All of us have rather a lot to be glad about this vacation season, from the primary birthday of the beacon chain, to the profitable upgrades over the previous yr and the unimaginable progress throughout the whole Ethereum ecosystem.
As a extremely productive yr attracts to a detailed, there are a number of ultimate presents to ship within the type of updates from many (15+!!) EF-supported groups which are at all times working to enhance the community. And there is a lot of substantive materials right here, so take a while to type by way of the desk of contents, and dig in!
As at all times, this roundup collection focuses on EF-supported groups whose members are working to develop and enhance Ethereum as a complete. Included on this version are updates from many groups highlighted in the earlier report, and different new and rotating teams.
Get pleasure from! 
Consensus R&D (aka EF Analysis Workforce)
Authored by Hsiao-Wei Wang
Within the second half of this yr, the milestones in Ethereum consensus R&D included:
To align with The Nice Renaming, we shifted parts to “Consensus Layer” from “Eth2” for clearer communication in the long run.
In early 2022, our group will deal with serving to to ship the “The Merge”, essentially the most vital consensus protocol improve ever. Thankfully, we now have nice help from shopper groups, and others locally working to make this a actuality! Within the meantime, we will probably be persevering with our analysis work on information availability, L1 scaling, and the options of the “clear up” fork after The Merge.
Ecosystem Help Program
Authored by ESP Workforce
We printed our Q2 Allocation Replace with grants totalling $7,794,000 for the quarter – and Q3 is coming quickly! You can even try latest month-to-month roundups right here and right here for extra detailed progress updates from a number of of our fabulous grantees.
Behind the scenes, we’re engaged on a serious web site overhaul which ought to make it simpler than ever to grasp ESP’s mission and priorities, and for eligible builders to use for funding or different help. We will’t wait to launch the brand new web site in early 2022!
Ethereum.org
Authored by Sam Richards
To make our work extra accessible and to foster extra neighborhood collaboration, our group publishes an outline of our quarterly roadmap targets. See our This autumn product roadmap right here.
Pleased holidays to all from the ethereum.org group 
As at all times, our imaginative and prescient with ethereum.org is to create one of the best portal for Ethereum’s rising neighborhood and to function the entrance door to Ethereum for tens of millions of latest guests every month.
Content material updates
Ethereum strikes quick! In addition to updating tons of of pages to make sure our content material stays updated and correct, we’ve additionally launched a bunch of latest content material:
Ethereum.org exists due to tons of of content material and code contributors from the neighborhood. In Q3/This autumn, we put emphasis on methods to extend contributions and acknowledge the neighborhood for the work they had been doing:
Some stats (Aug – Dec)
- Our GitHub contributors elevated by 57%, from 396 to 621
- Our Discord neighborhood practically doubled, from 6,500 to 12,200 members
- We’ve hosted two neighborhood calls and began office-hours for contributors
- We added 3 new neighborhood guides (trusted members answering questions and moderating chat)
- We launched tiered POAPs to gamify contributions for content material, code, and translations
Translation Program
Since hiring our new Translation Lead in July, the Translation Program has actually ramped up!
Some stats:
- Between July and November, the neighborhood collectively translated 1,373,046 phrases for ethereum.org, over 10x the quantity of this similar interval final yr! To place this in perspective, that is equal to translating everything of just about 20 books
! - We have obtained translation help from over 2,500 neighborhood contributors
- Now we have 37 languages dwell on ethereum.org
- We launched an initiative to higher acknowledge our translators, together with a leaderboard and translator certificates!
CLR funding
We’re supporting a clr.fund spherical on Layer 2! After over 6 months of contributing to clr.fund’s quadratic funding stack, we have merged our modifications to the upstream repo, which provides L2 community help and a wide range of internet app enhancements.
clr.fund plans to deploy a funding spherical on Arbitrum One geared in direction of the staking ecosystem in January, and the EF is worked up to supply matching funds to the spherical. We hope you take part! Keep tuned for particulars. Yay public items!
We have been constructing on the shoulders of giants. Thanks to the clr.fund group, the MACI group & clr.fund’s neighborhood of contributors who proceed to push improvements within the ZKP & quadratic funding area.
What’s subsequent?
