\n<\/p>\n
Metropolis is finally (almost) here! The fork for Byzantium, the first and larger part of Metropolis, succeeded on the testnet over two weeks\u00a0ago, and the likely date for the fork on the mainnet has been set to block 4.37 million, which is expected to be on Oct 17. New features include opcodes such as REVERT and RETURNDATACOPY, as well as precompiles that can be used to support a wide array of cryptographic algorithms. At the same time, we have been seeing many improvements to Ethereum core code, Whisper, Swarm as well as Ethereum\u2019s future scaling plans.<\/span><\/p>\n The research team has added one full-time new developer and one part-time to Viper, and there is an increasing number of community contributors. Features being worked on include:<\/span><\/p>\n cpp-ethereum<\/b><\/p>\n We are making progress with syncing to the test and main networks. Now cpp-ethereum can <\/span>import warp snapshot <\/span><\/a>and continue syncing from the snapshot block.The Byzantium implementation has been finished. Since the last roundup:<\/span><\/p>\n Geth<\/b><\/p>\n Since the last roundup, Geth saw a <\/span>major release (v1.7.0)<\/span><\/a> and a follow up <\/span>maintenance release (v1.7.1)<\/span><\/a> with primary focus being on the upcoming Byzantium hard fork (enabled for all networks as of v1.7.1).<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to Byzantium, a few features finalized (some of which you may have seen in the <\/span>v1.7.0 Megara blogpost<\/span><\/a>):<\/span><\/p>\n Some important features we\u2019re currently working on (but might take a bit of time due to Devcon preparations) includes:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A plethora of bugfixes have also been merged into both releases, which you can skim through at the GitHub milestones for <\/span>v1.7.0<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>v1.7.1<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Testing<\/b><\/p>\n Test cases for Byzantium are ready and some clients passed all of them. After the last round up, we:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yellow Paper<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n All Byzantium changes<\/span><\/a> have been documented on pull-requests. The next issue to address is the treatment of the empty account states on precompiled contracts, where different clients do different things. <\/span>A GitHub issue<\/span><\/a> was created to discuss this.<\/span><\/p>\n Formal Verification<\/b><\/p>\n @pirapira gave talks at the <\/span>ARM Research Summit<\/span><\/a> and at <\/span>TU Berlin<\/span><\/a>. We Implemented <\/span>RLP in OCaml<\/span><\/a>, available with opam install rlp.<\/span><\/p>\n Bamboo<\/b><\/p>\n We started<\/span> writing a specification<\/span><\/a>. External interfaces are <\/span>being implemented<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n EVM 1.5<\/b><\/p>\n Solidity assembly can now handle <\/span>EIP #615<\/span><\/a> opcodes for subroutines and the rest, thanks to Alex. \u00a0Initial implementations of both EIP #615 and <\/span>EIP #616<\/span><\/a> are written, and reviewed by Andrei, and testing has begun. \u00a0Greg is working to present initial performance measurements at Devcon.<\/span><\/p>\n web3.js<\/b><\/p>\n web3.js 1.0 beta received a great deal of community contributions which is exciting as it appears 1.0 is already being used a lot in the wild. Please be careful using the account generation and signing, as it has not been audited. Those accounts should not hold any significant amount of ether. We are currently at beta.22. If everything goes well, we hope to have a 1.0.0 Release candidate by Devcon3.<\/span><\/p>\n web3.py<\/b><\/p>\n Web3.py recently added features and improvements including:<\/span><\/p>\n py-evm<\/b><\/p>\n Development continues to progress, moving us closer to an early alpha release, which will allow running py-evm as a light client.<\/span><\/p>\n Ethereum Tester<\/b><\/p>\n Ethereum Tester is a new tool for python developers design to provide a standard API for testing applications that interacts with the EVM. The library uses a pluggable backend system that allows swapping out the underlying VM implementation. This library can also be used transparently with web3.py by using the <\/span>experimental EthereumTesterProvider<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Remix<\/b><\/p>\n Two very important PRs has been pushed recently: (1) a terminal that allows tracking transactions and interacting with web3, and (2) a revamp of the UI.<\/span><\/p>\n We are now fixing bugs and helping the community to adjust to this new GUI.<\/span><\/p>\n A number of new features are being worked on for release in the coming weeks:<\/span><\/p>\n – <\/span> Highlight of declarations and references, basic autocomplete and renaming<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/browser-solidity\/pull\/819<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/browser-solidity\/pull\/806<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/browser-solidity\/pull\/802<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/browser-solidity\/pull\/799<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Solidity<\/b><\/p>\n We are close to finishing the <\/span>new ABI en\/decoder<\/span><\/a> using the iulia language. This allows passing structs and arbitrarily nested arrays across function calls. It is also a little stricter when it comes to invalid input data including <\/span>invalid array lengths<\/span><\/a>. You can use pragma experimental ABIEncoderV2;<\/span> to activate it. With a similar statement, pragma experimental \u201cv0.5.0\u201d;<\/span> you can activate upcoming breaking changes, which we are adding one after the other. You can now use f.selector<\/span><\/a> to access the selector (also called the \u201cfunction hash\u201d) of a function. Using the default visibility of a function will generate a <\/span>warning<\/span><\/a> now, and should make you aware of <\/span>unintended public functions<\/span><\/a>. Finally, Solidity is <\/span>warning<\/span><\/a> about (and more strictly <\/span>enforcing<\/span><\/a> if you opt to already activate v0.5.0 features) violations of \u201cview\u201d (formerly called \u201cconstant\u201d) and \u201cpure\u201d annotations for functions. After Byzantium, a call to a \u201cview\u201d function will use the new <\/span>STATICCALL<\/span><\/a> opcode and thus enforce the \u201cview\u201d aspect of the function at VM level.<\/span><\/p>\n Mist<\/b><\/p>\n Released version 0.9.1: <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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