1. Growth by Subtraction
2. Ultrasound Money
3. Social Slashing
4. MEV
5. Proposer-Builder Separation
6. Account Abstraction
7. Scaling Ethereum
8. Future of Staking

Growth by Subtraction

Aya from the Ethereum Foundation (EF) opened with a talk on the philosophy of Growth by Subtraction. While the predominant approach to growth for companies is to expand and acquire, the EF understood its role in the infinite game that is Ethereum and chose to subtract — empowering others and providing opportunities for more people to get involved in the process.

“Ethereum is too great for one entity to control.”

Subtraction is not easy. It may not be in the best interests of the individual and they may not be recognized. The philosophy refers to subtraction of power, not work, so it involves even more effort for the organization in educating, coordinating and communicating.

In the words of the Nomics Labs team (behind Hardhat), what subtraction does allow for is the feeling of working with others to achieve the same common goal.

A question for us all: how can each of us Subtract?

Ultrasound Money

The only talk out of 330 in Devcon about ETH the asset rather than Ethereum the protocol was by none other than Justin Drake. He equates ETH with water and uses temperature as a mental model to examine it.

ETH is cold when staked as the assets are not fluid or flowing, and hot when it is being transacted for dapp interactions.

ETH can also be programmed to contribute to the network in four ways:

1. towards security when it’s staked
2. towards sustainability when it’s spent as base fees
3. towards economic bandwidth when it’s used in DeFi
4. towards activity as it’s used for transactions

The incentives for users to stake are in issuance of new ETH and in appreciation of ETH price. Given that issuance has diminishing growth as stake grows, and that the network has been designed for minimum viable issuance, this means that for Etherum’s security to be upheld, ETH price needs to go up.

In short:

A way to measure the sustainability of Ethereum is by treating it with the Price-Earnings (P/E) ratio model. Treating ETH burnt (from base fees) as revenue and issuance as expenses, we can model ETH to have a P/E ratio better than that of Google.

Justin emphasizes ETH as an ideal collateral for DeFi services due to it having no contract, custodial, oracle, bridge, or governance risk on the Ethereum network. Due to its ETH’s volatility, stablecoins will always be used on the network, and here again ETH is ideal as collateral.

With rollups, sharding, and assuming Nielsen’s law, Justin predicts that Ethereum will be able to handle 10 million transactions per second leading to transaction fees of 3 gwei per transaction. Even with an ETH price of $1 million, that amount equals $0.003!

Social Slashing

The Ethereum community has never been one to shy away from discussing controversial ideas, and Social Slashing is right up there in the list, especially in light of OFAC censorship.

With potential centralization of validators challenging Ethereum’s neutrality, Eric Wall cited an old article on Vitalik’s blog discussing how harder-to-detect attacks like coalition censoring can be tackled through a minority User Activated Soft Fork (UASF). A UASF can selectively target and slash misbehaving validators and can be done without compromising the entire protocol, which isn’t possible with Proof-of-Work.

A fear of censorship might prompt us to slash all validators using OFAC-compliant relays such as MEV Boost, but it is not that simple. The existence of these relays preserves the decentralization on the validator level — they may choose to use other relays. The alternative would be worse — only a few validators having a majority of the access to order and censor transactions.

This brings us to a more dystopian view of system-wide censoring. Instead of censoring happening in the block building process, it would happen at the validator level through refusal to attest non-OFAC compliant blocks.

A growing body of research is being built to tackle this pertinent issue, and it is our collective responsibility to be involved in the push for a credibly neutral Ethereum.

MEV

The topic of MEV has been a confusing one ever since it was first introduced to the community. Not only is the term ill-defined, even what it stands for hasn’t been consistent. Initially standing for Miner Extractable Value, it became switched (rather unsuccessfully) to Maximal Extractable Value.

At Devcon Sxsyun entered the scene with a clearer distinction of 3EV — the three types of MEV: Mafia, Moloch, and Monarch.

Mafia EV refers to the scenario where one or more agents have knowledge not known to other agents in the system. This upper hand allows them to conduct sandwich attacks or frontrun others’ attempted transactions.

Moloch EV is value that is surrendered to Moloch, the mythical god of discoordination. In this scenario, a lot of value is wasted due to the lack of coordination between all agents. An example of this was the Priority Gas Auction (PGA) wars that frequently drove up gas prices prior to the launch of Flashbots.

Monarch EV arises as a central coordinator gains power to decide on the ordering or allocation of transactions. A sequencer of transactions in a layer 2 network, for example, can extract value from all transactions occurring there.

Ideally, we want the relationship between them to be 0% Mafia EV, 0% Moloch EV, and 100% distributed Monarch EV. This is difficult to achieve in real life but isn’t impossible.

0% Mafia EV can be achieved with programmable privacy. By increasing efficiency in MEV or specialization of labor, Moloch EV can be reduced. As for Monarch EV, focusing reinvestments into wallets or ideas such as retroactive public goods funding helps to ensure the MEV is distributed.

Proposer-Builder Separation

The idea of PBS is closely related to MEV, as it aims to separate the powers of proposers from that of MEV builders. In the current post-Merge Ethereum, the building of blocks (fitting and ordering transactions that make up a block) is done by external parties using a third party system called MEV-Boost. Searchers find opportunities for arbitrage and other MEV-transactions from users’ transactions and share them with a builder. The builder submits their block of transactions to relays who pass these on to MEV-Boost. On the other side, a block proposer (i.e. validator) selects a suggested block and adds it to the blockchain.

This currently happens outside of the Ethereum protocol itself, relying on relays that could fail to submit blocks, pay proposers less than promised, or even not deliver payment at all.

PBS aims to make this “in-protocol”, removing the reliance on a third party. However, research for it and its consequences are still in an early stage. Some directions in the research are to explore:

• “Two-slot” PBS: where the bidding and payment between proposer and builder are done over two consecutive blocks
• Inclusion lists: where block builders are forced to include a list of transactions as long as the block size isn’t at 100% (extremely expensive to maintain with EIP-1559)
• Partial PBS: where proposer can sell off rights to form only part of a block to a builder
• Slot auction: where the builder can ‘book’ the rights to a particular block ahead of time

More research is needed, and the Robust Incentives Group of the EF welcomes mechanism design researchers to apply to join the team!

Account Abstraction

Another big topic in Devcon was account abstraction, which aims to make smart contract wallets a first-class citizen compared to its current status as subordinate to Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs).

Wallets would not need to sign transactions with their private keys by default. Instead, they could leverage smart contract capabilities to do all kinds of powerful actions such as paying gas for other wallets, using social recovery if access to wallets are lost, and sign batched transactions.

Because there is so much at stake on Ethereum’s layer 1, the current roadmap for implementing it is to push it live on layer 2s with a non-consensus affecting change such as ERC-4337. Once it has proven itself there, the changes could then be implemented to layer 1.

To support the movement, layer 2 developers are encouraged to implement account abstraction on their networks while dapp developers are encouraged to support existing related standards such as ERC-1271 (a standard way to verify signatures for smart contract wallets). Developers in general are also encouraged to join #AllWalletDev calls organized by Sam Wilson to discuss related topics.

Scaling Ethereum

Scaling Ethereum involves not only upgrades to the layer 1 network but also research and breakthroughs in layer 2 technology.