- making a studying hub to permit non-technical customers to turn into proficient Ethereum customers
- constructing further assets on operating nodes and staking to enhance accessibility
- additional automating our translation pipeline to launch translated content material out quicker
- increasing the Translation Program past ethereum.org
- updating content material to transition away from the Eth2 terminology because the merge approaches
How does that sound?
We admire suggestions on our roadmap. Our guiding ideas are based mostly on delivering essentially the most worth within the shortest time, so if there’s one thing you assume we should always work on, please tell us! We welcome concepts and contributions from anybody locally.
Extra on contributing
Ipsilon
Authored by Alex Beregszaszi
Now we have created a group web site to supply a transparent explainer and to comprehensively listing our present and previous work.
It’s simple to inform from the next headers that within the second half of the yr the group largely centered on the EVM. It’s additionally vital to say that we now have teamed up with the Geth Workforce to enhance the efficiency of the EVM interpreter.
EVM Object Format (EOF)
Step one in direction of this, EIP-3541, went dwell with London and we now have performed a survey throughout many testnets and EVM chains to discover a becoming prefix for EOF.
Continued clarifications had been made to EIP-3540 (together with the chosen prefix), and we additionally proposed additional work constructing on high of it:
- EIP-3670 to introduce code validation at deploy time
- EIP-3690 to interchange JUMPDEST opcodes with a JUMPDEST-table
- EIP-4200 to introduce two new opcodes, RJUMP and RJUMPI, facilitating static jumps
Throughout October we offered EOF at Liscon (slides right here, however the recording will not be obtainable) and on the Ethereum Meetup in Berlin (slides, recording).
Different EIPs
EIP-2681 (Restrict account nonce to 2^64-1)
One among our outdated proposals, EIP-2681, was accepted throughout ACD#120. It codifies a restriction, which was already (partially) carried out in observe in most purchasers. After acceptance we now have prolonged the Ethereum State Assessments suite and adjusted the geth implementation.
EIP-3855 (PUSH0 instruction)
EIP-3855 proposes to introduce a PUSH0 instruction which pushes 0 onto the stack. It is a steadily used function, largely achieved right now through inefficient or repurposed directions.
Our evaluation discovered that substantial assets may have been saved with this opcode:
To place the “waste” into perspective, throughout current accounts 340,557,331 bytes are wasted on PUSH1 00 directions, which implies 68,111,466,200 fuel was spent to deploy them.
EIP-3860 (Restrict and meter initcode)
EIP-3860 is a proposal to set a boundary and introduce metering for initcode. This could enable for extra optimised evaluation and execution, as a result of implementations would wish to cope with much less unknowns.
geth
As a collaboration with the Geth Workforce, we began to work on measuring and enhancing the efficiency of the EVM interpreter in geth.
On the evaluation facet two reviews are noteworthy:
- Geth vs evmone compares the velocity of Geth and evmone utilizing the benchmarking suite in evmone.
- Geth & Go compiler explores the impact of the Go compiler model on the velocity of geth.
Based mostly on these preliminary outcomes, we now have appeared into profiling geth, and eventually contributing a number of enhancements to the codebase, most of which has been already merged. A non-comprehensive listing of related PRs: 23952, 23970, 23974, 23977, 24017, 24026, 24031, 24120.
Comply with this hyperlink to see each PR. We plan to proceed this work within the subsequent quarter.
evmone
Two bugfix releases of evmone had been made: 0.8.1 and 0.8.2.
ethash
The group additionally maintains a C++ ethash/keccak256 library, which is utilized by evmone and Silkworm.
The most recent 0.8.0 launch introduces a brand new methodology for verifying the ultimate Ethash hashes in opposition to the block issue. That is each a usability and velocity enchancment. The tactic has been posted on Ethresear.ch.
Moreover, ProgPoW has been deprecated within the library.
Fizzy
The group additionally participated within the Wasm in Web3 convention throughout September. We gave two displays:
- Fizzy — A deterministic interpreter (slides) gave a complete overview of what Fizzy is, the way it compares to different engines, and in addition explains the reasoning behind lots of the design decisions we made.
- Bizarre quirks whereas testing WebAssembly exhibits a wide variety of edge circumstances we now have encountered whereas creating Fizzy. The discuss additionally offers some potential options and explainers for these edge circumstances, in addition to how we now have prolonged the official WebAssembly check suite to cowl them.
