Gratitude to all the developers and project leads who participated in the sections regarding their projects
Over the past six weeks, the Ethereum network experienced an astounding surge in usage, culminating in it processing as many transactions per second as Bitcoin. To handle the heightened demand, which at times has hit the network’s full capacity for several hours, the community united and miners voted to raise the gas limit to 6.7 million. At the Foundation, we have been swiftly allocating additional resources toward enhancing the network’s efficiency while also devising long-term modifications that will significantly improve the network’s scalability.
Research
The pyethereum client has undergone a significant overhaul, and version 2.0 has been launched. For download, see https://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=display&name=ethereum&version=2.0.4; on Ubuntu, you can also execute “sudo pip install ethereum”. Furthermore, we have incorporated experimental versions of:
Metropolis testing
Metropolis testing is progressing quickly. We are actively searching for further assistance to complete the testing. See:
We have initiated an extensive cross-client benchmarking initiative to pinpoint areas that most urgently require performance enhancements. Review some initial outcomes for opcode benchmarking in geth here: https://gist.github.com/holiman/7b157e4074707f6ba3196d46ad3745af
Ethereum core developer meetings #15-#19 were conducted. Notes and audio/video recordings of the meetings can be accessed here: https://github.com/ethereum/pm/tree/master/All%20Core%20Devs%20Meetings
Mist team
During May-June, the Mist team held a team gathering: for one week, the team engaged in face-to face meetings, with some members meeting in person for the first time, during which we collaborated to discuss details on projects we were working on and to deliberate on the current codebase and future plans. Although we have an extensive list of attributes on which we are focused, we realized that the majority of the concerns raised on GitHub were tied to two key issues: slow synchronization and lost account private keys/passwords. We identified features that we could implement to assist in minimizing user errors and related challenges, which include more alternatives for node switching (with Infura support) and improved choices for account management (such as HD wallets and mnemonic seeds – but with a twist).
- Many of these new issues necessitate alterations in the signing process to render Mist more autonomous from Geth, which is being developed as a standalone signer.
- We have also conducted some research on restructuring parts of the Mist codebase to enhance its modularity and simplify maintenance.
- Victor Maia showcased some research on enhancing app loading speed and reliability, and we are currently testing several of these ideas as either components of the main codebase and/or as an alternative web-based product.
- Progress has been made on ENS integration: we have added ENS compatibility to our address component, which means that any of the applications we have developed in meteor (wallet and ens registrar app) will accept a name in any place where an ethereum address is usually expected. We are also working on creating a web component for generic input types for ethereum addresses, allowing any web app developer to use an input field supportive of ENS, checksum and ethereum identicons. With swarm now utilizing the main net registrar, it implies that Mist will accept ENS addresses in the URL once the swarm branch is merged.
- Swarm integration has been assessed and is considerably more stable than it was just a few weeks prior. We anticipate that it will finally be ready for release soon.
Web3.js
Web3.js is progressing well. The new whisper API has recently been incorporated into both the old 0.x.x and the new 1.0.0 version. Whisper v5 is presently only available in geth and needs to be initiated using –shh. We are currently in the process of adding swarm.js and finalizing the JavaScript account management. If all goes smoothly, an alpha release will occur soon.
You can already experiment with the new web3.js 1.0 here: https://github.com/ethereum/web3.js/tree/1.0, and review the new documentation at http://web3js.readthedocs.io/en/1.0/
Security
We have received several bounty submissions for vulnerabilities in EthereumJS, Solidity, and Cpp-ethereum. Refer to the leaderboard for the current statistics.
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We currently have pyethereum integrated into the cross-client blackbox consensus evaluation in Hive, which consistently executes over 10K assessments on each client. Refer to http://hivetests.ethereum.org. As a lighter alternative to Hive, we have also initiated a project to conduct fuzz testing directly on the virtual machines, commencing with Geth, Parity, and Python. Equally, we’ve established an automated AFL-based fuzzing of Solidity.
In anticipation of Metropolis, a benchmarking suite for the Geth EVM has been established to confirm that the gas prices for new opcodes and precompiles remain within reasonable ranges, thereby avoiding their potential use as DoS vectors later on.
EVM 1.5
The “EVM 1.5” proposals are now EIP drafts for “Subroutines and Static Jumps for the EVM #615,” and “SIMD Operations for the EVM #616.” Inputs and critiques are encouraged at the https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/615 and https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/616 discussions.
