• Max Effective Balance added to Electra.

• Patched Ethereum security vulnerability disclosed.

• Frax Finance releases a fee switch proposal.

• Espresso Systems raises a $28 million Series B.

EIP-7251 Max EB Added To Electra Upgrade

Developers agree to add Max Effective Balance to Electra. Developers disclose a security vulnerability that existed on Ethereum. Frax Finance release...

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Ethereum core developers agreed to include Increase Max Effective Balance EIP-7251 in the Electra upgrade. Also called Max EB, the update allows validators to hold an effective balance between 32 and 2,048 ETH. Currently, any validator balance above 32 ETH is not actively staked and does not earn attestation and validation rewards. With the increase, validators will now earn consensus layer rewards for balances over 32 ETH. Any balance above 32 ETH will be subject to slashing. The update also reduces the operational overhead for large stakers by minimizing the number of validators required. Core developers also considered Inclusion Lists EIP-7547 for inclusion in the Pectra upgrade.

Ethereum core developers disclosed a security vulnerability that existed on Ethereum mainnet from the Merge until the recent Dencun hard fork. The bug could have been exploited to execute a denial-of-service attack. It emerged due to differing message size limits for RPC communications that were established after the Merge. The vulnerability allowed the creation of blocks exceeding RPC size limits for some clients while remaining valid for others, disrupting consensus. It could cause a chain split leading to potential reward losses for block proposers. Developers addressed the bug by standardizing and increasing the RPC message size limitations for all clients.

Frax Finance founder Sam Kazemian introduced a proposal under the Frax Singularity Roadmap that unveils a new tokenomics model, focusing on activating a protocol fee switch to enhance value distribution to veFXS holders. The model entails enabling the fee switch, which directs 50% of the generated yield back to veFXS holders—the token granted for locking the native FXS token. The remaining 50% will be allocated to purchase Frax assets for pairing in the FXS Liquidity Engine (FLE). The proposal comes after the protocol achieved a 100% Collateral Ratio (CR). The roadmap also includes the Flox Blockspace Incentives, designed to incentivize user and developer engagement with the Fraxtal Layer 2 network.

Espresso Systems, a shared sequencing infrastructure provider, raised a $28 million Series B funding round led by a16z Crypto. Espresso Systems targets the issue of liquidity fragmentation within the multi-rollup ecosystem. The Espresso Sequencer is designed to facilitate atomic transactions across rollups. Espresso Systems plans to allocate the new funds towards expanding its team and launching the Espresso Sequencer to mainnet.

• Coinbase partners with BlackRock

• Hyperlane introduces Yield Routes

• Polygon introduces a dapp launchpad

• Euler launches a $1.25m audit competition

• Kwenta hits $55m volume on Base

• Delv releases hyperdrive docs

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• RIP-7212 goes live on Polygon PoS.

• Base postpones planned maintenance.

• DeFi Saver introduces automated debt payback.

• Nethermind releases a post-mortem.

RIP-7212 Goes Live On Polygon PoS

RIP-7212 goes live on Polygon PoS. Base postpones its planned bridge maintenance. DeFi Saver introduces automated debt payback. And Nethermind releas...

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Rollup Improvement Proposal (RIP) 7212 has been successfully implemented on Polygon PoS mainnet as part of the Napoli Hardfork. Polygon is the first network to implement the standard. RIP-7212 introduces a new standard for secure and cost-effective signature verifications using the secp256r1 elliptic curve. The standard aims to improve account abstraction by significantly lowering the costs associated with signature verification, leveraging common technologies like WebAuthn. Polygon has further plans to incorporate more RIPs in future network upgrades. zkSync, Optimism, and Kakarot ZKEVM have also pledged to adopt RIP-7212.

