is there anything I need to do?
If you use an exchange (such as Coinbase, Kraken, or Binance), a web wallet service (such as Metamask, MyCrypto, or MyEtherWallet), a mobile wallet service (such as Coinbase Wallet, Status.im, or Trust Wallet), or a hardware wallet (such as Ledger, Trezor, or KeepKey) you do not need to do anything unless you are informed to take additional steps by your exchange or wallet service.
As a node operator or miner, what do I need to do?
Download the latest version of your Ethereum client:
- Latest geth client (v1.9.9)
- Latest Parity client (v2.5.12-stable)
- Latest Besu client (v1.3.7)
- Latest Nethermind client (v1.2.6)
- Latest ethereumJS client (v4.1.2)
- Latest Aleth Client (v1.8.0)
NOTE: Harmony (ethereumJ) is now a deprecated client and will not be supporting Istanbul. Besu is a mainnet compatible Ethereum client written in Java.
Where can I learn more about this upgrade?
The Ethereum Cat Herders have put together a blog post which outlines why the team is upgrading the network and what changes are going into the upgrade. You can find that blog post here.
The 1.x Files: December call digest
December 17th tl;dc (too long, didn’t call)
Disclaimer: This is a digest of the topics discussed in the recurring Eth1.x research call, and doesn’t represent finalized plans or commitments to network upgrades.
The main topic of discussion for this call and broader Eth1.x research is the feasibility of stateless ethereum. Last week was largely about organizing and sizing up the various challenges the stateless client concept will need to overcome to be viable, and identifying some tangible objectives on the short-term (3 to 6 months) to focus on.
On the logistical side:
- At this point there is not enough compiled content to warrant the creation of an Eth1x spec repo, but establishing a public repository for continued research will be revisited at the next call/meeting.
- The Eth 1.x working group will be aiming to hold ~3 in-person meet-ups next year, with the first one tentatively-planned adjacent to EthCC, but as France is still on strike this is still uncertain.
- The next call is tentatively scheduled for mid-January 2020. As always, if you are interested in joining the call or the telegram group, please introduce yourself on the ethresearch forums.
- One area that the working group is focusing on is maintaining a high level of communication with the broader Ethereum community. This includes speaking and answering questions at the many Ethereum conferences in 2020, but also includes explainers and these call updates. If you have feedback on Eth 1.x comms, want to find a speaker for an upcoming event, or have any questions, please reach out to @gichiba or @JHancock on twitter or the ethresearch forums.
Technical discussion:
- Statelessness is a spectrum. It would be nearly impossible to design and implement a network change that would make all nodes on Ethereum change to a stateless paradigm. Rather, something less dramatic should happen: New network primitives can be developed that allow for a range of stateful/stateless behavior; with miners and archive nodes remaining “full-state”, while clients and dapp-specific nodes can choose to maintain partial state, or be fully stateless.
- There are a range of issues that need to be considered for this to work:
- Questions about the incentives to keep full or partial state, and what effect those incentives have on the overall topology of the network. For example, there needs to be an incentive for a full-state miner to include witness data with each block, and an incentive to verify witnesses on received blocks. Because Stateless Ethereum introduces a variety of new node types, these incentives (especially ones affecting miners) must be carefully considered.
- It seems like a semi-stateful network would naturally arrange itself like the diagram below, with full-state miners passing and verifying new blocks outwards to partial-state clients, who can still provide witnesses for the stateless clients out on the edges (relying entirely on witnesses). This isn’t a good or bad thing, but the implications of a topology like below need to be explored.
- Witness format has not yet been formally defined. Optimistically, the format for witnesses would be cast in the same mold as the red queen sync protocol for state, and the semantics of witnesses formalized as such. There are huge benefits to a more formal definition of witnesses in the context of client development, and indeed the turbo-geth team is hoping to have witnesses formalized early next year. Block witnesses and their propogation are essential for moving towards the stateless client concept.
- In the more near-term, trinity’s beam sync implements a limited version of state witnesses, and is a good first step toward witnesses on mainnet. Beam sync is not specifically a pre-cursor to stateless client research (rather, it’s a UX improvement for Eth 1.0), but can be seen as an opportunity for network experimentation with witness propagation, especially between different implementations. Currently Besu is experimenting with their own prototype of beam sync. One tangible goal for the near term is getting a common test specification for cross-client sync, which will help with data collection later down the road. This sounds like a job for Hive. As it stands, beam sync is planned to be ready for prime-time (reliably passing around witnesses) in Q2 next year.
- There are complexities around gas and witness sizes that must be addressed for stateless clients to be workable. It’s thought that Wei Tang’s ‘unGas’ proposal is a potential solution, but even though it is not particularly complicated to implement within Ethereum, there are spillover effects (such as necessary changes to compilers, potential smart contract effects, etc) that complicate implementation. All these have yet to be thoroughly investigated.
- The broader goal with this discussion is to focus and organize work in the short-term. This means prioritizing work on witness specification/implementation, beginning to outline some standard testing for cross-client sync, and collecting more data on modeling network requirements for witness propagation.
Check out also The 1.x Files: a fast-sync: Background on eth1 very long-term sustainability problems and options.
Ethereum on ARM update: run a full node on Raspberry Pi 4, NanoPC-T4, and RockPro64 boards.
Are Stateless Clients a dead end?