A significant future upgrade is the change to Ethereum’s data structure from a Merkle Patricia Tree to a Verkle Tree structure. This talk by Guillaume Ballet from Geth explains how moving to a Verkle Tree structure will pave the way to a stateless Ethereum and other future applications such as state expiry. A few advantages of Verkle Trees include faster and selective node syncs, making blocks as self-contained execution packages and a (somewhat) smaller state.

Layer 2s are key in Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap and a plethora of sessions about it were held in Devcon. A talk by Daniel Goldman from Arbitrum highlights the current and future role of sequencers. As sequencers are currently centralized, a few possible futures were laid out on how to reduce this power. One way is through cryptoeconomic penalties by enforcing slashable bonds from the sequencer. Next is managing MEV extraction through encrypting transactions or having an MEV auction for ordering rights. Finally is “Fair Ordering” through sequencer committee consensus or a hybrid ordering algorithm paired with priorities fees.

Future of Staking

With Ethereum now running on Proof-of-Stake, nowhere is the battle for a secure and decentralized network fiercer than in the staking space. From hobbyist stakers to institutional staking services, Devcon was the perfect place to catch up on this ever evolving front.

For solo stakers, a session led by Pok Lanski from DAppNode provides useful insights. First is the acceptance of MEV as a centralized force and mitigation (for now) by participating in extracting its opportunities. Next is related to proto-danksharding, specifically EIP-4844. Once this is implemented, expect your consensus layer node to become bigger as a new type of data or ‘blob’ is created for Rollups. Statelessness and PBS were also covered. Once this is achieved, validators won’t need to store the full state of Ethereum to validate a block. Hard-drive requirements will lessen for validators, but more work for builders will be needed to provide pieces of state affected in a block.

A panel titled The Staking Economy: From Monolith to Modularity invited us to have a glimpse of the staking future, made possible by tech stack modularization and innovations in middleware solutions. Key highlights include:

• Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) services that can allow distribution of an encrypted single validator key, allowing for distribution of staking pools
• EigenLayer which plans to allow ETH stakers to leverage their ETH stake as a commitment to provide services for blockchains
• An interesting question on whether middleware providers should implement their own governance mechanisms, to ensure adopted innovations are properly maintained and are not just passed over to Ethereum’s core developers

The talks and panels above are only a small portion of the knowledge shared at Devcon. For those interested in consuming all its content, head over to the EF’s YouTube channel to explore the various tracks covered. Until the next Devcon!

Thanks to Azfar and Faiz.

A Recap of Devcon Bogotá was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Folks, the moment we have all been waiting for has arrived! The Merge is finally happening on Ethereum, slated for September 14–15 at time of writing.

As we prepare to head into the new world of Proof of Stake Ethereum, we recap key metrics related to staking.

Metrics looked at include:

• Deposit amount
• Validator distribution
• Node distribution
• Client distribution

Deposit amount

The Beacon chain deposit contract is now by far the largest single holder of ETH in the entire Ethereum network, with 11.3% of all ETH staked in it.

After gradually dropping off over 2021, deposits into the contract shot up in March 2022 with its highest ever monthly amount. It retained the momentum to mid-May, at which point it slowed down again.

Grouping the data by entity shows that the additional deposits came almost entirely from Lido, boosted by key integrations such as that with Aave. These catapulted Lido to the top of validators. As they approached 33% of total stake in May, Lido self-limited their deposits — June onwards saw minimal deposits from them.

Validator distribution

Naturally, Lido’s quick capturing of stake share led to concerns about the decentralization of Ethereum. At first glance, it appears as if Lido alone makes up almost 1/3 of stake and that only 3 entities make up more than 50% of Ethereum validators.

However, Lido is made up of 29 separate node operators. Splitting up the data across each node operator makes for a less concentrated chart. In this view, 12 entities are required to make up 50% of validators.

How does this compare to Proof of Work Ethereum? In PoW Ethereum, three mining pools alone make up more than 50% of hashrate.

Since OFAC added Tornado Cash to their list of sanctioned addresses, talk of potential censorship has been rife within the Ethereum community. Some were concerned that the Ethereum protocol itself would be censored if the validators were to be compelled by authorities in their jurisdictions.

Let’s look at the breakdown of depositors by jurisdiction. Inferring the jurisdiction of the top 50 known entities from their company registrations, we find that slightly less than 1/3 of validators are within a single jurisdiction (U.S.).

One thing to note is that Coinbase, which makes up almost half the U.S. portion, has made a commitment to shut down staking rather than censoring transactions if the situation calls for it.

Node distribution

A similar concern with regards to centralization is on the distribution of nodes. Three separate data sources show that the U.S. and Germany make up more than 50% of all nodes.

When it comes to hosted nodes, the data is less consistent. Eth2 Nodewatch reports 75% of nodes being non-hosted while Ethernodes reports almost the exact opposite — 70% hosted nodes.

Digging deeper into Ethernodes’ hosted node numbers, we see that a vast majority of these are based in the U.S. and Germany, which tracks with the geographical data above.

Staking service providers may want to consider diversifying their node distribution to ensure better stability for themselves and the network!

Client distribution

Another important aspect of distribution is client diversity for both the consensus and execution layers. Having too many nodes running a particular client risks a liveness failure for the entire chain and penalties for ALL the validators running that client if that client encounters a bug.

On this point, the consensus layer distribution has greatly improved. Several months ago, Prysm made up 75% of all consensus clients. Today, Client Diversity estimates it to be only 30–43%. In an ideal world, no single client should have more than 1/3 of stake.

Execution client diversity remains a major challenge. While clients such as Erigon and Nethermind have been improving, Geth remains far and away the client that most nodes rely on. In case of a critical bug with Geth, all of the validators that use it for the execution layer would face penalties to their stake.

As seen in this article, the robustness of Ethereum’s decentralization is a work in progress. Above and beyond these decentralization metrics, a final defense layer of the Ethereum network is its community. Should an attack on the chain occur and the metrics above prove insufficient to protect against it, the community can get behind social slashing to fork Ethereum, remove the stake of the attacking party, and carry on with our lives.

The Case for Social Slashing

What are your thoughts on the metrics and the Merge? Let us know!

Credit to Bernard Lim for data analysis.

Recap of Metrics on the Eve of the Merge was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We look at prices of the top 100 Ethereum tokens by market cap, split across 20+ categories. Both 1st January 2021 and 1st January 2022 are used as base points for analysis.

Key observations include the following:

• Emergence of Meme, Fan Engagement & NFT-related tokens
• The challenge of out-performing ETH
• Trend breakers

To check out the dashboard used for this article, click here.

Overall Market

First, we look at the overall data. Using 1st Jan 2022 as a base point, we see that only the new IOT category has a positive return. It in fact has only one token, MXC, with a return of 63%.

The Bridge category returned -28%, but it is primarily propped up by TITAN (71%) while SYN (-74%) and REN (-80%) performed as badly as others. CEX (-39%), AMM (-45%) and DEX (-50%) managed to stay above -50%, while all other categories ranged between -60 to -85%

While useful, the chart above doesn’t tell us much that’s new given the current bear market. Using 1st Jan 2021 as the base point, we can compare the returns today vs those shared in the previous article.

The chart here throws up some monstrous numbers. The top 5 categories are led by Meme and DEX categories, which are heavily skewed by SHIB (at 13 million %!). The 3 other categories — Fan Engagement, NFT, Gaming — still brought a return exceeding 1,000%.

Almost all categories are still providing positive returns, two months into the bear market.

4 categories with negative returns are Lending, Oracle, API and the Yearn Family.