Formal Verification
Authored by Leo Alt
Within the second half of the yr the FV group continued to deal with our current instruments:
Act:
- We lastly launched Act 0.1! You possibly can learn the superb tutorial at https://ift.tt/zcfwSBD to verify what’s attainable at the moment and learn how to use it.
- We’re at the moment refactoring error dealing with to enhance usability.
Hevm:
SMTChecker:
- Monitor the balances of contracts exactly, together with msg.worth despatched to and from the analyzed contracts.
- Additionally help the low-level name operate as an unsafe exterior name.
- Enhance counterexamples by reporting block.*, msg.* and tx.* values which are vital for failed verification targets.
- Report contract and reentrancy inductive invariants again to the person.
Geth
Authored by Felix Lange
Within the second half of 2021, we printed 9 geth releases. As traditional, our time has been cut up between EIP evaluation/implementation, shopper optimization/upkeep and reviewing code modifications proposed by the neighborhood.
In July, the London exhausting fork, which included EIP-1559, was activated. The brand new fuel pricing scheme outlined by this EIP required many modifications throughout all subsystems of geth. We’re nonetheless discovering and fixing corner-case points associated to EIP-1559 now, six months after its introduction.
Two safety vulnerabilities had been found up to now six months. For each of them, we adopted our safety advisory coverage: we instantly assigned a CVE quantity to the problem and printed a hotfix launch. Technical particulars concerning the vulnerability had been printed 6-8 weeks later.
Within the final quarter of 2021, our work has largely shifted in direction of implementation and testing of The Merge. We’re on monitor to show geth into the ‘execution layer shopper’ of the merged execution+consensus (fmr. “eth1+eth2”) layers. In preparation for The Merge, we now have re-written a lot of the sync code to function beneath management of the consensus layer. Geth additionally participates in Merge testnets.
Moreover, the geth group has been engaged on a number of long-term tasks, reminiscent of implementation of Verkle Timber, a beacon chain gentle shopper, and a brand new database storage scheme for the Ethereum state.
Javascript Workforce
Authored by Holger Drewes
Within the final two quarters of 2021, preparations for “the large transitions” on the Ethereum community was a robust focus of our work. We participated within the Merge Interop in Greece and launched the primary Merge-testnet prepared variations of our shopper, VM and associated libraries (see e.g. the EthereumJS shopper v0.2 launch). We additionally began on an thrilling experiment with the Go-Ethereum Verkle/Stateless group to natively check stateless block execution based mostly on a verkle proof served alongside a modified block header through devp2p inside our shopper. If you’re you possibly can see the next monitoring difficulty to observe our progress.
A bit extra relevant for the top person proper now: the help of our libraries for the rising L2 networks like Polygon, Arbitrum or Optimism has been improved. These and another networks can now immediately be referenced to e.g. ship a transaction to a sure L2 community. See e.g. the Widespread v2.6.0 launch for the most recent Optimism L2 community integration.
And final however not least: there’s a VM ArrowGlacier launch obtainable and on the Ethers.js entrance. Richard has simply posted an thrilling overview on the upcoming Ethers.js v6 library modifications and updates on his weblog.
Privateness & Scaling Explorations
Authored by Thore Hildebrandt
The Privateness & Scaling Explorations group works to bridge the hole between cutting-edge analysis in zero-knowledge proofs, and software improvement on Ethereum.
zkEVM
The objective of zkEVM is to run good contracts in a zk-rollup. Sadly, the EVM was not designed to run in a zk circuit which makes it a problem. We need to implement the complete set of EVM opcodes immediately into the zk circuits so a wise contract operating on L1 will be deployed to L2 with minimal modifications. This can enable full compatibility with current tooling and allow us to leverage data of the EVM that the ecosystem has constructed up over the previous years. We’re making good progress on specification of the opcodes and implementation of the circuits, and we now have early benchmarks and an vital objective going ahead to deliver prover time down.
ZKOPRU
ZKOPRU (zk-optimistic-rollup) is a layer-2 scaling resolution for personal transactions utilizing zk-SNARK and optimistic rollup. It helps non-public transfers and personal atomic swaps throughout the layer-2 community between ETH, ERC20 and ERC721. It additionally gives immediate withdrawal with pay-in-advance options and compliance compatibility utilizing spending key and viewing keys. ZKOPRU has lately launched on testnet – go forward and test it out. We’re engaged on enhancing sync-times and on a non-public trade function.
