GM! Buidlers

This edition of Hashingbit brings you some important updates about web3. The SEC has given the green light to 8 Ethereum ETFs, including ones from big players like BlackRock and Fidelity. This shows that big institutions are starting to get more involved in cryptocurrencies. There's also news about an upgrade called Pectra (a mix of Prague and Electra) coming later in 2024, which will bring some improvements to the network. WitnessChain is doing some cool stuff by building a DePIN Coordination Layer with Polygon CDK. This will make it easier for people to join DePIN and for developers to create new apps. There are also updates on zksync, Polygon, Berachain, and Fantom, showing progress in these platforms. If you're interested in tokenizing real-world assets, there's a new tutorial available. A recent hack on Gala Games resulted in a whopping $219 million loss, showing that we still need to be careful. Also we are announcing Season 1 of the QuillAudits Points Program! Get a chance to win a share of 50 million QuillAudits Points for $QUILL token airdrop.

EtherScope: Core Developments 👨‍💻

  • Vitalik Addresses MEV and Decentralization Concerns

  • Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade, small fork targeting late 2024

  • Notes on collaborative zkSNARKS

  • Announcing the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship Cohort 5

  • SEC approves 8 Ethereum ETFs including BlackRock and Fidelity

  • EIPs

    • EIP-7713:- Box type for EIP-712 messages

    • EIP-7709:- Read BLOCKHASH from storage and update cost

    • EIP-7708:- ETH transfers emit a log

  • ERCs

    • ERC-7710:- Smart Contract Delegation Interfaces

    • ERC-7714:- Simple Permissions Checks

  • RIPs

    • RIP-7712:- Multi-dimensional 256-bit nonce for RIP-7560 Account Abstraction transactions

EcoExpansions: Beyond Ethereum 🚀

  • zkSync

    • Liquid restaking LRTs have arrived on zksync . Stack yield with wrsETH.

    • Successful upgrade of the Cronos zkEVM Testnet to Tethys.

    • Deutsche Bank Collaborates with Memento on MAS’s Project Guardian for Asset Tokenization on ZK Chain

    • zkSync Protocol Upgrade v24: New precompiles, more blobs, Validiums, and more.

  • Polygon

    • Learn Aggregation Layer A list of resources to learn about the Aggregation Layer

    • L3s v. Aggregated L2s: An Analysis for Developers

    • WitnessChain Constructs DePIN Coordination Layer with Polygon CDK, Facilitating Seamless DePIN Onboarding and dApp Innovation

    • Blockworks Launches Research Portal Offering In-Depth Analytics for Polygon PoS, zkEVM, and Beyond

  • Fantom

    • Fantom developers introduce foundation for Sonic, close $10 million strategic round

    • Sonic Preps for Launch: Unveiling Details on Sonic Chain, $S Token, and New Strategic Funding Round

    • EtherMail Joins Fantom Ecosystem, Extending Cutting-Edge Services with Special Offer for Projects

  • Berachain

    • Berasig - The first gamified wallet serving as a mobile portal of Berachain at your PAWTIPS!

    • Berachain and Union Build Interoperability Partnership for IBC Assets and Staked Derivatives

DevToolkit: Essentials & Innovations 🛠️

  • Find Audit v1.0

  • Hardhat v2.22.4: adds BigInt task argument type

  • Raycast extension: ethereum-eips

  • ERC-5189: Zero-Cost Account Abstraction

  • Guide to Hardhat Ignition deployment using Ledger

  • Foundry roadmap of planned 2024 features

  • Heimdall-rs v0.8.0: decompilation & decode improvements and more modular code base

  • Wagmi adds Vue support

  • Vitalik: proposal for MACI with votes offchain by default

Explore the Depths of Knowledge: Research Papers, Blogs and Tweets🔖

  • Twitter

    • Major EIPs of Ethereum Pectra upgrade

    • The Value of Statelessness/Verkle Trees

    • PureDai: Returning to the ideological roots of Dai

    • Low Float & High FDV: How Did We Get Here?