Emergence of New Categories

3 of the top 5 categories from above — Meme, Fan Engagement and NFT — didn’t even exist in the top 75 tokens analyzed previously. Their emergence points to these categories being a major part of the bull run.

By far the most impressive is SHIB. From being seen as a Dogecoin copycat to developing its own suite of products such as the ShibaSwap DEX, it has come a long way. Its price chart overshadows every other token, to the point where we need to exclude it to look into others.

While not the extreme returns provided by SHIB, ELON (566%) and PEOPLE (470%) both did amazingly as well, providing a 10x better return than ETH. This in spite both of them seemingly having no use cases.

Fan Engagement tokens share a similar chart with Memes. CEEK also overshadowed other tokens with a return of 10,000%. Unlike the Meme tokens, all 3 of these tokens launched before the 2021 bull run.

Zooming into CHZ (336%) and AUDIO (151%), both also outperformed ETH.

NFTs have unsurprisingly come up as a top category. 4 NFT-related tokens (OMI, GALA, AXS, MANA) massively outperformed others with 1,000+% returns each. Incidentally all 4 also fall into the Gaming token category, which itself outperformed other subsets of the NFT category.

Of those that underperformed ETH and are having negative returns, all of them launched after Jan 2021. Timing, at least for NFT projects, matter.

The challenge of out-performing ETH

A common thread among token investors is whether the token will outperform simply holding ETH. We next look at how different categories match up to this.

For sidechains, MATIC (2,630%) and FTM (1,463%) stand out by far. Benefiting from the EVM L1 narratives, their returns hold up very well, even after falling from their highs at the start of the year. Most tokens in this category overperformed ETH, with only OMG (-25%) and SKL (-35%) falling short.

CEX (Centralized Exchanges) tokens on Ethereum also hold up well. All of the tokens in this category had positive returns. Note, however, that VGX was in this category previously and has since dropped out of the top 100, as they navigate their post-Luna and 3AC issues.

DEX (Decentralized Exchanges) did not do as well as their centralized counterparts. With the exception of SHIB and TITAN (627%), all other tokens underperformed ETH. Half of them had negative returns.

Derivatives-related tokens showed a similar pattern. With the exception of FTT (331%), all other tokens are showing poor negative returns. DYDX’s -89% return may have played a part in their shift to creating their own blockchain.

In Lending, MKR (57%) is the exception that beats ETH returns. Others lose out, and CEL facing similar Luna issues as VGX is also doing terribly.

An intriguing category from the previous article is the Yearn Family. From a seemingly unassailable position in DeFi at the start of 2021, the projects have struggled and all of their tokens have since suffered terrible returns.

Trend Breakers

An interesting cohort of tokens are breaking off from the down trend of the market. In fact, with the exception of KNC, all of them are heading into July with positive tail winds. It will be interesting to see how they do over the course of the bear market!

While looking up prices may be a fun and even useful activity, remember to understand the underlying project and other important metrics such as market cap and fully diluted valuations before purchasing any tokens out there. As always, none of this is financial advice!

Numba Go Up… 1.5 Years Later was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fake or ‘spoof’ ERC-20 token transfers are not a new occurrence in Ethereum. However, wider adoption of the blockchain in the last year has caused a sharp uptick in these cases. It was a common-enough question that we provided a short answer in our newsletter two months ago, but the increasing number and a recent high-profile case calls for a more in-depth look.

No, the 'Peaceful World' Token Is Not Ukraine's Secret Airdrop

In this article, we go over:

• What this ‘spoofing’ is
• How to detect it
• How to avoid it

Imagine hearing rumors of an upcoming token airdrop from a much-hyped DeFi product. The consummate trader that you are, you scour the blockchain for any hints of this happening.

Lo and behold, you notice that a token with name and symbol bearing close resemblance to this DeFi product is newly minted. What’s more, you see it sent to an address you’ve privately tagged as belonging to a well-connected whale/influencer.

And then that address transfers it on. “This must be it!”, you proclaim. Wanting to frontrun others getting into this coin, you ape in buying a large chunk of the token from a just-created Uniswap V2 liquidity pool. An hour later, the LP gets drained of all ETH and you realize you’ve been played.

What went wrong?

The mistake you made was to believe that a token transfer with your trusted influencer listed as the From address was actually made by that address. This ‘spoofing’ tricks unsuspecting users by taking advantage of:

1. The ERC-20 standard design
2. Block explorers’ transparent data display

The ERC-20 standard transfer and transferFrom functions can be modified to allow any arbitrary address to be the sender of tokens, as long as this is specified within the smart contract, resulting in a token being transferred from a different address than the one that initiated the transaction.

Often the ‘spoofing’ token contracts are not verified on Etherscan precisely because it helps to obscure the contract’s inner workings.

For ERC-20 token transfers, block explorers such as Etherscan display the address that a token is transferred from, not the initiator address. Data for block explorers are not censored by default due to their very nature.

In most cases, the extent of damage is limited to bagholding a token with zero value. But more dangerous cases can exist, such as a token with revert error messages that point to a phishing website stealing user private keys. ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens (NFTs) may also suffer from the same issue.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🚨 Update: Transaction Error MessagesWith the recent rise in phishing attempts via error messages, we've taken steps to help protect users! Read more below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/TPaU3Nw5QK / Twitter"

🚨 Update: Transaction Error MessagesWith the recent rise in phishing attempts via error messages, we've taken steps to help protect users! Read more below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/TPaU3Nw5QK

How might one detect this?

The answer is fairly simple. For any of these token transfers, click on the exact transaction hash and inspect its details. The From address that initiated the transaction is clearly not the same From address for the token transfer.

To dig deeper, look for the spoofed From address in the transaction input data or contract source code. It would typically be included in either location. If the contract is not verified, doing this becomes harder but it automatically makes the token that much more suspicious.

One key caveat. Not all token transfers initiated by a different address are necessarily fake or spoofing. A common example is dApps that send multiple token transfers in bulk. These usually have a Public Name Tag added by Team Etherscan — if there are any untagged, please let us know!

A close cousin of spoofing is that of spam tokens. While these do not pretend to be sent by an influencer’s address, they are sent en masse to it and make reading the address’s token tabs a miserable experience.

What can be done to avoid this?

For the average user, there is no need to do anything as this problem is unlikely to affect you much. For the degens, it is wise to stop and ask yourself whether something is too good to be true. And then check the transaction details page.

Etherscan does not censor data by default, but we are exploring ways to help alleviate this problem. The first such step will be to extend the capabilities of our Token Ignore List. The feature will:

1. Automatically hide token transfers in the ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tabs on top of hiding them in address balance and token holdings.
2. Include a simple option for users to opt into ignoring all tokens that have been flagged as Suspicious or worse by Team Etherscan.

We hope this feature extension will help protect users from getting spoofed and at the same time enjoy a cleaner user experience on the website.

As always, happy to hear your feedback!

For more on these ‘spoofing’ tokens, refer to:

• https://blog.mycrypto.com/bad-actors-abusing-etherscan-to-trick-you
• https://twitter.com/cryptocatvc/status/1498406376309235713

‘Spoof’ Tokens on Ethereum was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2021 was a huge year for Ethereum and the wider ecosystem. Adoption shot through the roof with DeFi and NFTs leading a new generation of users to actually use blockchains for the first time.

While bull markets are exciting for end-users, it can be tough for builders. Distractions abound, while more users means more fire-fighting to keep services running safe and sound. But be it the year of the bull, the bear, the ape or the shiba, Etherscan just keeps building.

