ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, two Ethereum researchers revealed in a message released today that they have resigned from their positions due to controversy arising from their roles as advisors for the restaking platform EigenLayer.Ethereum researchers Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist posted on the X platform that they resigned from their advisory roles to focus on the development of the Ethereum base layer. Drake stated that he stepped down from this position in September.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Galaxy cryptocurrency researcher Christine Kim believes that due to the current complexity of the Pectra fork and the increased demand for upgrades, the possibility of splitting into two independent upgrades (Prague upgrade and Electra upgrade) is "very high." Christine Kim previously summarized the 196th Ethereum Core Developers Meeting (ACDE), stating that Ethereum developers are seriously considering executing the Pectra upgrade in two phases.In addition, Christine Kim also added that if developers decide to split the Pectra upgrade into two hard forks, the scope could change significantly. It is reported that Ethereum developers will make a decision on this during the next Ethereum All Core Developers teleconference on September 19.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, researchers behind the Ethereum network have grown from around 25 people in Q1 2019 to a peak of 550 people in Q1 2024, an increase of 2,100%.According to developer report data, Ethereum has the highest number of monthly active developers among blockchains. As of July 1, Ethereum has a total of 2,788 full-time developers, with a total developer count exceeding 8,865. The Base blockchain ranks second, with 889 full-time developers and a total developer count of 3,991.

ChainCatcher news reports that the vulnerability bounty platform OpenBounty has faced criticism from peer security researchers after users discovered that their submitted vulnerability reports were published on a public blockchain. When OpenBounty receives a report, it automatically publishes the content of these reports as transactions on Shentu, a blockchain operated by OpenBounty's parent company, Shentu Foundation. The publicly disclosed details include the threat level of the vulnerability, the location of potentially vulnerable code, and comments from the report authors. OpenBounty lists over 30 different cryptocurrency projects offering vulnerability bounties, with a total deposit value exceeding $11 billion.Independent security researcher Pascal Caversaccio stated that publicly disclosing potential vulnerabilities is extremely irresponsible, as any hacker can sift through these reports and exploit them. Security researchers also complained that OpenBounty listed and accepted vulnerability bounty reports from other security companies and cryptocurrency projects that had not authorized them. Among the bounties listed on the OpenBounty website are those from top decentralized exchange Uniswap and lending protocol Compound.Michael Lewellen, Solutions Architect at the crypto security company OpenZeppelin, stated, "As a security advisor for Compound DAO at OpenZeppelin, I can authoritatively say that they have not been authorized to manage vulnerability bounties on behalf of the protocol."Dmytro Matviiv, CEO of the vulnerability bounty platform HackenProof, said, "Listing bounties without permission could have legal consequences. The vulnerability bounty market operates under a carefully considered legal process. Within this system, permission from the bounty issuer must be obtained before placing a bounty on a vulnerability bounty platform."A spokesperson for CertiK confirmed that the entity controlling the OpenBounty platform, Shentu, was once part of CertiK; however, Shentu has been operating independently since 2020. Nevertheless, four years after the split, the code on the OpenBounty platform still links to domain names that include CertiK in their names. However, CertiK's spokesperson stated that these domains are managed independently by Shentu.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, a Web3 Foundation researcher has proposed a new request for comments (RFC-0092) to shorten the unbonding period for staked tokens on Polkadot from 28 days to 2 days.

ChainCatcher news, according to Wired, two researchers successfully cracked the password of a digital wallet that had been forgotten for 10 years and recovered approximately $3 million worth of Bitcoin.Due to a flaw in the version of RoboForm password manager from ten years ago, along with a bit of luck, the researchers were able to uncover the password for a cryptocurrency wallet containing a fortune. Michael, who lives in Europe and requested anonymity, had stored the cryptocurrency in a password-protected digital wallet. He used the RoboForm password manager to generate the password and stored it in a file encrypted with TrueCrypt. Later, the file became corrupted, and Michael was unable to access the 20-character password he generated to protect 43.6 Bitcoin (worth about 4,000 euros or $5,300 in 2013).

