Yesterday, there was another Ethereum dev call. The primary focus of discussions on ACDC #119 was Cancun/Deneb testing, specifically:
- the status and health of the latest developer-focused testnet, Devnet-9,
- and timing for the launch of Devnet-10.

galaxy.com/insights/resea… About the timing for the launch of Devnet-10, not all developers were confident that the next devnet could be launched in the next two weeks, especially given the fact that client teams are still discovering and resolving bugs on Devnet-9.

📬NEW REPORT ALERT 📬

This one is on EIP 4844, proto-danksharding, the most important code change going into the next Ethereum upgrade, Cancun/Deneb.

galaxy.com/research/insig… At a high-level, EIP 4844 introduces a new transaction type, called blobs, increases the data and storage requirements of Ethereum blocks, and creates a new fee market for pricing blobs separately from regular transactions.

gm, for anyone who missed yesterday's acdc call, here's a quick summary:

galaxy.com/research/insig… On ACDC #111, developers discussed what CL-focused EIPs to include in Deneb. Deneb is the name of the CL upgrade that will occur simultaneously with the Cancun EL upgrade.

Last week, client teams finalized the scope of Cancun. Summary of last week's call:
galaxy.com/research/insig…

Great podcast episode from @BanklessHQ today about the non-finality issues Ethereum faced last week. @preston_vanloon and @terencechain explained what happened and to the best of their knowledge why.

Read below for a TLDR of the episode 🧵

Full episode:
@BanklessHQ @preston_vanloon @terencechain *What happened?* Teku and Prysm validator nodes were receiving old attestations, that is votes on what the head of the chain should be, and evaluating the validity of these old attestations by replaying chain state.

This week, Ethereum developers came to consensus about a few outstanding issues related to EIP 4844 (proto-danksharding) implementation.

galaxy.com/research/insig… 1. Precompile input and output mismatch: @yperbasis, developer for the Erigon (EL) client, mentioned that the input format for the EIP 4844 precompile differs from its output. The input uses little-endian while the output uses big-endian.

Meme coins in a nutshell
Q: What is the purpose of your token?
A: TO PUMP KEKEKEKEKEKE Crypto in a nutshell
Q: Why does this have to happen on the blockchain?
A: TO PUMP KEKEKEKEKE

What's going into the next Ethereum upgrade, Cancun? 🦜

Yesterday, Ethereum devs agreed to include *three additional EIPs* alongside EIP 4844 (proto-danksharding) in Cancun.

galaxy.com/research/insig… 1. EIP 6780: Changes the functionality of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode so that the operation sends all ETH in an account to the caller, except when the opcode is called in the same transaction a contract was created.

eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-6780

Here are two views on total ETH staked by @nansen_ai and @coinmetrics. The one by Nansen suggests deposit inflows are beating withdrawal outflows and the one by CM suggests the opposite.

They're both correct and I want to explain why: 🧵 @nansen_ai @coinmetrics 1. The Nansen chart illustrates deposit inflows and withdrawal outflows over the last 7 days. The Coin Metrics chart I pulled illustrates net flows over a longer time period.

This week in the @glxyresearch brief, we discuss a new AML bill impacting smart contract applications that was passed by Members of the European Parliament (MEP) of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

galaxy.com/research/insig… @glxyresearch On Tuesday, MEP voted in favor of requiring DAOs, DeFi protocols, and NFT marketplaces to conduct the same due diligence checks on their users as traditional banks and financial institutions.

March has been a big month for #zkEVM development, with new zkEVM projects being announced and existing ones reaching major development milestones.

In this report, @FullNodeChuck and I give a comprehensive update on the zkEVM landscape 🌄

galaxy.com/research/insig… @FullNodeChuck Our report dives into background on zkEVMs as a scaling technology on Ethereum, the major differences between the @zksync and @0xPolygon zkEVMs, as well as early data on zkEVM adoption.

The following are a few key takeaways from the report:

🧵🧵

The MEV supply chain on Ethereum is ripe for disruption because of a lack of robust financial incentives. There are a handful of solutions to the MEV problem being worked on for implementation in 2023.