Eth2.0 Call #30 [2019/12/19]
- Testing and Release Updates
- Client Updates
- Research Updates
- Highlights from Client Survey
- Danny: I haven’t had a chance to go through these 😬
5. Networking
6. Spec discussion
eth2 quick update no. 6
Posted by Danny Ryan on December 19th, 2019
- Announcing comprehensive Phase 0 spec audit by Least Authority
- Sigma Prime launched public Lighthouse testnet with 16k+ validators and mainnet spec configuration, pushing the envelope on eth2 scale
- Nimbus integrates native nim-libp2p to be launched in testnet reboot next week
- beaconcha.in adds support for Lighthouse in open-source block explorer
- Eth2 spec version v0.9.3 released, stabilizing core spec. v0.10.0 release scheduled for January to integrate new BLS standards
Lighthouse Update #20: Lessons learned from our first public testnet. Testnet rebirth in 1–2 weeks.
Seeking an Experienced Rust Developer: A call for an experienced Rust developer to join the team.
Ethereum 2.0 Development Update #41 — Prysmatic Labs. A bunch of updates from the PryLabs team including a network stability overview and a heft update on merged code, pull requests, and issues.
Phase 0 spec v0.9.3
Light Client Task Force Call #2: Notes from the last light client call.
Nethermind 1.3.7 released (a major improvement over 1.3.6) with significantly better peer connections stability and improved early-stage fast sync (header + bodies + receipts) by 50–600%. Much lower memory footprint with significant ethash and tx pool improvements.
Development tools
Introduction to Ethereum Studio
Learn the basics of Ethereum with Ethereum Studio, a web-based IDE where you can create and test smart contracts, and build a front end for them.
Solidity v0.6 — “Changes include explicit virtual and override keywords in inheritance, support for try/catch, splitting the fallback function into a receive Ether function and an actual fallback function and limitations on how the length of an array can be changed.” ABIEncoderV2 no longer experimental. Yul optimizer automatically activated.
Truffle v5.1.5 compatible with Solidity v0.6.
Easier deployment with Truffle Teams with Metamask and hardware wallets.
AirAssembly v0.2, language for STARKs.
MythX: the journey from slow Python tool to EVM code analysis platfom.
Decentralized source verification repository for better wallet confirmations.
Loredana released an early version of Pipeline, visual IDE:
3 approaches to permissioning in Solidity.
Test your code from Java using web3j-unit.
EY’s ERC20 token testing service is in public beta.
How EY reduced Nightfall’s gas costs so drastically by using logs.
Remix IDE v0.9.2.
Ethcode v0.8, now supports Vyper.
0age: the more minimal proxy.
Steve Marx: destroying the indestructible registry.
Blocknative’s onboard.js to easily support many wallets.
Runtime Verification: K vs Coq as language verification frameworks.
Deep dive into eip1167 minimal proxy contract.
Automated deploy to ENS and IPFS.
Governance and new standards proposals
EIP2442: LOGQUERY(x) opcode.
Synthetix planning to decentralize its governance in 2020.
Deversifi launches its necDAO on DAOstack with 17k ETH in the DAO.
Extending MolochDAO’s features: TheLAO, Moloch and MetaCartel to standardize for venture-style investments and accommodation of security token standard.
Maker’s governance security module puts a 24 hour delay on all governance decisions. This was in response to Micah Zoltu’s “how to turn 20m into 340m in 15 seconds.” The 0 delay was explicitly a tradeoff as MCD launched to ensure that Maker could respond nimbly to any problems.
Vocdoni: an app for anonymous, onchain voting.
Check out Istanbul hard fork wiki.
Istanbul was approached with a fork-centric approach, where EIPs were proposed for the fork, reviewed then accepted. This resulted in many EIPs being proposed, in various states of readiness. This approach limits the amount of review time per EIP.
Future forks will ideally follow an EIP-centric approach outlined here. This approach will allow EIPs to mature independently of forking schedule. When mature, they can be added to the next scheduled fork.
- Endorsement (by major clients, developers and community stakeholders)
- Implementation (merged into major clients)
- Testing
- Acceptance (Allocate to a specific hard fork)
Istanbul brings upgrades that will:
- Align the costs of opcodes with their computational costs and improve denial-of-service attack resilience
- Make layer 2 solutions based on SNARKs and STARKs more performant.
- Enable Ethereum and Zcash to interoperate
- Allow contracts to introduce more creative functions.
Specifically:
EIP-152 Adds the ability to verify the Equihash PoW within an ethereum contract. This will enable a relay and atomic-swap transactions between Zcash.
EIP-1108 Makes zk-SNARKs cheaper, allowing for cheaper scaling and privacy applications to be built. See Matter labs, Aztec, Rollup and Zether for examples.
EIP-1344 Adds a way for contracts to track the correct chain. To be used by contracts, especially those used by layer 2 (state channels, plasma), to follow the correct layer 1 chain, especially during a hard fork.
EIP-1884 Changes the cost of some EVM opcodes to prevent spamming attacks and to balance blocks better. The amount that must be paid for each operation in ethereum usually matches the computation required for that operation. This change increases some costs of some opcodes that are computationally intensive but currently cheap.
EIP-2028 Makes zk-SNARKs and zk-STARKs cheaper by reducing the cost of calling data within transactions. This will make layer 2 solutions able to increase throughput.
EIP-2200 Changes the calculation of cost of storage in the EVM and will enable contracts to introduce new functions including re-entry locks and same-contract multi-send.
The next fork is called Muir Glacier and will address the difficulty bomb.
Ecosystem updates
Activate Token Launch Standards: The ConsenSys Codefi team published a blog post outlining their principles for robust and include token ecosystems as well as outlining the Activate Platforms standards.
