Developers Consider Feature Fork Before Pectra

Quick Take

• Feature fork before Pectra upgrade.
• Starknet v0.13.0 mainnet vote.
• Arbitrum Orbit supports custom gas tokens.
• Gamma Strategies suffers an exploit.

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Developers Consider Feature Fork Before Pectra

Ethereum core developers are considering whether to ship a feature fork before the Prague/Electra upgrade (aka “Pectra”), which is the next upgrade after Dencun. Core developers agreed that verkle should be the top priority for the Pectra upgrade. However, they estimate that verkle can take 12-24 months to implement. Verkle, which is part of The Verge category on Ethereum’s roadmap, is a new data structure that provides smaller proof sizes. Verkle aims to make stateless clients on Ethereum more feasible, helping simplify block verification. For the time being, most developers are in agreement to ship a feature fork first while also working on verkle in parallel.

One developer compared the feature fork to Shapella, which was a smaller fork that unlocked Beacon Chain withdrawals, while efforts remained ongoing for EIP-4844 as part of Dencun. The Dencun upgrade will go live on Goerli, Sepolia, and Holesky testnets on January 17, January 30, and February 7, respectively.

Vote Goes Live For Starknet v0.13.0 Mainnet

A vote to deploy Starknet v0.13.0 to mainnet is now open. Starknet v0.13.0 is an upgrade that introduces reduced gas fees and a V3 transactions type that allows STRK to be used as a gas token on the network. ETH will still be supported for gas fees. It also features oracle services, a fee market, a paymaster, and support for volition mode. The proposal marks one of Starknet’s first governance proposals. Users with STRK voting power can vote on the proposal between now and January 8th at 12 PM UTC.

Arbitrum Orbit Supports Custom Gas Tokens

Arbitrum Orbit, a tech stack for deploying L3 appchains on Arbitrum AnyTrust chains, now supports custom gas tokens. Developers can now program almost any ERC-20 token for transaction fees on their Orbit chains. The ERC-20 token must be already deployed on the Anytrust parent chain, such as Arbitrum One or Nova. Despite using an ERC-20 token for gas, Orbit chain validators may still need ETH to cover costs on the parent chain, such as interactions with Ethereum mainnet. Orbit Chains can now be deployed on mainnet but are still in an active developmental phase.

Gamma Strategies Suffers Exploit

Liquidity management protocol Gamma suffered an exploit on its hypervisor contract resulting in the loss of over $3.4 million on Arbitrum. According to Gamma, an attacker was able to manipulate the price of certain LST and stablecoin vaults to mint a disproportionately high number of LP tokens. Gamma paused deposits on ite protocol to prevent further losses until a fix is implemented.

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• Across begins OP fee rebate

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