Below we recap 21 of our top features released throughout 2021.

1. Explorer-as-a-Service

Etherscan’s stable of block explorers expanded massively in 2021. Etherscan and BscScan remain two of the most visited websites in the world. On top of these two, we built out explorers for a total of nine other blockchains.

These come with the core features and tools from Etherscan (including the all-important Night Mode!).

We’ve already kicked off on this front in 2022, with more to come.

2. ‘Method’ Column

Transactions on Ethereum can be carrying out many different actions. The Method field introduced in March allows end-users to see at one glance what function was executed by a transaction.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Celebrating the Berlin Hard Fork with a bunch of new releases 🚀The main one you'll find hard to miss is the new Method column! pic.twitter.com/0uiyM66h9N / Twitter"

Celebrating the Berlin Hard Fork with a bunch of new releases 🚀The main one you'll find hard to miss is the new Method column! pic.twitter.com/0uiyM66h9N

This was the 2021 crowd favorite, with users appreciating the added context and requesting for it to be added to pending transactions, CSV exports and more.

Reminder: the method names are taken directly from the corresponding smart contract with no curation by Etherscan. Always DYOR (Do Your Own Research) when referring to the Method name of any transaction.

3. EIP-1559 Support

Ethereum’s fee mechanism had a major update in August 2021 with EIP-1559, introducing dynamic gas prices, flexible block sizes and fee burns. Etherscan supported it off the bat displaying base fees, burnt fees and a dashboard!

4. ERC-1155 Token Support

Long requested by the NFT community, ERC-1155 gradually became integrated into Etherscan over the year. Ethereum finally has a block explorer that supports ERC-1155, including:

• Top Tokens page
• Latest Transfers page
• Token page
• As a tab in Address page
• Being displayed as token transfers and transaction action in the transaction details page

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Did you notice? 👀ERC-1155 token support have gradually been added to Etherscan, including:- Top tokens page- Latest transfers page- Tab in Address page- Token transfers in Tx Details page- Token pageDetails in 🧵 and more support to come! / Twitter"

Did you notice? 👀ERC-1155 token support have gradually been added to Etherscan, including:- Top tokens page- Latest transfers page- Tab in Address page- Token transfers in Tx Details page- Token pageDetails in 🧵 and more support to come!

5. DEX Trading Pairs

Etherscan’s DEX Tracker originally listed DEX trades done on Ethereum. DEX Trading Pairs extended it in September to showing you the trading pairs and price chart of any ERC-20 token on SushiSwap or Uniswap v2 and v3.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🆕 Feature: DEX Trading PairsView the hottest 🔥 DEX trading pairs on Ethereum, and each specific pair's latest transactions and price chart!https://t.co/FZT7WGc3f6This is a Beta release - please let us know how we can improve it 👇 pic.twitter.com/G80npzHmLT / Twitter"

🆕 Feature: DEX Trading PairsView the hottest 🔥 DEX trading pairs on Ethereum, and each specific pair's latest transactions and price chart!https://t.co/FZT7WGc3f6This is a Beta release - please let us know how we can improve it 👇 pic.twitter.com/G80npzHmLT

Find your way to this page by simply clicking the Chart button in any ERC-20 Token page!

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🆕 Just added: Chart 📈 button on ERC20 Token pagesClicking it brings you to a DEX Tracker page involving that token - displaying overall & trading pair information, USD price chart and latest on-chain trades! pic.twitter.com/for51g7GUF / Twitter"

🆕 Just added: Chart 📈 button on ERC20 Token pagesClicking it brings you to a DEX Tracker page involving that token - displaying overall & trading pair information, USD price chart and latest on-chain trades! pic.twitter.com/for51g7GUF

6. ENS Name Tags

Prior to 2021, you could find an ENS name by searching it in the site search bar or in the lookup page. In May, we added ENS Name Tags for accounts that have set a primary (reverse) record for their ENS names. Users are now able to see their ENS names instead of a random 0x… string throughout the explorer.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🔈 New Release: ENS Name TagsENS names with both forward and reverse resolution set are now displayed automatically on Etherscan. You can see it in the From and To columns and on the top right of each Address page! pic.twitter.com/IXMU4h8V1v / Twitter"

🔈 New Release: ENS Name TagsENS names with both forward and reverse resolution set are now displayed automatically on Etherscan. You can see it in the From and To columns and on the top right of each Address page! pic.twitter.com/IXMU4h8V1v

7. Natspec Support

Users of Etherscan’s Read & Write Contract tabs received a gift to end the year with — Natspec support released in December. Smart contracts with embedded Natspec now have descriptions shown in both Read and Write Contract tabs, helping users better understand each function they are calling.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "A first phase of Natspec support is now live on Etherscan Contract tabs 😎Head to a Read or Write Contract tab on Etherscan and read any notice, parameter & return descriptions included by the contract creator. pic.twitter.com/XynFpTk9Yo / Twitter"

A first phase of Natspec support is now live on Etherscan Contract tabs 😎Head to a Read or Write Contract tab on Etherscan and read any notice, parameter & return descriptions included by the contract creator. pic.twitter.com/XynFpTk9Yo

8. Enhanced Token Holdings Page

The Token Holdings page had a couple facelifts. It now displays LP tokens and an NFT inventory on top of ERC-20 tokens!

As our NFT indexer gradually catches up, we will be better able to provide the community with an additional independent source of NFT images and metadata.

9. Flashbots/MEV Support

MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) took the Ethereum world by storm in 2021. Previously hidden in the depths of the dark forest, it was brought to the limelight in large part through the efforts of Flashbots. Etherscan played our part early on in April by labelling for users the transactions and blocks that involved Flashbots MEV.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Illuminating MEV extraction in the Dark Forests of Ethereum by adding a couple new community labels with help from the Flashbots ⚡️🤖 crew!https://t.co/QF6Mecg4gthttps://t.co/1BawBvWAeHYou can clearly see the miner tip in each private transaction 👀 pic.twitter.com/CJmPFFOMzf / Twitter"

Illuminating MEV extraction in the Dark Forests of Ethereum by adding a couple new community labels with help from the Flashbots ⚡️🤖 crew!https://t.co/QF6Mecg4gthttps://t.co/1BawBvWAeHYou can clearly see the miner tip in each private transaction 👀 pic.twitter.com/CJmPFFOMzf

Flashbots Protect is a service introduced to help users safely submit transactions off-chain to avoid frontrunning and other MEV attacks. Soon after its launch, the status of its pending transactions became supported by Etherscan (even as they are off-chain!).