ChainCatcher news, Pyth announced on social media that it has launched the Pyth Ecosystem Grants program, aimed at providing bounties for researchers and developers.It is reported that the bounties are offered through the Superteam platform, covering content such as adding methods to parse Pyth benchmark prices in Aptos contracts, creating dashboards for Pyth usage on EVM, Sui, and Aptos, etc.

ChainCatcher news, Coinbase's Head of Institutional Research David Duong and Senior Sales Trader Greg Sutton stated that the introduction of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. could lead to a "regulated" Bitcoin shortage. Once these ETFs begin trading, two key risks may arise: the first risk is that the launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF could create issues for institutional procurement of BTC, as issuers need to purchase enough Bitcoin to hold in the ETF; the second risk involves a more popular institutional trading strategy known as "basis trading," which refers to exploiting the price difference between the spot price of Bitcoin and Bitcoin futures contracts.According to data from Velo, potential profits from basis trading have surged by 20% over the past two weeks due to a significant increase in trading volume of both spot and futures contracts for Bitcoin. However, as institutional investors increasingly invest directly in Bitcoin (through spot ETF products), the basis will narrow, leading to a substantial decrease in the profitability of the trades.

ChainCatcher message, Paradigm researcher @samczsun pointed out that there is a serious flaw in Twitter, where hackers can gain full access to accounts simply by clicking on a link. This means that hackers can tweet, retweet, like, block, and more, but cannot change the user's password. Until this issue is resolved, it is recommended that users install the ad blocker uBlock Origin to reduce the risk of such attacks.

ChainCatcher news, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, along with researchers from Chainalysis, the University of Basel, and other institutions, jointly published a paper titled "Blockchain Privacy and Regulatory Compliance: Towards a Practical Equilibrium."The paper studies Privacy Pools, an enhanced privacy protocol based on smart contracts. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this protocol and demonstrates how it can be applied to create a separating equilibrium between honest and dishonest users.The core idea of the paper is to allow users to publish zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate that their funds originate from known (or not) legitimate sources without publicly revealing their entire transaction graph. This is achieved by proving membership in a custom association set that satisfies certain attribute requirements, which are stipulated by regulatory or social consensus. This paper may represent a first step towards a future where individuals can prove compliance with regulatory requirements without disclosing their entire transaction history.

ChainCatcher news, according to Blockworks citing informed sources, the crypto news website The Block laid off 27 people last Friday, affecting departments such as editorial, research, engineering, sales, and operations, with nearly half coming from editorial and research.In December last year, The Block's former CEO Michael McCaffrey resigned after it was revealed by the media that he had secretly lent millions of dollars to SBF, and Bobby Moran took over. According to an Axios investigation, The Block has yet to become profitable. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, Nethermind researcher Deven Matthews has proposed to deploy Uniswap V3 on StarkNet in the Uniswap community. Deven Matthews stated that the Nethermind team has translated the Uniswap V3 Core's Solidity codebase to Cairo using their developed Solidity to Cairo transpiler Warp, and has tested it on StarkNet's local testnet. Deven Matthews also mentioned that if the proposal is approved, Uniswap V3 is expected to be fully deployed on the StarkNet mainnet before the second quarter. (source link)

Chain Catcher news, Stanford University researcher kaili.eth tweeted that he has collaborated with several other researchers to design two new Ethereum token standards: ERC-20R and ERC-721R.kaili.eth explained that the design of ERC-20R and ERC-721R aims to address the rampant theft incidents in the cryptocurrency industry, with the highlight being "reversible transactions." Specifically, ERC-20R and ERC-721R introduce a "decentralized court" mechanism, where in the event of asset theft, victims can first apply to freeze the assets. At this point, the "decentralized court" can decide whether to agree to the freeze through a quick round of voting. For the frozen assets, the "court" will subsequently determine whether to unfreeze or return the assets based on the evidence provided by both parties involved, thereby resolving security incident disputes. (source link)