The ConsenSys 2019 Annual Report: A year of enterprise exploration, increased composability, and ethically growing open source. Check out highlights from ConsenSys’ 2019.
Ethereum by the Numbers — The Year of 2019: Check out the network activity, Ethereum statistics, DeFi analytics, and more facts and figures from the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem throughout 2019.
Can Ethereum rollups beat Visa’s 2000 transactions per second? Iden3’s analysis of post-Istanbul Ethereum throughput limits with rollup.
How Infura manages nodes with VIPnode.
Networking: Waku spec v0.2 and Whiteblock’s no tag back gossiping.
The First Virtual NFT Holiday Advent Calendar: Fill your wallet with digital NFTs this Christmas.
2019 Was The Year of DeFi (and Why 2020 Will be Too): How Ethereum will create an open financial system with new financial assets and protocols.
Hyperledger Besu v1.3.8.
Private voting and whistleblowing using Semaphore.
Atomic Ethereum Blockchain Operations.
How To Sync an Ethereum Node via Tor.
4 Things You Missed in Nike’s Ethereum-based Patent.
The Path Towards an Under-Collateralized DeFi.
PLONK Benchmarks — 2.5x faster than Groth16 on MiMC.
The SKALE Network: Why Randomness, Rotation, and Incentives are Critical for Secure Scaling (Part 1).
What is Chai? An Instant DAI Savings Account Powered by Maker.
CHAI Unipool DeFiZap Tutorial.
Projects updates
0x:
A Review of Smart Contract Upgrades Since 0.6.
Security Disclosure: Aragon 0.6 Voting (“Voting v1”).
Aragon Court pre-activation begins January 7th: ANJ, the first Aragon Network protocol token, is launching January 7th.
The Aragon Association in 2020: The Aragon Association will:
- Simplify governance
- Focus heavily on adoption
- Fund fewer teams, but work with them closely
Augur Weekly — Impeachment, Debate, and How to Double your Money: A Look at the Week in Political Betting, Augur News, and More.
Helping You Manage, Grow, and Stay Informed About Your Crypto Holdings.
Introducing portfolios on Coinbase Pro.
Coinbase partners with DustAid to facilitate Crypto Donations to the NSPCC and others this Christmas.
Orchid (OXT) is now available on Coinbase.
Technical updates — 18 Dec, 2019: The latest releases, improvements and fixes from the Decentraland engine room.
Bring your LAND to life: Enjoy the very best creations from the Decentraland community.
Vote for your favourite Creator Contest scene: Decide which 300 scenes go before the judges.
Introducing the Decentraland Security Advisory Board: Governance in a decentralized world.
Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is Now Supported in the Dether App.
The District Weekly — December 21st: News and updates from the district0x Network.
The District Weekly — December 14th.
district0x Dev Update — December 10th, 2019: Development progress and product changes from district0x.
In the Lab with ConsenSys: Global Communities.
Gitcoin Grants Round 4 Announced: $200k in matching will be given out in Q1 of 2020 to Ethereum projects that have grants listed on the Gitcoin website. $75,000 will be allocated to a “community pool” and $125,000 will be allocated to an “infrastructure pool”.
Announcing the Gnosis Safe Multisig Launch: The successor to the original Gnosis multi-signature wallet is now available for public use.
Network Effects: Gnosis Safe and Pepo, the new dapp for the crypto community: How a new Ethereum dapp builds on the Gnosis Safe contracts
Graphene Contributor Spotlight: Isaku Yamahata: Graphene v1.0.1 was just released!
November Roundup: Keep’s EIPs in Istanbul, Cross-Chain Group tBTC demo in NYC (membership applications are open!), tBTC and Beacon tech updates, and new team members.
Katalyst: Kyber Protocol Upgrade and 2020 Plans.
Over the course of 2019, Kyber has consolidated itsposition as the leading liquidity protocol for the decentralized ecosystem. Besides hitting the key milestones of over $400M and 2M ETH traded, and 500K on-chain trades, the team has built a solid ecosystem, with both the number of integrated DApps and Kyber-focused liquidity providers growing rapidly.
In 2020, they intend to follow up on the progress with 3 key areas of focus in order to further drive value for the decentralized ecosystem:
- Cementing Kyber’s position as the liquidity layer for DeFi by having the majority of takers and makers using Kyber as their single on-chain endpoint.
- Executing on Katalyst — a major protocol upgrade to encourage participation for key stakeholders in the Kyber ecosystem.
- Expanding value creation options for KNC (Kyber Network Crystal) holders, and putting them at the heart of Kyber’s governance through the KyberDAO.
Eidoo Wallet Integrates Kyber for Seamless Token Swaps: Swap ERC20 tokens such as EDO, KNC, USDC, DAI directly in your wallet!
Kyber Ecosystem Report #9. Another great ecosystem report from the Kyber team that includes network stats for October, thoughts on the total value locked metric, Kyber DeFi updates and much more!
Stats for October 2019:
- 6,387 unique addresses in November (up 12% over October) have swapped with Kyber. Note: integrations like Nuo and Fulcrum count as single addresses and therefore their users are not included in this unique address figure.