@bertcmiller⚡️🤖🛡️ on Twitter: "Big Flashbots Protect update today:You can now see the status of your pending Protect transactions on @etherscan!Next time you send a transaction through Protect make sure to check it out on Etherscan⚡️⚡️⚡️ / Twitter"

Big Flashbots Protect update today:You can now see the status of your pending Protect transactions on @etherscan!Next time you send a transaction through Protect make sure to check it out on Etherscan⚡️⚡️⚡️

10. Smart Contract Search

A below-the-radar tool used by the discerning developer. Introduced in February, it allows you to search for a particular keyword across all verified smart contracts on Ethereum. You may further narrow the search with various filters ranging from Solidity version to date of deployment.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Another early release! Smart Contract Search 🔎💻Look for contract source codes and filter by:1. Solidity Version2. Contract License3. Contract Address4. Deployer Address5. Block Number6. Date DeployedLet us know what you think 👇https://t.co/i1ngFcdip9 pic.twitter.com/8PZgFbXQNC / Twitter"

Another early release! Smart Contract Search 🔎💻Look for contract source codes and filter by:1. Solidity Version2. Contract License3. Contract Address4. Deployer Address5. Block Number6. Date DeployedLet us know what you think 👇https://t.co/i1ngFcdip9 pic.twitter.com/8PZgFbXQNC

11. Contract Diff Checker

Released at the same time as Smart Contract Search, this particular tool allows devs to compare two smart contract codes side-by-side for similarities or differences.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "A feature devs 👩‍💻 have long been waiting for... Contract Diff Checker!Compare the code for two smart contracts side-by-side 📄📃*this is an early release, appreciate any feedback on how we can make it better 🙏https://t.co/csHpfuGQlU pic.twitter.com/XIJDiJ7wnh / Twitter"

A feature devs 👩‍💻 have long been waiting for... Contract Diff Checker!Compare the code for two smart contracts side-by-side 📄📃*this is an early release, appreciate any feedback on how we can make it better 🙏https://t.co/csHpfuGQlU pic.twitter.com/XIJDiJ7wnh

12. Transaction Decoder

Devs and degens looking to explore transactions in more detail directly on Etherscan became able to do so in August. Simply open up any transaction, open up the … menu on the top right and select Transaction Decoder.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "New tool for degen detectives: Transaction Decoder 🕵️Go to any tx and click on this new option to see in one view the:- Emitted Events- State Difference- Execution TraceClick on a line in the Trace or Function tabs to jump straight to the respective line in contract code! pic.twitter.com/vFpQjHUMQg / Twitter"

New tool for degen detectives: Transaction Decoder 🕵️Go to any tx and click on this new option to see in one view the:- Emitted Events- State Difference- Execution TraceClick on a line in the Trace or Function tabs to jump straight to the respective line in contract code! pic.twitter.com/vFpQjHUMQg

13. Error Messages

Error messages became a major issue for a subset of users heading into the last quarter of the year. Phishers were using URLs in token revert error messages to mislead users into opening malicious websites. This item required some thinking, but the team ultimately pushed a release in September balancing user safety with censorship-free UX.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🚨 Update: Transaction Error MessagesWith the recent rise in phishing attempts via error messages, we've taken steps to help protect users! Read more below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/TPaU3Nw5QK / Twitter"

🚨 Update: Transaction Error MessagesWith the recent rise in phishing attempts via error messages, we've taken steps to help protect users! Read more below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/TPaU3Nw5QK

Solidity custom error messages were soon to follow, with a release shortly afterwards in October.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🆕 Custom Error messagesA popular 👨‍💻 request is now up for Mainnet and Testnet transaction pages!@solidity_lang custom errors are shown as: Fail with Custom Error '[message]' 👨‍💻 please let us know your feedback in the replies 🙏 pic.twitter.com/gb41UaSZKH / Twitter"

🆕 Custom Error messagesA popular 👨‍💻 request is now up for Mainnet and Testnet transaction pages!@solidity_lang custom errors are shown as: Fail with Custom Error '[message]' 👨‍💻 please let us know your feedback in the replies 🙏 pic.twitter.com/gb41UaSZKH

14. Security Reports

Another September release! With Ledger as an initial partner, we released a tool for third party enterprises to submit name tags on Etherscan. Addresses identified to be involved in security incidents have been tagged on Etherscan directly by Ledger, and we expect more uses of this feature to open up in 2022.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "🚨 Security Report submissions by @Ledger now displayed on EtherscanWe're collaborating with Ledger, a leading hardware wallet provider, to flag addresses reported to have been involved in security incidents.Example: https://t.co/2wM6uyNlDK pic.twitter.com/qwnJM6haP2 / Twitter"

🚨 Security Report submissions by @Ledger now displayed on EtherscanWe're collaborating with Ledger, a leading hardware wallet provider, to flag addresses reported to have been involved in security incidents.Example: https://t.co/2wM6uyNlDK pic.twitter.com/qwnJM6haP2

15. IDM

IDM (Input Data Messaging) have been around in Ethereum for a long time. In October, we released a simple read-only feature gathering these into chat form. Messaging is a key use-case of Ethereum wallets — we expect to see more innovation here this year!

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Introducing: Ethereum IDM ✉️ (beta)Our IDM (Input Data Messages) feature allows you to generate a chat history of selected addresses and share it with the world!https://t.co/e7NtseT11RThis is a beta release - please let us know how you'd like it to be improved 🙏 pic.twitter.com/mCFEYU1s3k / Twitter"

Introducing: Ethereum IDM ✉️ (beta)Our IDM (Input Data Messages) feature allows you to generate a chat history of selected addresses and share it with the world!https://t.co/e7NtseT11RThis is a beta release - please let us know how you'd like it to be improved 🙏 pic.twitter.com/mCFEYU1s3k

16. Multi-Chain Address Search on Blockscan

In July, users of the EVM multiverse got the superpower of easily seeing if an address on one chain is used on other chains supported by Etherscan’s block explorers.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Curious whether an address is used on other chains? 🤔Simply click on the Blockscan icon on any address page and see where it appears in up to 17 EVM chains! pic.twitter.com/A6xijrm61s / Twitter"

Curious whether an address is used on other chains? 🤔Simply click on the Blockscan icon on any address page and see where it appears in up to 17 EVM chains! pic.twitter.com/A6xijrm61s

17. Multi-File Source Code Search

An early-year release, this multi-file search bar saved developers a ton of time sifting through long-winded source code.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Smart contract devs 🧑‍💻 rejoice! You can now do multi-file search of contract source codes. Whether there's 1 file or 72, we got you covered 👊 pic.twitter.com/4pqB3tyssE / Twitter"

Smart contract devs 🧑‍💻 rejoice! You can now do multi-file search of contract source codes. Whether there's 1 file or 72, we got you covered 👊 pic.twitter.com/4pqB3tyssE

18. More Transaction Actions

2021 saw us adding more Transaction Actions in the Transaction Details page. Details of pending swaps and NFT transactions were two key ones. Expect even more Transaction Actions this year!

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Transaction Action for pending swaps on @Uniswap 🦄 and @SushiSwap 🍣 now supported! See:1. Min/max amount of tokens to be received2. When the swap will expireLet us know what other pending tx we should add Transaction Actions for ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/cqzsl3RxMd / Twitter"

Transaction Action for pending swaps on @Uniswap 🦄 and @SushiSwap 🍣 now supported! See:1. Min/max amount of tokens to be received2. When the swap will expireLet us know what other pending tx we should add Transaction Actions for ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/cqzsl3RxMd

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Did you know? 💡 Transaction Action now supports most NFT activity on Ethereum - including both ERC721 and ERC1155! pic.twitter.com/MAOQcIIU9Y / Twitter"

Did you know? 💡 Transaction Action now supports most NFT activity on Ethereum - including both ERC721 and ERC1155! pic.twitter.com/MAOQcIIU9Y

19. Transaction Navigation

The Transaction Details page received a cool update in November: users could navigate between transactions based on sender nonce (or transaction order). It became much easier to cycle through transactions.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Another update to the transaction page! You may now navigate across transactions by sender nonce ⬅️➡️-----Something else is gradually being added there... NFT folks might have noticed 👀 pic.twitter.com/G4xYSNtidk / Twitter"

Another update to the transaction page! You may now navigate across transactions by sender nonce ⬅️➡️-----Something else is gradually being added there... NFT folks might have noticed 👀 pic.twitter.com/G4xYSNtidk

20. Sparkline Chart of ERC-20 Token Holders

One of the earliest releases of 2021. The sparkline chart shows the estimated number of holders of a token over the last 7 days: a useful metric for traders.