Let's dive in.🤿

galaxy.com/research/white… Before I get too deep in the weeds about how MEV is extracted on-chain post-Merge, it's worth revisiting the basics of what MEV is and why it exists in the first place. For this, I recommend reading Part 1 of the @glxyresearch MEV series as a refresher:

galaxy.com/research/white…

Today, Ethereum developers gathered for ACDE call #154. On the call, they discussed the updated timeline for Shanghai.

Full call notes here:
galaxy.com/research/insig… The first public Shanghai testnet dubbed Zhejiang was launched yesterday. Developers plan on activating the Shanghai upgrade on Zhejiang next Tuesday, February 7.

zhejiang.ethpandaops.io

Ethereum developers are targeting March 2023 for the activation of Shanghai and staked ETH withdrawals. In my latest report, I give a detailed overview of how staked ETH withdrawals will be enabled on Ethereum. Here's the tldr🧵

(Thread inspired today by @kellyjgreer 👑) @kellyjgreer All validators wanting to withdraw their staking rewards will have to ensure their withdrawal credentials are updated to the new “0x01” format. This is also a requirement for validators who want to exit, stop validating, and withdraw the full balance of their staked ETH.

We're back baby!

After a two-week hiatus, Ethereum devs reconvened for the first ACD call of 2023. They discussed planning around Shanghai and most notably, they agreed to punt EOF implementation from the upgrade.

Full summary of the call here:
galaxy.com/research/insig… The main rationale for removing EOF from Shanghai was two-fold. First, it was clear that testing for the code changes would likely delay the upgrade by roughly a month. In addition, developers expressed concern about the permanence of changes to the EVM as result of EOF.

Ethereum devs agreed on the scope of Shanghai today. It’s going to be:
- staked ETH withdrawals
- big EOF implementation
- warm coinbase
- push0
- limit and meter initcode
- time based EL forking
- getpayloadV2 and getpayloadbodiesbyrange Other than the first bullet, every other code change could be removed from Shanghai if devs think it would significantly delay a March 2023 activation date.

twitter.com/i/spaces/1nAKE… ceremony.ethereum.org

I have for you today not one, but TWO writeups of the latest Ethereum dev calls. As you know, I had skipped writing one for last week and that call ended up being very material to Shanghai planning.

Full summary of ACD Call #150 here:
galaxy.com/research/insig… Yesterday, on the 2nd anniversary of the Beacon Chain, devs had a call focused on discussing improvements to the consensus layer (CL) specifications of Ethereum.

galaxy.com/research/insig…

This year, several projects including @Scroll_ZKP, @zksync, and @0xPolygon have announced major progress in developing an ambitious and game changing technology for scaling Ethereum known as the zkEVM.

galaxy.com/research/white… @Scroll_ZKP @zksync @0xPolygon This report dives into what zkEVMs are, the main projects working on implementing them on Ethereum, and the challenges and outlook associated with their development. A few important takeaways from the report 🧵

#RollupDay was 🔥. My favorite hot takes from the panels were: There is not a single rollup in production today that is censorship resistant, meaning the rollup has permissionless leader election and non upgradeable smart contracts. - @tyneslol

In this week's @glxyresearch Brief, I discuss ongoing concerns around Flashbots and their dominance in the MEV space on Ethereum. 🤖🧵

research.galaxy.com/webmail/994012… @glxyresearch While the data around MEV extraction on Ethereum is still preliminary and by no means comprehensive, it suggests that roughly 40% of blocks are produced through the Flashbots relay.
transparency.flashbots.net

Yesterday, I sat down and read the Cosmos 2.0 whitepaper ⚛️ The changes proposed are extensive and while they do obviously benefit $ATOM holders, the ambitious vision for a revamped Cosmos Hub is bound to face delays and introduce new technological risks to the protocol. The implementation of an upgrade that fundamentally changes the value proposition of ATOM and the functionality of the Cosmos Hub necessitates a degree of prolonged and coordinated action by a core team of developers, not unlike what we see on Ethereum.