- 44,711 total trades for November for an average of 1,490 trades per day (8% increase over October)
- 3,440 first time addresses that had previously never interacted with Kyber (up 5% over October)
- 3,166 addresses trading multiple times throughout November (up 21%)
- $1,140 (or 7.0. ETH) average size per trade (up 36%)
Volumes continued their strong growth into November in both USD and ETH terms with a 47% increase in USD and 62% in ETH terms:
Start Building on Binance Chain Now 😍 New CryptoZombies Lesson. After completing the new CryptoZombies lesson on Binance Chain, you’ll be able to start building on Binance right away — create your own token, freeze and unfreeze tokens, place orders on Binance DEX, plus more — using Loom Network’s Transfer Gateway. Interoperability is already operable.
The Transfer of MKR Token Control: A Giant Leap Toward System Decentralization.
Maker Foundation Announces $27.5 Million MKR Sale to Dragonfly Capital Partners and Paradigm.
OKEx Becomes the First Major Platform to Integrate Maker’s Dai Savings Rate.
Executive Vote: Activate the Governance Security Module.
MEW’s Days of Giving Continue with Internet Archive and Lupus Foundation.
Cool Earth, Save the Children, and Mercy for Animals are on MEW’s Giving List.
MEW’s 12 Days of Christmas Giving.
Development Update: New DDO Structure: To prepare for v2 (compute-to-data), the team has modified the DID documents in all core Ocean components.
What the team Learned From INBLOCKS2019.
Transitioning Parity Ethereum to OpenEthereum DAO.
Introducing the Substrate Builders Program.
An Update on Parity’s Ethereum Foundation Grant Progress. Jutta Steiner from Parity runs through the progress the team has made since receiving a $5mil grant from the Ethereum Foundation.
Parity Ethereum v2.5.12-stable and v2.6.7-beta: Muir Glacier support included for the next Ethereum hard fork.
Components of The Status Network: Developer Tools — Embark & Subspace.
Components of The Status Network: Infrastructure — Vac, Nimbus & libp2p.
How deletes affect performance with CockroachDB.
Hosting Multiple Storage Nodes on the Storj Network.
Building dynamic updates on websites using Streamr.
An Open Letter to the Community.
Smart Contract Patterns: Scilla Procedures.
Other project’s updates:
Tornado Cash v2 Now Live: This new version contains a number of major features including ERC20 token support (DAI live now, more coming later), higher deposit limits, cheaper withdrawals, ENS support and much more.
First DEX Goes Live Using Loopring: WeDEX is the first working DEX on the Ethereum mainnet to use zkRollup technology in order to scale.
Loopring Opens Staking Window: In this update, Loopring runs through how LRC staking will work on the protocol and details the “golden staking window”.
Introducing Your new Argent Security Centre: You can now use MetaMask and Ledger & Trezor devices as Guardians in the Argent mobile wallet app.
Argent Integrates WalletConnect: Users of the Argent mobile wallet can now use Uniswap, PoolTogether and many more Dapps thanks to this integration.
Iden3: Istanbul, zkRollup, and Ethereum throughput limits: an analysis.
Celer light client SDK, runs in the browser.
Sablier is live on mainnet. It is a protocol for “real-time finance” on Ethereum that enables continuous, autonomous and trustless payments.
Synthetix inflation changed to exponential decay in the inflation rate with a 2.5% terminal rate
Introducing cTokens on TokenSets: Set Protocol introduced the first Set that contains a cToken this week — the ETH RSI 60/40 Yield Set. The main benefit of cToken integration is that users can now earn interest while the Set is positioned in the stable-asset.
RealT’s first property sells out.
Undercollateralized lending as next DeFi trend?
Kong.cash releases their whitepaper. As seen at Devcon, Kong is physical crypto-cash.
TXRX Research Team Announced: This new team is a merger of the existing Artemis and Harmony eth2 research teams. There will also be a steering panel that includes key Ethereum researchers and developers.
Zerion Android App Released: The app lets you track various aspects of your DeFi portfolio including Maker vaults, Compound loans, TokenSets performance and much more.
Introducing Compare by ConsenSys Codefi: Now you can easily explore the risk-return tradeoffs of various DeFi apps by using the DeFi Score app.
Forbes Integrates Unlock Protocol: You can now use Unlock Protocol to pay for Forbes articles using ETH!
Ethereum Marketing DAO December Update: A bunch of updates from the Marketing DAO team including updates on all of the working groups and what’s going on behind the scenes.
DeFi Prime Adds Holdings Tab: You can now keep track of your TokenSets and Uniswap Liquidity Pools by using DeFi Primes portfolio tracker.
Introducing MetaCartel Ventures: MetaCartel Ventures is a for-profit DAO focused on DApp development. The DAO aims to bring code, law, and community together.
The LAO joins forces with Moloch DAO and MetaCartel: The alliance will begin to standardize DAO-related smart contracts in order to power the next-generation of limited liability autonomous organizations (LAOs).
Synthetix is now using Chainlink oracles.
Neon District: Every blockchain game is an MMO.
Burner Machine: Spin up 3 hours of an anonymous cloud desktop for $1 in crypto.
Check biweekly updates by Paradigm:
Opinion and research articles
A meta-execution environment for cross-shard ETH transfers: Vitalik Buterin on sharding.
FRI as erasure code fraud proof by Vitalik.
Exploring Cross-Shard Communication in Eth2.0 by Aditya Asgaonkar.
Efficient Proofs for Pairing-Based Languages by Benedikt Bünz, Mary Maller, Noah Vesely.
Reinforcement Learning by Vanessa Bridge, Research Engineer, at PegaSys.
Simple Explanations of Arithmetic Circuits and Zero-Knowledge Proofs by Hadas Zeilberger.
Recursive Zero-Knowledge Proofs: A Comprehensive Primer.