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "Added 📈 sparkline chart of estimated holders for ERC20 tokens!We heard some of you will really enjoy this 😉 pic.twitter.com/HQLE6EL9U7 / Twitter"

Added 📈 sparkline chart of estimated holders for ERC20 tokens!We heard some of you will really enjoy this 😉 pic.twitter.com/HQLE6EL9U7

21. Updated API Page

Last but not least is the update of API docs and landing pages. From August, users have had access to a clear description of the various API plans, comprehensive list of API endpoints, helpful tutorials for getting started and more. Using the Etherscan API has never been easier!

"The Etherscan" on Twitter: "We've updated our API Documentation and Landing pages!The new docs page goes over:✨How to get started with Etherscan APIs🎯 How to use each API endpoint🏆 API Pro details📖 Tutorials🤝 Supporthttps://t.co/2RmT9ueo1XWhat else should we add? pic.twitter.com/LbSoO1Yi3P / Twitter"

We've updated our API Documentation and Landing pages!The new docs page goes over:✨How to get started with Etherscan APIs🎯 How to use each API endpoint🏆 API Pro details📖 Tutorials🤝 Supporthttps://t.co/2RmT9ueo1XWhat else should we add? pic.twitter.com/LbSoO1Yi3P

And there you are, 21 of our 2021-released features. Which of these are your favorites, which ones do you want us to build more on, and which features unlisted here do you want Etherscan to build?

Let us know in the comments.

Happy 2022!

21 Etherscan Features in 2021 was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hasu on Twitter: "More people self-custody their ETH and other Ethereum-based assets than self-custody their BTC. / Twitter"

More people self-custody their ETH and other Ethereum-based assets than self-custody their BTC.

One definition of self-custodying ETH refers to storing ETH on your own addresses on-chain instead of trusting a third party to secure it for you. While Etherscan doesn’t have a view of the Bitcoin blockchain, we do tag and label a large number of the top custodial addresses in Ethereum: exchanges.

Here we examine the ETH balance or Total Value Locked (TVL) on these exchanges as well as their inflows and outflows.

Custodied TVL

The total balance held on more than 300 exchange addresses sums up to 18 million ETH, equaling $77 billion.

This amounts to 15.5% percent of all ETH supply. A further 1.7% of all ETH is staked using exchanges in the Beacon (Eth2) deposit contract.

Breaking down the balance stored on each exchange, we find that Coinbase has by far the most amount of ETH, topping the chart with $29 billion. In second place (at almost a third of the amount) is Binance. Kraken, Bitfinex and Gemini round off the top 5.

Note: numbers shown here are only based on addresses identified by Etherscan or Viewbase. If you’d like to suggest other exchange addresses, please let us know!

As a point of comparison, the 2 non-custodial addresses with the largest amounts of ETH — the Beacon deposit contract and Wrapped ETH token — hold $36 billion and $31 billion respectively.

Another angle to examine TVL is by comparing it with exchange volume. A glance at CoinMarketCap highlights some interesting data. While Crypto.com and KuCoin are 11th and 12th in terms of TVL, they feature higher up in the 24-hour traded volume list for ETH at 3rd and 7th.

Comparing the ratio of TVL with top-20 volume shows that Crypto.com and KuCoin trades at 227% and 173% of TVL daily. At the other extreme, Gemini (1%), Bitfinex (2%), Kraken (3%) and Coinbase (4%) are trading barely a tiny slice of their ETH held.

Custodied Inflow & Outflow

While Coinbase has the most ETH, a lot more of their holdings are held in cold or inactive wallets. A look at the exchanges’ deposits and withdrawals shows Binance leading by far. Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfinex, Huobi, Gemini and FTX also contribute to a large chunk of transaction volume.

A popular heuristic used by traders to predict price movements (and chart providers looking to sell their services) is to look at deposits and withdrawals to and from exchanges. Large deposits signal an upcoming dump (as people send their ETH to an exchange to be sold) while the opposite applies for withdrawals. How do the numbers match up to this heuristic?

Daily exchange inflows and outflows appear inconclusive. An exception is the period in late May when the crash in price following ETH’s then-all time high correlated strongly with massive deposits into exchanges.

A comprehensive analysis of custodial addresses may require much more addresses to be included ranging from miners to exchange deposit addresses, while the term itself may need better clarification (should it include smart contracts that have admin keys or trading funds?). Our analysis is but one step in the search for an answer.

Do you have an address to add or definition to suggest? Let us know in the comments!

A Look at Custodied ETH was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Altair hard fork for Ethereum’s Beacon Chain went live on 27th October, marking a significant milestone before the Merge of the current Ethereum execution chain with the Beacon Proof of Stake (POS) consensus chain.

To mark the occasion, we take a look at how the Beacon chain deposit and distribution metrics are holding up a year after they began.

Total Deposits

Total deposits into the Beacon chain have now totaled up to 8.2 million ETH!

The rate of deposits can be broken down into chunks of 2 million:

• After a slow start in November 2020, deposits quickly ramped up to its first 2 million by the end of year (in 2 months)
• The second 2 million took another 4 months to reach
• In May, as ETH price quickly mooned and crashed, deposits recovered their momentum and breached the third 2 million in 2 months
• From there the rate has slowed back down, taking another 4 months to reach the fourth 2 million chunk

In USD terms, the deposits equal to an eye-watering USD 16.8 billion.

The May run-up in ETH price coincided with a spike in deposits. Even after the pullback — with ETH halving in price — deposit values did not drop, actually climbing even higher.

While USD 16.8 billion sounds high, deposits still make up only 7% of total ETH supply —there is still much room for more!

Deposit Distribution

The all-important metric for many in the community is validator decentralization. How does the Beacon chain measure up?

A high level look at the entities depositing show that roughly a quarter are done via exchanges and staking pools respectively.

Zooming into the entities involved, we see that Lido leads the way with 17%, followed by Kraken (11%) and Binance (9%). A collection of 39 whales make up another 9% and Coinbase rounds off the top 5 with 6%.

42% of Lido’s deposits are made using a 6 of 11 multisig (7.2% of total deposits). Excluding the portion held by whales, we find that 45% of deposits are held by 12 entities (6 exchanges, 6 staking pools).

These numbers are much better than the current POW mining pool distribution but is not ideal.

With that said, the trend for take up of decentralized staking pools is optimistic, as Lido’s deposits after becoming decentralized have been larger than other entities combined. Rocket Pool’s successful launch and development of protocols such as Secret Shared Validators also bode well for those of us interested in more decentralization.

Another view to analyze is the number of Ethereum addresses that have more than one validator on the Beacon chain. 50,189 (91%) of the total ~55,000 addresses have only one validator tied to them, while 44 (0.1%) have more than 1,000 validators.

Node Distribution

Separate from deposits, another important distribution metric is that of nodes. Using data provided by Chain Safe, we detect a total of 4,564 Beacon nodes. These are distributed geographically across 66 countries.

North America and Europe dominate here, with at least 81% of nodes coming from these regions.

The node distribution roughly matches that of the POW nodes detected by Etherscan’s Node Tracker.

Comparing the nodes by client, we find that Prysm makes up 75% of all Beacon clients. A client that is too widely used bears risk for all its validators, as a bug in its code may cause its validators to suffer larger slashing proportional to their combined stake. If you are a validator, consider using other clients. If you are staking through a third party exchange or staking pool, urge your provider to do the same!