EthereumJS
The ethereumJS team is still searching for community contributors to assist the Ethereum Javascript client in attaining Metropolis compatibility. A video guide titled “Introduction to Core Development with Ethereumjs-vm” has been made available.
Light Client
New algorithms have been devised and implemented to enhance log searching efficiency in the upcoming version of the LES protocol. Encouraging R&D efforts have been directed towards achieving rapid and trustless initial syncing without hardcoded checkpoints. We have been working on finalizing the topic discovery protocol, which aids clients in locating appropriate LES servers, currently a somewhat vulnerable aspect of the experimental light client service.
Remix
The primary Remix innovation in the past month is the alpha launch of Remixd: https://github.com/ethereum/remixd
Formal Verification
The advancements in the eth-isabelle project were primarily due to external contributions. Specifically, the improved separation logic tactics, which were contributed externally, allow for significantly shorter proofs concerning Ethereum contracts.
- Enhanced separation logic tactics (contributed)
- Resolved Coq build issues, and integrated it into the continuous integration process
- Eliminated unmaintained files, and `Annotation` structure is no longer necessary (PR pending)
- Executing Blockchain Tests (in progress; implementation of ecdsa recover in OCaml needed).
Bamboo
- The compiler is generating bytecode for all initial examples
- Syntax refinement following community feedback
- End-to-end evaluation of the compiler (in progress)
Solidity
The Solidity project has been quite dynamic in recent months, although many of the updates are not yet directly apparent to users. We have seen significantly greater community involvement and have volunteers consistently contributing to both the core code and documentation, including translations, primarily into Spanish.
We introduced a feature that facilitates the exporting of the complete abstract syntax tree with all type annotations, which significantly eases the process of creating tools that would otherwise require a custom parser. The subsequent feature will also be to re-import this data after modifications, which would enable functions like mutation testing.
We enhanced the inline assembly language with structured components (for, switch, and functions) and deprecated manual jumps. This newly structured inline assembly language will evolve into a new intermediate language (alongside type information), allowing Solidity to be more transparent in its compilation, more efficient (we will be capable of implementing much more sophisticated optimization routines), and more portable (it can already compile to EVM, EVM1.5, and some eWASM). Currently, we are reworking the ABI encoder
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in this intermediate language which will comprise structs and nested dynamic entities.
Ultimately, we are incorporating an automated compile-time overflow and assertion verifier which will also include an SMT solver for the more intricate scenarios. And naturally, we have focused on numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements.
Swarm
The swarm group has welcomed new participants and conducted an in-person Swarm Summit in Berlin in June, 2017. The week-long gathering united Ethereum team members, community contributors, and special guests representing ventures and organizations interested in swarm. Over twenty presentations and tutorial sessions were documented. The edited recordings will soon be available on the swarm summit website. Our public alpha assessment received a positive community reaction, enabling us to collect more insights into potential user base requirements and typical usage tendencies. The swift turnover of nodes necessitates a clear differentiation between nodes that can and cannot promise to remain available for an extended duration to furnish adequate storage and bandwidth resources for the network. To accommodate non-committing nodes and mobile clients, swarm will provide various light operational modes.
We have crafted a collection of example applications showcasing the architectural and implementation distinctiveness of Swarm-hosted distributed web applications that diverge significantly from the conventional client-server paradigm. Specifically, the foundational elements for a distributed functional equivalent of Dropbox are under development, including a web interface that presents a file system view of swarm-hosted volumes, ENS integration, Mist integration, FUSE mounting of swarm volumes, and privacy safeguards.
We introduced a new protocol, pss (bzz whispered), enabling internode communication with deterministic routing grounded in the relaying Kademlia network topology of swarm. This protocol employs whisper envelopes and facilitates udp-like protocol interactions between nodes that are not directly linked.
Moreover, we have established a network testing and simulation framework that allows us to model and assess a wide array of scenarios arising from the interaction of a potentially large quantity of nodes. This framework encompasses both scripting and visualization functionalities.
In collaboration with the Remix team, the development of a fully distributed integrated contract development environment is currently in progress.
The upcoming major version, POC 0.3 is anticipated to launch around Metropolis and will include obfuscation support for plausible deniability, a complete overhaul of the swap peer-to-peer accounting for bandwidth incentivization, among other features.
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