On ethresear.ch:
- Moving ETH between shards: the problem statement. As per this week’s implementers’ call, this is one of the two main things Vitalik is currently working on.
- An alternative low-degreeness proof using polynomial commitment schemes. Dankrad is also working on data availability.
- Discussion continues on the Remaining Questions on State Providers and Stateless Networks in Eth2.
- Shout-out to the PegaSys Eth2 Applied Research team (a different R&D team from TXRX introduced above: yes we have two!) for an Account-Based Anonymous Rollup proposal out today. Although not stated, doing this as an execution environment in Eth2 is in view.
Podcasts and videos
Into the Ether’s 100th Episode Livestream on Into the Ether: In celebration of Into the Ether’s 100th episode, the team hoped on a livestream with some great Ethereum community members. They talked about DeFi, Eth 1.x, Eth2, narratives, the community and much more.
MakerDAO Multi-Collateral Dai: Mariano Conti and Cyrus Younessi on Into the Ether: Maker Foundation team members Mariano Conti, head of smart contracts, and Cyrus Younessi, head of risk, join the podcast to discuss multi-collateral Dai. They talk about the recent transition from single-collateral Dai to multi-collateral Dai and how they think it’s gone. They then give an overview of all the new features that come with MCD including the Dai Savings Rate. They then discuss how the system can now add different collateral types and would handle black swan events. This is an excellent overview of the Dai system.
James Young: Incremental Decentralization with Abridged on Into the Ether: James Young, co-founder of Abridged and MolochDAO joins the podcast. James has been in the Ethereum space for many years and has insightful views on a wide range of topics. They talk about what they are building at Abridged in a hope to onboard new Ethereum users through the concept of incremental decentralization. They also talk the state of layer 2 solutions as well as the rise of DAOs. This is a really fun conversation about Ethereum.
The Story of MyEtherWallet & MyCrypto on Epicenter: Many people find that the crypto-finance space is quite difficult for non-technical people to understand and interact with the technologies. Some projects and people have made tremendous progress in creating tools and interfaces that allow a broader audience to participate, speculate, and learn.
Taylor Monahan started MyEtherWallet as a side project in 2015, only for it to grow into one of the significant pieces of software people used to participate in the 2017 ICO boom. She has since “design-forked” the codebase and created MyCrypto, an open-source tool for generating ether wallets, handling ERC-20 tokens, and interacting with the blockchain with a clean and intuitive design.
Topics discussed in the episode:
- Taylor’s background, and how she got into cryptocurrency
- What her experience was with Ethereum so early in the projects lifecycle
- How Reddit comments helped guide the feature list in the early days of MyEtherWallet
- How the DAO hack got her working full time on MyEtherWallet
- Building a project before “founding a company”
- Experiencing the ICO boom as the main wallet used to participate in token generation events
- Where MyCrypto is at today
- How Taylor wants MyCrypto to change the user experience in cryptocurrency
- Taylor’s view on centralized exchanges and view of the future
DeFi Zap with Nodar on Interaxis Podcast: In This Podcast, the team is breaking down DeFi Zap, what’s it’s about, how it can be used and what’s its real purpose.
Behind the Scenes of Synthetix with Kain Warwick on POV Crypto: Kain Warwick is the Founder of Synthetix Network, and synthetic asset facility on Ethereum. Synthetix is known for their powerful community, and their SNX token. Both have grown very quickly in the last few months, and have captured a lot of attention. Kain has been on a number of podcasts and interviews, but they all generally flow the same. This interview is different. They tackle some of the harder questions about Synthetix and explore the nuances and obstacles Synthetix has infront of it.
Scaling Ethereum and Beyond with Justin Drake.
Binance vs Kyber:
Check out Devcon5 videos!
Upcoming events
Jan 1 — Augur v1 cutoff
Jan 1–30 — EthIndia online hackathon
Jan ~2 — Muir Glacier upgrade to delay difficulty increase
Jan 6–20 — Gitcoin take back the web online hackathon
Jan 6–21 — Gitcoin grants quadratic matching
Jan 31 — deadline for EU ledger 200k euro grants for blockchain startups
Feb 14–16 — ETHDenver
Mar 3–5 — EthCC (Paris)
Mar 29-Apr4 — EthLagos
Apr 3–7 — Edcon (Vienna)
Finance
Information from Etherscan.io (December 24th, 2019):
Exploring staking keys
by Jim McDonald
When creating a staking deposit for Ethereum 2 two keys are used to generate the information in the deposit agreement: a validator key and a withdrawal key. This article discusses what these keys are, what they are used for, and the levels of protection that should be applied to each of them.
Ethereum 2 keys:
Ethereum 2 keys are similar to Ethereum 1 keys in principle, in that they are generated using elliptic curve cryptography. However, to enable some advanced operations, in Ethereum 2 the parameters of the curve used to generate the keys is different. As a result, Ethereum 1 keys cannot be used in Ethereum 2. This means that until wallet software and hardware are updated to provide support for Ethereum 2 keys, users will need to be more aware of the keys they generate, how best to safeguard them, and the consequences if they are lost or stolen.
The validator key:
The validator key is used to sign all on-chain operations that the validator carries out. These include proposing blocks and attesting to others’ blocks (hereafter just called “attesting” for brevity).
It is not possible to use the same validator key for different validators. If multiple deposits are made with the same validator key they will accrue to a single validator (but bear in mind that any balance over 32Ξ will be ignored; see this post for details).