The above metrics indicate high confidence by the community in Ethereum’s efforts to switch consensus to Proof of Stake. At the same time, validator and node client decentralization have much to be improved on.

Are we all going to make it? Time, and validator choices, will tell.

Beacon Chain D&D was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In June, we took a look at activity around bridges on Ethereum. Key highlights included the dominance of Polygon and USDC as well as the peaking of growth in May. A lot has happened since then. Four months on, we revisit the same metrics and see how far they have shifted:

• Balance held by the respective chains
• Deposits and withdrawals on each chain
• Breakdown of bridged tokens

The number of bridge addresses we track on our Bridges dashboard is now 62 (up from 36 in June), connecting Ethereum with 19 other Layer 1 chains and 16 of its own Layer 2 chains.

Etherscan.io on Twitter: "🆕 Bridges on BlockscanLately it's been all about bridges... but how to find the legit ones between Ethereum and other L1 or L2?Via the Bridges page on Blockscan! Each entry links to an Etherscan address page which links to the bridge's website.https://t.co/pJIvj4JSac pic.twitter.com/SxoTX5kpK2 / Twitter"

🆕 Bridges on BlockscanLately it's been all about bridges... but how to find the legit ones between Ethereum and other L1 or L2?Via the Bridges page on Blockscan! Each entry links to an Etherscan address page which links to the bridge's website.https://t.co/pJIvj4JSac pic.twitter.com/SxoTX5kpK2

Total balance held across all chains tracked in June amounted to $8 billion. Today, that number exceeds $18 billion.

Balance Held

Compared to the all-purple seen previously, the balances held across bridges are better distributed this time around. Polygon’s share dropped from ~90% to ~30%. Axie Infinity’s move to their Ronin sidechain has proven a major success, the explosion in activity and AXS token value garnering them 25% of bridge locked value. Avalanche and Arbitrum round out the top four.

While Polygon’s total balance dropped from ~$7 billion to ~$5.5 billion, other bridges made huge progress in adding value. Only two non-Polygon bridges had balances surpassing $100 million in June; today three bridges hold more than $1 billion each and 15 have exceeded the $100 million mark.

Interestingly, while Optimistic Rollup chains have launched and accumulated deposits, Layer 2’s share of total TVL only eked out an additional 3% from June.

Zooming into these Layer 2 chains, Optimistic Rollups make up close to two thirds of the $2.8 billion total share. The bulk of this total are in Arbitrum (~$1.5 billion) and dYdX (~$700 million).

Deposits & Withdrawals

Deposits actually slowed down following the May peak, with Polygon deposits dropping being a primary factor. September roared back, as deposits totaling $12 billion came in led by Arbitrum, Avalanche, Ronin, Solana and dYdX.

Withdrawals retained its May levels for the next three months, leading to limited change in net inflow through August. In September, withdrawals increased but paled in comparison to the increase in deposits.

Bridged Tokens

As the main token deposited into Axie Infinity’s Ronin, AXS shot to the top of the list. Ether dropped to second place, partially explained by WETH appearing at #4 as several new bridges accepted it instead of Ether. Total AAVE amounts dropped, an interesting finding given that it was widely used in Polygon and is a major partner for the Avalanche Rush. Users may have been waiting for the launch to deposit into Avalanche.

Tokens related to Polygon (MATIC, QUICK, AAVE) dropped down the pecking order as users delved into other chains. Other than the usual suspects of stablecoins and WBTC, FTM also gained a noticeable share of the pie.

AXS is by far the most concentrated token per bridged chain out of the top tokens, with AXS locked in Ronin making up 56% of its circulating supply!

The combined $18 billion locked in Ethereum bridges exceed TVL for every single DeFi app across all chains, jumping from #8 four months ago.

The burgeoning growth of chains and interconnecting bridges them will continue to be a massive part of Web3. The Explorer-as-a-Service product, Blockscan list of bridges and Etherscan Bridges dashboard are some of our attempts to support this growth.

What are other ways we can help? Let us know in the replies!

Ethereum Bridges: Four Months On was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On 11th August, we saw the single largest cryptocurrency hack of all time. $611 million dollars were stolen from PolyNetwork. The humongous amount wasn’t the only unique characteristic of this hack. Unlike most hacks, this one had an ongoing narrative accompanying it, supplied by messages sent to and from the hacker’s address. It even had a self-published Q&A series!

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In this article we take a look at the various ways Ethereum users have been using their wallets to communicate with the world and each other, looking at:

• Input Data Messages (IDM)
• Non-Standard IDMs
• Verified Signatures

Input Data Messages (IDM)

IDM is the term we’re coining to describe messages sent via the Input Data field in an Ethereum transaction. The input data field is widely used to inform the blockchain on what contract calls are made as part of a transaction. Data is written in hexadecimal form which can be decoded to show the exact function being called.

However, the same field could be used to enter hexademical data that — when converted to UTF-8 encoding — is represented as text.

Identifying which out of all the transactions done on Ethereum are IDMs is a challenge, as contract-interaction transactions could be converted to UTF-8 (appearing as gibberish) while those meant to be messages could have some characters incorrectly formatted (thus showing up as part-gibberish).

From the messages we could identify, their use could be categorized into:

1. Transaction receipts/notes
2. Description of properties (in JSON)
3. Crypto begging
4. Advertising
5. Conversations

Transaction receipts/notes

The most predominant use of these messages appear to be in the form of receipts/notes. When attempting to look for common words used in IDMs involving a subset of addresses, one such example completely dwarfed every other word.

Another example of receipts are from the Anyswap: BSC Bridge address. In this case, Anyswap includes the transaction hash of a user’s deposit on BSC as an IDM in the Ethereum transaction they send to the user. Users can simply copy and paste the hash into BscScan.com to double check their BSC deposit.

Verification

Some addresses use IDMs to do verification. In one example, an address religiously sends itself an IDM on a daily basis.

Inspecting the IDMs shows that they follow a standard JSON format. We don’t know for sure, but we can speculate that it is a daily verification of smart contracts added to a registry.

Crypto Begging

Wherever there is a popular or newly rich address, you can bet that another address will be messaging them to “help muh famili”. A sample of messages sent to Vitalik (Vb address):

For those looking to ask for money, remember that your chances of success is higher if you first add value to the other party (although in this case, whether or not the funds are legitimate is a separate story).

Advertising

In contrast to the begging messages, some entrepreneurial folks instead send IDMs to popular addresses to promote their wares. This address spammed more than 150 addresses with an IDM promoting a campaign to raise funds for “TROLL HUNTERS — the First tokenized 3D animated movie”. Unfortunately, it seems that the fundraise was not completed successfully.

Another kind of ‘advertising’ is an address regularly posting links to their product in IDMs such that it gets picked up by crawlers like us. Folkspaper, a self-dubbed “fast-growing newspaper curated by the online community”, consistently posts links to their articles in IDMs sent to themselves.

Conversations

Finally, the kind of IDMs most interesting to online busybodies like ourselves are the on-chain conversations. A ‘heart-warming’ exchange between two MEV bot operators is the best example of a productive use of two-party IDMs.

In the space of 30 messages, the two hitherto online strangers and arbitrage competitors set up a partnership to ensure better profits for both parties and became friends!