    • Why L2 Scaling is a Losing Strategy

    • Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) Market Risk Framework

    • Verifiable Compute: Scaling Trust with Cryptography

    • Execution and Consensus in Staking Services

  • Articles

    • New launches (part 1) - private capture, phantom pricing

    • The near and mid-term future of improving the Ethereum network's permissionlessness and decentralization

    • Monthly Outlook: Expectations on Ethereum

    • Affine Restaking Risk Engine: Simulating the Distribution of Eigenlayer Restaking Yields

  • Github Repos

    • Betherscan (browser extension): adds data fields to Etherscan, including block header RLP, contract storage root, EOA nonce and transaction signature (v, r, s)

  • Research Papers

    • A Sound Type System for Secure Currency Flow

    • IT Strategic alignment in the decentralized finance (DeFi): CBDC and digital currencies

    • AI-Protected Blockchain-based IoT environments: Harnessing the Future of Network Security and Privacy

    • Blockchain-based AI Methods for Managing Industrial IoT: Recent Developments, Integration Challenges and Opportunities

    • Sustainable business decision modelling with blockchain and digital twins: A survey

    • Securing Health Data on the Blockchain: A Differential Privacy and Federated Learning Framework

  • Tools

    • **Writing Cross-Chain PoC Using Pigeon** by Sujith Somraaj.

    • Foundry adds console input for more interactive testing.

    • Ponder adds **call trace indexing** for smart contracts.

    • **The go-ethereum live tracer** by Marius Van Der Wijden.

    • Introducing Drillx: a new proof-of-work algorithm for smart-contract based cryptocurrency mining

  • Watch🎥

Web3 Security Watch 🛡️

  • Articles

    • Pink Drainer ‘steps back from the grind’ after stealing $75M from victims

    • Beginner’s Guide to Web3 Security: Guide to Avoiding Fake Wallets and Private Key/Mnemonic Phrase Compromises

    • BlockTower Capital's main hedge fund 'partially drained' in attack

  • Research Papers

    • Large Language Models for Blockchain Security: A Systematic Literature Review

    • A Privacy-Preserving DAO Model Using NFT Authentication for the Punishment not Reward Blockchain Architecture

    • Strategic Deployment of Honeypots in Blockchain-based IoT Systems

    • Towards an Optimal Staking Design: Balancing Security, User Growth, and Token Appreciation

    • Securing Blockchain-based IoT Systems with Physical Unclonable Functions and Zero-Knowledge Proofs

  • Twitter

    • Bitcoin L2 protocol bridge Alex suffers $4.3M in losses after suspicious upgrades

  • Tools

    • Betterscan is a security tool designed to parse, analyze, and display data from any EVM-based smart contracts. Developed by shortdoom.

    • Reth Execution Extensions. Post-execution hooks.

    • **SOLP: A Stand-alone Solidity Analysis Library** by Zellic. The library is pretty powerful capable of creating stable ASTs great for code analysis.

    • Etherscan converter tools.

Hacks and Scams 🚨

Gala Games

Loss ~ $219M

  • On May 21, 2024, Gala Games was exploited on the Ethereum Mainnet.

  • The exploit resulted in the minting of 5 billion GALA tokens, valued at approximately $219 million.

  • Possible causes include private key compromise, private key misuse by an insider, or team involvement.

  • The attack involved minting a large number of tokens due to a private key compromise of the deployer or administrator wallet.

  • The attacker used 0xProject to dump the tokens in chunks of 50 and 100 ETH.

  • The attacker swapped 599 million GALA tokens for approximately 5,913.20 ETH, valued at $21.8 million.

  • The exploiter's wallet currently holds approximately $206,737,478 worth of assets.

  • The affected Gala contract has a notBlocklisted modifier, allowing the deployer to restrict addresses.

  • Two hours and 16 minutes after the exploit, the deployer added the exploiter's address to the blocklist.

  • This action limited the damage to $21.8 million.

  • The team will burn the excess 4,401,236,462 GALA tokens.

Community Spotlight

We at QuillAudits are excited to launch Season 1 of the QuillAudits Points Program. We’re giving away 50 million QuillAudits Points! These points will be used to decide who gets the $QUILL token airdrop, and users can earn points in various ways, and we’re kicking this off with our Zealy campaign. Join our community and climb the leaderboard to secure your share of the airdrop allocation.