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Development has steadily continued over the last month and a half as we approach the launch of Metropolis. Over a series of <\/span>core dev calls<\/span><\/a> over the last few months, we have specified and finalized <\/span>the EIPs<\/span><\/a> for Metropolis, and made the appropriate changes to the Yellow Paper. Metropolis has now been split up into two consecutive forks, named \u201cByzantium\u201d and \u201cConstantinople\u201d. EIPs for Byzantium (Metropolis part one) are essentially finalized, and the last remaining work to be done has to do with writing tests and making sure that all clients are passing all tests.<\/span><\/p>\n The Ethereum network continues to see all-time highs in <\/span>transaction usage<\/span><\/a>, and the network has maintained stability through this period with <\/span>consistently low uncle rates<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n Research<\/b><\/p>\n Geth<\/b><\/p>\n Implemented the following:<\/span><\/p>\n Currently working on:<\/span><\/p>\n Mist<\/b><\/p>\n ENS<\/b><\/p>\n The weekend of August 11-13 in London was the first community-driven ENS workshop, where representatives of the community at large including representatives of multiple wallets, individuals working on ethereum projects and other ENS stakeholders discussed the current state and future of ENS. A summary post is available <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>, but here are some highlights:<\/span><\/p>\n Web3.js<\/b><\/p>\n In the last two weeks, web3.js beta was released and immediately and widely used by the community. A few packages already started integrating the new version into their libraries. Since the first beta release, issues were found and fixed and improvements have been added so that the beta is currently at beta.18.<\/span><\/p>\n Once web3.js 1.0 is ready for prime time, a separate blog post will introduce its new features. <\/span><\/p>\n To try it out yourself, either clone the 1.0 branch<\/a>\u00a0or install it via npm install web3@1.0.0-beta.18<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Please add issues and suggested improvements to the GitHub issues.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Light Client<\/b><\/p>\n C++<\/b><\/p>\n Solidity<\/b><\/p>\n We added support for <\/span>\u201cexperimental\u201d features<\/span><\/a> that can be switched on via a \u201cpragma\u201d statement in the source code. One of these features is the <\/span>new ABI encoder<\/span><\/a>, which can encode arbitrarily nested arrays! Another experimental feature that will soon be available is the <\/span>automated verification<\/span><\/a> of assertions and overflow conditions using an SMT solver. We also fixed <\/span>two<\/span><\/a> bugs<\/span><\/a> in the code generator. Apart from that, we implemented many smaller changes that <\/span>improve<\/span><\/a> error<\/span><\/a> messages<\/span><\/a>, added <\/span>new<\/span><\/a> warnings<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>improved<\/span><\/a> security<\/span><\/a>. Lastly, work has begun on implementing <\/span>view<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>pure<\/span><\/i> function specifiers<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Remix<\/b><\/p>\n EVMJIT<\/b><\/p>\n Metropolis support was added to EVMJIT; all tests were passed. Also EVM-C has been updated to support new features for Metropolis, like support for REVERT and return buffers. The EVM-C interface is evolving slowly, but only VM trace support is missing to mark it as fully functional.<\/span><\/p>\n Swarm<\/b><\/p>\n While the swarm testnet has migrated to new hardware, the team is busy churning out the new features for our POC3 roadmap planned for after Metropolis. The team has been working on a devp2p network simulation and testing framework for the past nine months, and the module is now ready to merge to go-ethereum. PSS (bzz whispered), our new node-to-node messaging protocol, now fully incorporates whisper\u2019s encryption module and supports remote peer sessions with Diffie-Helmann key exchange for udp-like protocols. The biggest component of our forthcoming release is the complete rewrite of the swarm network layer. As part of this endeavor, the connectivity (kademlia overlay topology) and the discovery (topology bootstrapping) components are ready to merge.<\/span><\/p>\n The final missing piece for a proper dropbox backend (to complement FUSE and ENS) is<\/span><\/p>\n chunk-level encryption for privacy. We came up with an elegant solution: the Keccak-Feistel blockcypher, which will be included in POC3.<\/span><\/p>\n The team has started working on the third orange paper describing generalised swap, swear and swindle games (courtroom contract suite) to drive decentralised services by providing scalable payment, incentivisation and service guarantees. Videos of talks from the Berlin Swarm Summit in June are available on the summit website on swarm <\/span><\/a>http:\/\/swarm-gateways.net\/bzz:\/summit2017.ethersphere.eth\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Whisper<\/b><\/p>\n Ewasm<\/b><\/p>\n Ewasm itself is close to finished in its current form. Work on <\/span>Hera<\/span><\/a>, an implementation of Ewasm that is compatible with the VM API using in Ethereum C++, is being resumed since EVM-C interfaces matured significantly.<\/span><\/p>\n EthereumJS<\/b><\/p>\n Issues with handling large numbers<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>certain<\/span><\/a> edge<\/span><\/a> cases<\/span><\/a> have been identified and fixed. Implementation of <\/span>Byzantium changes<\/span><\/a> is ongoing. The most challenging area is the elliptic curve pairing precompiles. To support these precompiles, we will use <\/span>Zcash\u2019s Rust implementation compiled to asm.js<\/span><\/a>. There is also work being done to support the <\/span>new tracing format<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>optimise the VM<\/span><\/a> for speed<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n EthereumJ<\/b><\/p>\n A team of two developers has started working on bringing EthereumJ up to compatibility with Byzantium in preparation for the first Metropolis<\/span> hard fork.<\/span><\/p>\n Pyethereum<\/b><\/p>\n Some bug fixes have been made as well as updated to related libraries (eg. <\/span>rlp.hex_decode<\/span> and <\/span>rlp.hex_encode<\/span> in pyrlp). Metropolis EIPs are essentially implemented, and Byzantium state and block test compliance are continuing to improve.<\/span><\/p>\n Py-EVM<\/b><\/p>\n Py-EVM is a<\/span> new<\/span> implementation of the EVM written in python. The library is heavily influenced by the existing Pyethereum library, with the key difference being<\/span> a more modular architecture.<\/span><\/p>\n Recent development includes:<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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