Loss/theft of the validator key:
If the validator key is lost the validator can no longer attest. Over time, the validator’s balance will reduce as the validator is punished for lack of participation in the consensus process. Eventually the validator’s balance will be reduced to 16Ξ, at which point it will be ejected from the validator pool. The remaining balance will become eligible for withdrawal after a delay of just over 1 day.
If the validation key is stolen the thief could carry out one of two malicious actions. The first would cause the validator to exit the validation pool through a process known as “voluntary exit”; a voluntary exit results in the validator ending its validation work and its entire balance being returned, becoming eligible for transfer.
The second, more extreme, action would cause a slashing condition. Describing the full technicalities of slashing is beyond the scope of this post, but if attesting is equivalent to voting then a slashing condition can be created by voting twice in the same election for different candidates. When the network detects this condition it will eject the validator from the validator pool through a process known as “forced exit”, and also apply a slashing penalty to the balance before returning it. The cost of the penalty is dependent on a number of network factors, but could be anything up to the entire balance.
The withdrawal key:
The withdrawal key is used to sign any request made by a user to transfer funds from the validator once it has exited (either voluntarily or forced).
It is possible to use the same withdrawal key for multiple deposits. In general it is better to have a single withdrawal key, unless the keys are stored in separate locations or be otherwise dispersed.
Loss/theft of the withdrawal key:
If the withdrawal key is lost there is no way to obtain access to the funds held by the validator. The funds can continue to be used by the validator, attesting and earning rewards, but without any way of retrieving the balance there is little point to do so beyond an altruistic desire to support the network.
If the withdrawal key is stolen the thief can transfer the validator’s balance, but only once the validator has exited. If the validator key is not under the thief’s control there is a possibility that a user could quickly exit the validator and subsequently transfer their funds before the thief can do so.
Protection and management of keys:
The very different functions of the validator and withdrawal keys result in very different security recommendations.
Validator keys must be available for signing at all times, which limits their protection via the traditional means of taking them offline. Validators currently have their own key management systems, however over time it is expected that the development and use of remote signers and standardized wallets will allow the keys to be stored more securely, along with the possibility of using hardware wallets that never disclose private keys. Backups of validator keys should also be available for recovery in relatively short order, to counteract the fact that an offline validator will lose funds all the time it is not attesting.
Withdrawal keys should be stored in a secure location, preferably offline and if not then behind multiple layers of encryption. There is no immediate requirement for withdrawal keys to be available as they have no use until transfer operations are added to Ethereum 2. Multi-party security systems such as Shamir’s secret sharing can be used to provide additional security for the key(s) if required.
As new wallets and custody schemes become available for Ethereum 2 their usefulness for storing validator and withdrawal keys can be evaluated using the above information. Attestant will assess these as they become available, so watch out for updates in the new year.
Understanding Ethereum staking deposits
by Jim McDonald
Ethereum 2 uses proof of stake to secure its network, but to do so requires each active participant (known individually as a validator) to have funds to stake. Ethereum 1 accounts hold funds, and these funds needs to move to Ethereum 2 validators, where they can be staked.
The validator carries out the work of proposing blocks and attesting to others’ blocks (hereafter just called “attesting” for brevity), whereas the staker provides the funds to stake. They may be the same or different entities; best practice recommends that these roles are separated for highest security of funds.
The process of sending funds from Ethereum 1 to Ethereum 2, along with defining the staker and validator, is known as staking and the first step of staking is to send a staking deposit transaction on Ethereum 1. The staking deposit transaction contains the details of who is staking, who is validating, how much is being validated etc. and is cumulatively known as a deposit agreement. This article looks at staking deposits in detail, and explains the process of using Ether on Ethereum 1 to fund a validator on Ethereum 2.
Creating the deposit agreement:
The deposit agreement defines the roles of the staker and validator, and forms the basis of the transaction sent to start the deposit process.
Validator identification:
Validator identification is required to ensure the deposit is credited to the correct validator. The validator identifies themself by adding their public key to the agreement:
Note that the validation identification uses an Ethereum 2 public key rather than Ethereum 1 public key, as it is used in Ethereum 2 to identify the validator.
Amount staked:
The amount staked needs to be included to ensure that both parties (and both networks) agree on the amount to be staked. The staker adds the amount they wish to stake to the agreement:
Withdrawal identification:
Withdrawal identification is required to provide the account to which withdrawals from the validator are sent. The staker identifies the withdrawal account by adding a manipulated public key to the agreement:
- The public key is hashed to reduce its size; and
- The first byte of the hash is replaced with a type identifier (currently just ‘0’).
Note that the withdrawal identification uses an Ethereum 2 public key rather than Ethereum 1 public key, as it is used in Ethereum 2 when it comes time to withdraw the stake. As such, it must be supplied directly by the staker rather than recovered from the transaction signature as is commonly the case with Ethereum 1 smart contracts.
Also note that if the validator and staker are the same entity different keys should be used for validator identification and withdrawal identification. This allows the withdrawal key to be held safely offline until the staker is ready to withdraw their funds.
Validator authorization:
Validator authorization is required to show that the validator agrees to validate within the terms of the agreement. The validator provides their authorization by signing the agreed terms with the same key as used to provide the validator identification, and adding that signature to the agreement:
Submitting the deposit agreement:
At this point the deposit agreement has four pieces of information in it: the validator identification, the amount to be staked, the withdrawal identification and the validator authorization. If the staker wishes to proceed with the deposit they send a transaction to the Ethereum 1 deposit contract containing the agreement and the funds:
There are two important points that need to be made here:
- There is no explicit authorization in the deposit agreement by the staker. Instead, the staker adds their signature to the transaction prior to broadcast, providing the required authorization; and
- The transaction must be accompanied by the exact amount of Ether stated in the deposit agreement; any other amount will cause the transaction to be rejected by the deposit contract.