PEPO🇦🇷 on Twitter: "happy ending 🤍THAT'S THE TWEEThttps://t.co/AAJb31DGwK23/23 pic.twitter.com/KL84XBbvhw / Twitter"

happy ending 🤍THAT'S THE TWEEThttps://t.co/AAJb31DGwK23/23 pic.twitter.com/KL84XBbvhw

By far the most active and interesting conversation we could find remains the one involving PolyNetwork Exploiter 1. Rewarding advice with 13.37 ETH, nurses and refugees requesting for money, encrypted messages, calling out scammer emails & the media, negotiations with the hacked project and Q&As, this conversation has it all.

Non-Standard IDMs

While most IDMs are sent simply as text, some require additional work to decode the messages.

Encrypted messages

These messages combine the public nature of blockchains and relative privacy of encrypted messages. Those who want to understand the message content would need to decrypt it.

Event logs

Used by the second THORChain exploiter as a message to their target, the message requires parsing through the event logs of 6 transactions and changing the line-by-line input data view from Hex to Text. Future DeFi exploiters, please stick to the standard IDM method!

Bytes

Another form of non-standard IDMs is by making the data (when converted to UTF-8) appear in byte format. For these cases, the reader would need to then convert the text from byte to string format using a tool such as this.

IDMs that appear as long series of numbers magically become human-readable.

Verified Signatures

Another type of message uses Ethereum but is not stored on-chain. A wallet owner can sign a message using their private key to prove that the message came from the signed address. The signed message can then be verified by anyone else using tools such as Etherscan’s and Mycrypto’s.

Etherscan keeps a record of the messages signed using our tool. While this tool is primarily meant to allow contract creators to verify ownership of their contract, it has since been used by thousands in the community for a variety of use cases.

Why would users opt to use verified signature messages rather than IDMs? For one, these messages are not tied to a receiving address. Anyone who lands on the Verified Signatures page on Etherscan can see a list of these messages without navigating to a particular address. The UX of reading these messages is also simpler — you don’t need to convert from hexadecimal to UTF-8. Perhaps most importantly, they do not incur transaction costs the way IDMs do.

Looking through these messages, we can see that they are used for different reasons than those used in IDMs.

• 30% of messages are used to verify their social media account.

Note: for those looking to do this to add a Public Name Tag to their address, take note that Etherscan needs to see the link to signed message on the social account to verify on both sides. An example for reference.

• 29% of messages are used to certify ownership of addresses using a format other than Etherscan’s (example).
• Only 9% of messages actually follow the Etherscan template (example).
• Interestingly, as much as 1% of these messages were used to indicate shipment delivery of courier services (example)!

Other than these uses, some interesting highlights include:

• Identifying an account for exchange support
• Releasing license for a smart contract
• Request for P2P loan on Bitcointalk
• Announcing correct Twitter account for DeFi project
• Voting on Uniswap governance
• Verification of financial audit
• Correction of wrongly sent USDT

… and to cap it off, what appears to be a love letter!

Due to its Turing-complete nature, Ethereum can be used for all kinds of things beyond DeFi or NFTs. Using it as a messaging app is one such example. The space for this use case is wide and under-explored. We look forward to seeing more done on this front!

How would you like to see Etherscan support Ethereum messages? Let us know.

Ethereum: the Messaging App was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At block 1,265,000, Ethereum pushed its London upgrade with the long-awaited EIP 1559. The upgrade went off without a hitch and had thousands tuning in to watch parties celebrating the occasion.

In this article we look at data from the blockchain in its first 2 days after London. Key highlights include:

• Burnt Fees
• Gas Prices
• ETH Inflation
• EIP 1559 Transactions

To check out live data by block, head to the Etherscan Blocks page!

Burnt Fees

The key metric in most people’s minds. In the first 2 days post-London, Ethereum has already burnt close to 9,200 ETH, approximately 0.01% of total supply. It has burnt ETH at a rate of 3.19 ETH per minute.

The 10 largest blocks burning ETH at the time of writing were all mined shortly after the upgrade. Continuing a trend prevalent throughout the last month, these congested blocks were caused by yet another NFT airdrop.

Gas guzzlers are contracts that consume the most gas due to their users’ interactions. After the London upgrade, they are also the largest burners of ETH. The top 10 entities to guzzle gas have burnt more than 4,500 ETH in the first 2 days since London.

Breaking these addresses down by type, we see that NFTs lead the way, followed closely by decentralized exchanges (DEX). These addresses make up more than 2/3 of top gas guzzlers burning ETH.

Providing an indication of a rollup/sidechain-centric future of Ethereum were the two bridge contracts of Polygon’s POS chain and Axie Infinity’s Ronin chain.

Conversely, gas spenders are entities that have spent and burnt the most gas. By far the leading ones are Binance and Coinbase. In total, the top 10 spenders have burnt close to 600 ETH in London’s first 2 days.

Looking at gas spenders by type, centralized exchanges dominate the pie, making up almost 90% of the top 25 addresses. Mining pools Spark Pool and Ethermine burnt a fair amount of ETH distributing mining profits to their miners, as they are now unable to do so by spending negligible gas prices.

Gas Prices

EIP 1559 changed the transaction mechanism in Ethereum from a first price auction to relying on a protocol base fee + user-selected priority fee. Etherscan users may have noticed this additional information displayed on the site.

The aforementioned NFT airdrop also had a significant impact on network base fees, becoming the first test case of the EIP 1559 flexible block size mechanism. Base fees spiked quickly up and back down as users rushed to claim their NFTs.

Contrary to a popular misconception, EIP 1559 does not necessarily result in lower gas fees (Etherscan readers know better though!). What it does is provide better gas price estimation by updating protocol base fees. It functioned as expected here, as base fees shot up from 97 Gwei to a high of 476 Gwei in 6 minutes and dropped back in 40 minutes.

Tied closely with base fees are miner tips or priority fees. These are the amounts of ETH actually sent to miners instead of burnt from the blockchain. Again indicating successful execution of the EIP 1559 mechanism, the chart below shows how protracted high priority fees led to the large spike in base fees while short bursts of it led to a limited or no impact.

ETH Inflation

Another popular misconception is that EIP 1559 necessarily results in a deflationary supply of ETH. Without the deployment of Proof of Stake (POS) and a subsequent drop in block rewards, Ethereum will overall remain inflationary. However, short periods with high base fees will result in a temporary deflation in ETH.

The first deflationary block in Ethereum was found an hour after London.

Depending on the amounts of ETH staked after the merge to POS and base fees, ETH supply may well become net deflationary. Ultrasound.money has a nice projection of inflation after the merge given a user’s selected parameters.

EIP 1559 Transactions

As most wallet providers have not switched to using EIP 1559-style transactions, they have made up less than 10% of transactions so far. A full analysis of EIP 1559 will likely be possible only after a majority of transactions have flipped from Legacy to EIP 1559.

Why should wallets and their users opt to use EIP 1559 transactions? Using this transaction type saves ETH for the user, following the formula:
(Max Fee Per Gas — (Base Fee Per Gas + Max Priority Fee Per Gas)) * Gas Used

COVIDPunks (culprit of the spike in base fees) were a primary beneficiary of these savings, experiencing the highest savings per transaction so far while minting new NFTs.

As mentioned, a full analysis of EIP 1559 is only fair to make after it has been adopted widely by wallets and users. This article is only a first look at the data. If you are interested to view more, check out our EIP 1559 dashboard and let us know what other metrics you’d like to see!

First Look at Post-EIP 1559 Ethereum was originally published in Etherscan Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.