Coinbase's Layer 2 rollup, Base, has postponed planned maintenance for testing the pausability features on its native bridge. The maintenance requires a temporary pause in withdrawals from the native bridge for about an hour. The update was pushed to March 27th at 11AM PST. The delay comes amid a surge in activty on the network. Base has seen over 1 million daily transactions over the past week. The influx in activity has caused the median gas fee on Base to increase from a few cents to upwards of a dollar. The network’s TVL has nearly doubled in the past month, making Base the fifth largest Layer 2 by TVL with $1.6 billion in locked assets.

DeFi Saver introduced a new feature that enables automatic debt repayment for loans on the CurveUSD lending protocol. The feature allows users to set a health ratio threshold and a crvUSD repayment amount to automatically trigger the loan repayment. The feature aims to avoid the risk of hard liquidations. This automated repayment will execute even if the funds available are below the configured amount. It will not execute if the required payback amount surpasses 50% of the transaction's gas costs. DeFi Saver also offers an automated leverage management tool for CurveUSD positions. DeFi Saver is a DeFi dashboard aggregator.

Nethermind released a post-mortem for its consensus bug on January 21st, which caused validators to incorrectly mark valid blocks as invalid. The bug led to validators going offline, missing out on block validations and attestations. The root of the issue was traced to a smart contract transaction containing a revert opcode that caused transactions to fail by using up all its gas, creating a discrepancy in the block hash and breaking network consensus. Nethermind says it plans to enforce stricter requirements for changes affecting EVM and consensus mechanisms.

• CCTP is now live on Hop

• Gelato introduces Playnance

• Across proposal to support Polygon ZK-EVM

• Cryptopunk sells for $16m

• Ethos builds on EigenLayer

• Withdrawal from zk.money before March 24th

• High-level changes to accommodate blobs

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• BlackRock tokenized asset fund.

• Increasing the block gas limit.

• Arbitrum ArbOS phase 2 update.

• Fault proofs go live on OP Sepolia.

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BlackRock launched the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, a new tokenized asset fund that has an initial investment of $100 million in USDC on Ethereum. Operating under the ticker BUIDL, the fund is accessible to accredited investors and leverages Securitize Markets for the tokenization of its digital asset securities. The tokenized fund is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Earlier this year, BlackRock launched a Spot Bitcoin ETF and is currently awaiting approval for a Spot Ethereum ETF. As the world's largest asset management firm, BlackRock oversees over $9 trillion in assets under management.

Ethereum community members Eric Conoar and Mariano Conti launched pumpthegas.org, a campaign aiming to advocate for an increase in the block gas limit to 40 million, a 33% rise from the existing 30 million gas limit. Conoar suggests that the increase could potentially lower transaction fees on L1 Ethereum by about 15-33%. Implementing this modification does not require a hardfork, allowing validators to adopt the change already by changing their node configuration. The campaign also calls on operators of large pools to adopt the increase. Marc Zeller, a contributor to Aave, compares the gas limit increase to adding a new lane on a highway, offering only a temporary solution to network congestion.

The second stage of the ArbOS Atlas upgrade for Arbitrum One has been completed, bringing the median transaction fee on the network down to approximately one cent. The second phase of the upgrade eliminates the L1 surplus fee per compressed byte, lowering it from 32 gwei to zero, and reduces the L2 minimum base fee from 0.1 to 0.01 gwei. The improvements are additive to the cost efficiencies from blob transactions, which were introduced as part of the first phase of ArbOS last week. The update also benefits L3 Orbit chains that settle on Arbitrum One. Arbitrum Orbit L2 chains are required to implement the ArbOS upgrade independently.

The OP Stack fault proof system has launched on the OP Sepolia testnet, marking a critical milestone in the journey towards achieving Stage 2 decentralization for OP Stack chains. The fault proof system enables permissionless validation and for invalid ETH and ERC-20 token withdrawals to be challenged and rejected. Optimism contributors are now focused on developing multiple proof schemes and preparing the fault-proof system for a mainnet deployment.

• Relay supports gasless USDC transfers

• Grayscale adds staking to its ETH ETF

• Yearn Vaults V3 goes live

• Avocado Email Wallet

• Dolomite raises $900k seed

• Scaffold-ETH-2 bounty

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