Unirep & Unirep Social
UniRep is a non-public and non-repudiable status system. Customers can obtain optimistic and unfavourable status from attesters, and voluntarily show that they’ve not less than a certain quantity of status with out revealing the precise quantity. Furthermore, customers can’t refuse to obtain status from an attester. We’re utilizing Unirep to construct Unirep Social: a Reddit-like platform that enables customers to privately accumulate karma. Constructing the Unirep Social web site was our focus up to now months. Proofs in Unirep are actually listed in order that they are often referred many instances and forestall one proof from being submitted twice. Unirep can now deal with an preliminary status airdrop and person state transition airdrop. We’re additionally enhancing the effectivity in producing person state and Unirep state.
Primary features, frontend design, frontend and backend of Unirep Social are full, and we’re planning a closed pre-alpha launch. Take a look at this blogpost if you wish to study extra.
CLR.fund for Everybody
The objective of the venture is to make it simple for any neighborhood to run their very own CLR spherical with clr.fund. This venture has been very busy. Now you can deploy your individual quadratic funding software with the clr.fund Deployer. Empower your neighborhood to decide on and fund its personal future, in a completely decentralized method. Take a look at our Subgraph and Documentation.
InterRep
Popularity is the important thing to belief. Folks spend years build up their status on centralized social platforms, however they’ve to begin from nothing each time they begin utilizing a brand new app. InterRep goals to make status transportable to increase the compounding advantages of trusted human interactions throughout the online. Take a look at this blogpost for the preliminary announcement and the repo. Prior to now quarter we now have expanded the vary of social proof sources, to POAP and e mail and have curated teams: on-chain, and off-chain through a Telegram bot. We’re doing a UI redesign, enhancing interplay with shopper functions and making ready for a dwell launch.
Semaphore / ZK-Keeper
Semaphore is a zero-knowledge gadget which permits customers to show their membership of a set with out revealing their authentic identification. On the similar time, it permits customers to sign their endorsement of an arbitrary string. It’s designed to be a easy and generic privateness layer for Ethereum dApps. Use circumstances embody non-public voting, whistleblowing, mixers, and nameless authentication. With ZK-Keeper we’re focussing on conserving Semaphore updated with the most recent zk instruments and integrating it with different tasks like InterRep. Now we have new libs for dealing with semaphore proofs and identities. Implementation is now accomplished on high of Halo2 and we’re getting it prepared for use within the browser.
RLN
RLN (Charge Limiting Nullifier) is a assemble based mostly on zero-knowledge proofs that permits spam prevention for decentralized, nameless environments. In nameless environments, the identification of the entities is unknown. Now we have lately printed an explanatory weblog put up to get extra individuals excited concerning the concept. Now we have completed analysis round “Feasibility evaluation for ETH2 Validator privateness utilizing RLN”. We’re engaged on productionalizing the “Non-public immediate chat app utilizing RLN and Interrep” venture. We’re additionally serving to to combine the ZK-Keeper plugin into the RLN tasks.
Protocol Help
Authored by Tim Beiko
The Protocol Help (PS) group was fashioned in 2021 to develop the variety of methods during which the groups constructing or interacting with the Ethereum base layer are supported. The group’s predominant focus is enabling core builders to ship community upgrades on Ethereum’s execution layer.
To this impact, Berlin, London and Arrow Glacier had been deployed this yr. Past these, PS spent vital efforts working in direction of The Merge, first with Rayonism, then the Amphora workshop and now the Kintsugi Devnet!
This accelerating tempo and scope of change has required extra outreach to the Ethereum neighborhood, which led our group to prepare frequent Group Calls. Throughout these, software, infrastructure and tooling builders had been invited to debate learn how to greatest help protocol upgrades and supply a easy transition for his or her customers. Alongside these calls, the group has given a number of talks and printed a number of posts concerning the altering Ethereum roadmap, reminiscent of this latest all core devs replace, this piece in Bankless and this latest put up on the Merge and the appliance layer within the EF Weblog.