The transaction is received and processed by the Ethereum deposit contract; if all is in order the deposit contract creates a deposit receipt event. This deposit receipt event contains all of the data in the deposit agreement, and acts as notification that the deposit contract has accepted the deposit agreement and received the appropriate funds.
Activating the deposit agreement:
Activating the contract moves the focus from Ethereum 1 to Ethereum 2.
Ethereum 2 listens to updates on Ethereum 1 for deposit receipts. Each Ethereum 2 node includes the latest deposit receipts in its proposed blocks; as these blocks are finalized the deposit becomes part of the overall state of Ethereum 2. Deposit receipts are stored on Ethereum 2 as validator state.
The validator, in turn, listens to updates on Ethereum 2 for changes in validator state. When it sees an entry in the validator state with its public key it knows the deposit has occurred on Ethereum 1 and been recognized by Ethereum 2, and it is time to start its work of attesting.
The full process:
Putting the submission and activation pieces together provides the full process of staking Ethereum 1 network funds on Ethereum 2, with information from the validator and staker passing from Ethereum 1 to Ethereum 2 and allowing secure activation of the validator with the appropriate funds:
Nuances:
Although they are not shown, this process involves a number of delays for added security. For example, there is a delay between Ethereum 2 finding a deposit receipt event and adding its information to the validator state, to ensure there is effectively no chance of an Ethereum 1 network chain reorganization that would invalidate the deposit.
Validated: Staking on eth2 #0
The latest on the inner workings of eth2 and on the concrete requirements, incentives and experience of being a validator.
This article will provide a high-level overview of eth2 which will form the basis for a series on all aspects of eth2 relevant to validators. eth2 has been in the works for a long time now and has improved dramatically over the years. What were initially separate sharding and Proof of Stake (PoS) efforts managed via smart contracts has transmogrified into a highly interconnected design which yields dramatic improvements regarding efficiency, scalability and security.
The phases:
As parts of eth2 have become more interconnected, other pieces have been separated out into phases to allow for better pipelining of the different aspects of eth2. Phase 0 is nearing launch as developers put the finishing touches on the client software. Meanwhile, the specification for Phase 1 is being completed, and Phase 2 is under active R&D.
- Phase 0 is concerned with the beacon chain, the core of eth2, which manages validators and the coordination of shards. The beacon chain is the source of ground truth from which all other aspects of eth2 are bootstrapped.
- Phase 1 builds upon this by allowing data to be put into shards. The implementation complexity of this component is much smaller than the others as phase 0 lays most of the ground work for the shards.
- Phase 2 adds execution to eth2 basically upgrading eth2 from a robust database to a fully decentralised computing platform.
What exactly is Phase 0?
As mentioned previously, the beacon chain tracks the state of both the set of validators and the shards. In practice this means that if you (periodically) follow what is happening on the beacon chain, you will know enough to verify anything said to be happening within eth2. Trust, but verify.
In order for a PoS system to function, there needs to be consensus on who the validators are, and on what each of their stakes are in order to know how much their votes are worth, and to appropriately reward and/or punish them for their behaviour. The beacon chain also manages the sharding aspects of eth2 by assigning validator duties in the shards as well as tracking the current state of each shard.
Part of what differentiates eth2 from other PoS systems is the sheer number of validators that can participate in the protocol. In contrast to the 10s, 100s, and 1000s of participants that are possible in other systems, eth2 scales to hundreds of thousands or even millions of validators. This level of decentralisation is only possible due to the intermediate levels of consensus achieved by groups of validators called committees. The beacon chain uses the eponymous random beacon at its core to assign validators to committees which are tasked with evaluating what is and isn’t a part of the beacon and shard chains. A committee’s votes are then cryptographically aggregated into an attestation meaning that verifying an entire committee’s votes is only marginally more effort than checking a single vote. Therefore, to check the validity of the beacon chain, only a few aggregated signatures need to be considered to evaluate the votes of many validators.
The beacon chain also tracks the eth1 chain and the deposits thereupon so that new validators can join eth2 by sending 32 Ether to the deposit contract on eth1. As a result of the beacon chain voting on the eth1 chain, eth2 will, at some point in the future, enhance the security of eth1 by providing an economic guarantee that blocks that are a part of the canonical eth1 chain.
Nodes vs. Clients:
eth2 makes the distinction between beacon nodes and validator clients, and validators will need both in order to perform their duties. A beacon node (or just node) concerns itself with maintaining a view of the beacon chain as well as whichever shards may be needed by a user or validator.
As their name suggests, validator clients (or just clients) handle the logic of a single validator. This is achieved by communicating with the beacon node to understand the current state of the chain, by attesting to and proposing blocks as well when appropriate, and finally by asking the beacon node to send this information on to its peers.
If you are not running a validator, a beacon node contains all of the information you need to trustlessly interact with eth2, much like a full node in eth1.
Below are some of the many arguments for this separation:
- Each validator needs to be initiated with a deposit of exactly 32 Ether and therefore people who wish to stake more ETH will need to run multiple validator instances. The node-client separation allows such users to only run a single beacon node with multiple validators connected to it thereby reducing computation, memory, and storage requirements.
