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.