Past protocol upgrades, the PS group has taken on two main initiatives to make sure purchasers groups are properly supported. First, a Shopper Incentive Program was introduced to offer groups Ethereum-aligned long-term incentives. This system gives shopper groups with a set of 144 validators that they need to run utilizing their software program. Assuming groups hold assembly sure efficiency benchmarks on mainnet, these validators are step by step vested to the groups, that are free to both liquidate them or hold them operating to gather rewards and charges. This program aligns groups with Ethereum, ensures they’re “dogfooding” their purchasers on mainnet, and that they hold delivering performant software program.
Second, a Core Developer Apprenticeship Program was launched. This program supplied stipends and mentorship to self-directed people who wished to dive deep into protocol improvement. CDAP was launched as an experiment which proved to be extremely profitable! Two cohorts had been run, with over 25 individuals. Of those, not less than 5 are actually working full time within the ecosystem. These preliminary cohorts have taught us rather a lot about what was good and what could possibly be improved with this system. Anticipate a revamped CDAP in 2022!
Lastly, the group experimented with offering infrastructure to the shopper groups and broader neighborhood. To that finish, crawler.ethereum.org was shipped and open-sourced. We hope that having a further crawler operating and obtainable for the neighborhood to enhance, modify or fork helps present higher views of the community’s topology.
Remix
Authored by Rob Stupay
Over the previous 6 months, the Remix group has unscrewed the again of our app to do some in depth rewiring. First amongst these modifications was continued work on shifting our code to React. We additionally expanded our attain by dialing in some efficient channels to new communities, and onboarding new customers with a primary product “tour” of our IDE. We’ve plugged in tasks into our “expertise”, integrating Slither, and Hardhat, in addition to updating the Remix VSCode extension.
And, if that’s not sufficient, we jammed on some instruments for collaborative coding, enhancing Decentralized GIT and integrating Github. Final however not least, we’ve up to date our current plugins. Briefly, we’ve maxed it out to 11.
See extra particulars in our article.
Strong Incentives Group
Authored by Barnabe Monnot
The RIG (Strong Incentives Group) welcomed new group members and took part in lots of vital milestones for the Ethereum protocol. For a fast refresher on what the RIG is and what we care about, you possibly can try Protocol cryptoeconomics with the RIG, offered by Barnabé at EthCC in July.
On the Proof-of-Stake consensus facet, Caspar, who joined us as full-time analysis scientist earlier this yr, discovered a difficulty with the present fork selection, written up as Three assaults on Proof-of-Stake Ethereum. Thankfully, there’s a robust candidate repair that was lately merged within the consensus specs, after many productive discussions with Stanford’s Tse Lab, who co-authored the “Three assaults” paper. Caspar and others additionally proposed a special mitigation (“proposer view merge“), that’s nonetheless beneath analysis. Take a look at Caspar at Liscon presenting his outcomes!
Shyam, who joined us first as analysis intern final summer season and is now a analysis assistant on the RIG, launched a collection of notebooks exploring the beacon chain statistics from many distinctive angles, together with oceanic video games and inequality. Shyam has additionally been engaged on an extension to our Beacon runner PoS simulation engine that features reinforcement studying. Take a look at his discuss at EDCON!
Block 12,965,000, August fifth, 12:33:42 PM UTC, was an vital date for us: the London exhausting fork activated, and with it, EIP-1559. During the last yr, we have launched a collection of notebooks presenting numerous simulations of the brand new payment market mechanism, which set the stage for additional evaluation after launch. Barnabé reported some outcomes early after, and with co-authors (together with Shyam) wrote up a longer-form paper, Transaction Charges on a Honeymoon: Ethereum’s EIP-1559 One Month Later. The paper is motivated by the behaviour of the 1559 replace rule in the actual world, and opens new analysis instructions for enhancements to the rule.
The RIG was additionally intently working with the cadCAD Edu group in making ready a web based masterclass in validator economics, supported by a completely extensible mannequin of Ethereum economics (in Python).
Snake Charmers [Python Ecosystem]
Authored by Keri Clowes
Within the second half of 2021, the Snake Charmers group accomplished the modifications wanted throughout the ecosystem to help the London exhausting fork. This concerned wide-ranging, basic modifications all through our stack, particularly in Py-EVM, Ethereum Tester, Web3.py, and eth-account. There have been additionally two bug bounties submitted for Py-EVM which have been fastened. We’ve ramped up efforts to generate academic content material, and positioned an even bigger emphasis on developer relations. And as at all times, there’s ongoing neighborhood help, difficulty triage, and bug squashing throughout our Python instruments.