- By having validator nodes be separate modules, they will likely be more secure as it is easier to write, reason about, and audit smaller code modules.
- For users particularly worried about redundancy, multiple nodes can be run in parallel, thus reducing the chance of a validator going offline.
- Because validator clients can only interact with the rest of the eth2 network via a beacon node, and even then via a restricted API, the attack surface of a validator node is greatly reduced.
- For users who wish to interact with eth2, but don’t want to be a validator, they need only operate a beacon node which will grant them access to the beacon chain and all the shards they require.
Design Philosophy:
The design philosophy of eth2 provides useful context for all the decisions made within eth2 and in many instances encapsulate the differences between eth2 and other protocols.
- Protocol über alles: With the acknowledgement that everything is a trade off, the protocol’s safety and liveness take precedence over other design desiderata.
- Hope for the best, but expect the worst: eth2 assumes validators will be lazy, take bribes, and that they will try to attack the system unless they are otherwise incentivised not to. Furthermore, the network is assumed not to be entirely reliable and that catastrophic events could force large numbers of validators to go offline. For these reasons, eth2 should be capable of surviving World War 3.
- Minimally viable complexity: Wherever possible, eth2 has been simplified as this makes it easier to reason about, explain to others, audit, write bug free clients, and generally avoid edge cases.
- Maximally decentralised: Proof of stake protocols commonly compromise on the number of validators that can participate, eth2 is designed to scale to millions of validators while encouraging these validators to work independently of one another.
- Expect the unexpected: All components of eth2 are resistant to quantum computers or can be swapped out for those that are in the event of a quantum apocalypse.
- By the people for the people: eth2 must be able to run on a consumer laptop. The lower the barrier to entry, the more people who can participate which translates into a higher degree of decentralisation.
The next posts in this series will tackle the juicy details of what makes eth2 tick.
Understanding validator effective balance by Jim McDonald.
Roadmap
When I came up with Ethereum, my first thought was, ‘Okay, this thing is too good to be true.’ As it turned out, the core Ethereum idea was good — fundamentally, completely sound.
- Vitalik Buterin
Istanbul is successful so far.
More details on the road to Istanbul.
Next Timelines
The next fork will be called Muir Glacier and will address the difficulty bomb.
Serenity / ETH2
Serenity is meant to move from consensus through Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
- See the ETH2 Specs Github Repo.
- The ETH2 Project Management repo holds ongoing notes and meetings.
Rumors
Twitter:
Reddit discussions:
HK should use Cryptocurrency NOW!!!
EthereumJS VM v4.1.2 with MuirGlacier support.
Validator rotation, state, stateless clients, and bandwidth in eth2 sharding.
The first working ZK-Rollup DEX is live on Ethereum mainnet.
Worldwide Google Trends interest of DeFi going “parabolic”.
Now deploy your smart contracts with MetaMask using Truffle Teams.
Accountancy giant, EY Launches Ethereum-based Token & Smart Contract Testing Service in Open Beta.
Add some music to this Spotify playlist, get paid some ETH.
Super-simplified explanation of the beacon chain (without sharding).
Other:
Nike Receives Patent to Tokenize Shoes on Ethereum: In a document posted on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and dated Dec. 10, Nike stated that it intends to generate unique IDs and create ERC 721 tokens for some shoes.
Fidelity Digital Assets Intends to Support Ethereum in 2020: If the client demand is there, then Fidelity Digital Assets could support Ethereum in 2020.
In a recent episode of The Scoop, Fidelity president Tom Jessop told The Block that the firm has “done a lot of work on Ethereum” when asked if they would soon offer custody for the digital currency. Launched at the beginning of 2019, Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS) offers cryptocurrency custody and trading tools for institutional investors and traders. Still, the firm has only supported bitcoin — a fact that some say keeps FDAS from truly competing with crypto-native firms like Coinbase and BitGo.
Jessop said that the lack of a track-record serves as one of the biggest obstacles to institutional adoption of a given cryptocurrency. Since bitcoin has the longest track record, there is a stronger appetite from institutional investors to allocate capital to it compared to cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, according to Jessop. Hence the reason Fidelity isn’t supporting it, at the moment.
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
Ethereum community continues to grow. There is constant slight growth in Ethereum social media channels these weeks.
Twitter (Ethereum) — Official announcement channel.
Twitter (Ethereum Network) — News from dApps.
Twitter (Ethereum Report) — Retweets from official announcement channel and team members’ pages.
Facebook — Official announcement channel. Recent publications — about Ethereum Core Devs Meetings, conferences.
r/ethereum — plain Ethereum development discussion. News about projects, links to interviews, podcasts, upcoming events.
Keep price discussion and market talk to subreddits such as r/ethfinance or r/ethtrader.
Keep mining discussion to subreddits such as /r/ethermining.
Do you have any question that feels really dumb? Try r/ethereumnoobies
Don’t forget to check out /r/ethdev for the Ethereum developer community.
Surfwith r/ethstaker. The future is at stake!
YouTube (Ethereum) — Last video on July 27th, 2017 (5000–20 000 views per video).
YouTube (Ethereum Foundation) — Videos from conferences, meetups, Ethereum Core Devs Meetings.
Check out Ethereum Community and Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians forums.
There is strong stable growth in the Ethereum community over time. The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Ethereum Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
Main sources
Ethereum official social media
Core Devs Meetings
Eth2.0 Implementers Calls
Week in Ethereum by Evan Van Ness
What’s New in Eth2 by Ben Edgington
Projects build on Ethereum official blogs
Ethereum in news