Fe-lang
Authored by Grant Wuerker
Over the previous 6 months, the Fe group has minimize the next releases:
0.11.0-alpha “Karlite” (2021-12-02)
- multi-file help
- operate definitions on structs
v0.10.0-alpha “Jade” (2021-10-32)
- module-level constants and features
- unsafe help
v0.9.0-alpha “Iridium” (2021-9-29)
- self declarations in operate signatures
v0.8.0-alpha “Haxonite” (2021-8-31)
- query-based evaluation utilizing Salsa
0.7.0-alpha “Galaxite” (2021-07-27)
- Solidity ABI decoding checks
0.6.0-alpha “Feldspar” (2021-06-10)
If you need to know extra about our progress during the last 6 months, you possibly can checkout the next assets:
Portal
Authored by Piper Merriam
This yr has been a giant yr for the Portal Community. We began this yr with an concept and solely a free plan for learn how to construct a peer-to-peer community that might ship light-weight entry to the Ethereum protocol. We now have three unbiased groups and implementations and are properly underway to launching the preliminary testnet which ought to evolve into a completely useful community by the top of 2022.
The EF Portal group has been working exhausting on Trin, a portal shopper written in Rust. The EF Javascript group has additionally been engaged on Ultralight, a portal shopper written in Typescript geared toward being runnable within the browser. The group from Standing.im has additionally been engaged on Fluffy, a portal shopper meant for integration with the Standing ethereum shopper and pockets options.
Throughout this yr we now have solved the beforehand unsolved drawback of learn how to distribute the present Ethereum State in a fashion that’s conducive to environment friendly storage and retrieval. We established the Portal Wire Protocol, an extensible base protocol that’s the basis of the entire networks making up the Portal Community. We additionally had the pleasure of working with a number of individuals of the Core Developer Apprenticeship Program who used the Portal Community tasks as a leaping off level for moving into Core Protocol improvement.
Safety [Security / Consensus Tests]
Authored by Safety (Safety / Consensus Assessments) Workforce
On the safety and testing facet, loads of consideration has been given to the London improve and the upcoming merge. We’ve made updates on tooling for check authoring and continued to enhance the reference exams.
Solidity
Authored by Franziska Heintel
Within the second half of this yr, we launched Solidity variations 0.8.8, 0.8.9, 0.8.10 and 0.8.11:
- Solidity 0.8.8 brings you person outlined worth sorts as a serious new function. It additionally improves overriding interface features, studying from immutables, and extra.
- Solidity 0.8.9 is a pure bugfix launch and fixes two vital, however low severity, bugs:
- Solidity 0.8.10 incorporates exterior operate name optimizations, allows the brand new EVM code generator for pure Yul mode and may report contract invariants and reentrancy properties by way of the SMTChecker.
- Solidity 0.8.11 provides a primary implementation of a Language Server and permits a safer technique to carry out ABI-encoding.
Furthermore, a number of Solidity group members offered at ETHGlobal’s Developer Software Summit:
The Solidity documentation received a number of upgrades, most notably, we…
- up to date the assets part with common assets, Ethereum IDEs, editor integrations, Solidity instruments, Solidity parsers and grammars.
- added the performance to open code examples within the documentation immediately in Remix.
Lastly, we launched our yearly Solidity Developer Survey. If you’re a Solidity developer, please take 10 minutes to share your suggestions and participate within the survey right here. The survey will probably be open till thirty first of December 2021.
Oh and we’re hiring! Take a look at our C++ Engineer Solidity opening.
ZoKrates
Authored by Thibaut Schaeffer
Within the second half of 2021, ZoKrates superior on completely different fronts:
Language
- Sort aliasing, in addition to the power to make operate calls in fixed definitions
- Help for the ternary expression syntax
- Allow fixed generics on structs
Proof techniques
- Discount of the deployment price for some Solidity verifiers
- Expose recursive verification in the usual library
- Add help for Groth16 MPC ceremonies (coming quickly)
Compiler efficiency
- In depth work on lowering reminiscence and time necessities of the compiler (coming quickly with metrics!)
For a full listing of the modifications, try the changelog
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