TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / Archives for ethereum foundation

ethereum foundation

Ethereum Foundation’s Mailing List Compromised in Phishing Attack

by

Ethereum Foundation recently suffered a security breach after its mailing list was compromised. Disclosing the incident, Tim Beiko, the lead developer said that the leak occurred due to a vulnerability in SendPulse, an email automation service used by the foundation. According to Beiko’s post, deceptive mail was sent from the address updates@ethereum.org.

PSA: it seems like the mailing list provider the EF uses for “updates@ethereum.org” has been compromised. We are currently trying to reach. @SendPulseCom to resolve the issue. Please don’t click any links sent from that email. Here’s a sample fake email that was received.

Typically, phishing emails disguise themselves as legitimate, tricking recipients into revealing sensitive information or clicking on malicious links. However, the Ethereum Foundation has quickly responded by locking access to the compromised mailing list to prevent further damage. While the exact details of the phishing attack on SendPulse remain unclear, the incident underscores the importance of robust security measures and vigilance against such attempts.

Ethereum
Ethereum Foundation’s Mailing List Compromised in Phishing Attack 3

The Ethereum Foundation has assured its community that they are investigating the breach and working to secure their systems to prevent similar incidents in the future. Furthermore, Beiko highlighted the need for subscribers to be cautious of any suspicious emails claiming to be from the Ethereum Foundation.

Additionally, he advised users to verify the authenticity of emails by checking the sender’s address and avoiding clicking on links or downloading attachments from unknown sources. Additionally, users should enable two-factor authentication [2FA] on their accounts for an added layer of security.

No Major Ethereum Sales: Is the Foundation Predicting a Higher Peak?

Meanwhile, IntoTheBlock’s latest analysis delved into the USD net flows from Ethereum Foundation wallets. Historically, during each bull market, the Foundation has strategically sold substantial amounts, often aligning these sales almost perfectly with market peaks. In the current cycle, the Ethereum Foundation has yet to execute any significant sales.

Ethereum
Ethereum Foundation’s Mailing List Compromised in Phishing Attack 4

This leaves us with two options to consider. First, the absence of substantial sales could indicate that the Foundation anticipates further market growth, suggesting that the peak of the current cycle is still ahead. Alternatively, the Foundation might have opted for a new approach, potentially adopting a longer-term holding strategy or a different method of managing its assets.

Ethereum Foundation Treasury reserve includes 1.3B ETH and $300M Fiat: Report

by

The Ethereum Foundation [EF] released a report on Monday, detailing its reserves and investments in both crypto and fiat, as of March-end. The non-profit foundation said it held more than $1.6 billion in treasury assets in end-March.

Out of a total of $1.6 billion EF treasury, nearly $1.3 billion comprises ether reserves, which represented over 0.297% of the total ether supply as of March 31. Around $303 million accounted for non-crypto assets and investments. Some $11 million was held in other cryptocurrencies.

At the time of writing this post, the foundation did not disclose any further details on the composition of the assets. But did elaborate on how it deals during a market downturn.

We also increase our non-crypto savings in response to rising ETH prices. This provides a greater safety margin for our core budget and would enable us to continue funding non-core but high-leverage projects through a market downturn.

The holdings included 39,168 ether already committed to client teams building on Ethereum, according to the report.

The Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization that’s focused on growth within the Ethereum ecosystem. The team provides projects with grants to fund other teams working outside of the core EF domain. Apart from that it also manages delegated domain allocation and leverages third-party funding techniques.

Image

The foundation funds research and development on Ethereum and related technologies. According to the report, in 2021, it invested a total of roughly $48 million, of that $20 million was in the form of external funding which included, grants, third-party funding, bounties, sponsorships, etc.

Eth developers, agencies, and teams involved in the foundation’s activities netted a total of $5.1 million in 2021, the report noted.

As a matter of fact, Research and development of layer 1 blockchains, saw spending of over $21 million last year, which included research on main net upgrade, security, mechanism design, and grants to external clients.

Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge might get pushed back

That said, the highly anticipated Merge to Proof-of-Stake on Ethereum might get delayed. Ethereum Foundation member Tim Beiko tweeted on Tuesday night that the upcoming Merge would not take place by June, as was previously thought.

Despite the delay, Beiko still hopes that the Merge will take place “soon.”

Ethereum Foundation receives $1.5M donation to fund Ethereum 2.0

by

Ethereum Foundation has revealed that six crypto-companies have donated $250k each. According to the official announcement, the funds secured will be used to aid efforts to upgrade the Ethereum blockchain. Over the past several years, the ETH ecosystem has witnessed unprecedented developments and innovations.

To foster the growth of the blockchain, several platforms have come together and donated a total of $1.5 million. Announcing the same, Ethereum Foundation stated,

“Today, we’re excited to announce that Compound Grants, Kraken, Lido, Synthetix, The Graph and Uniswap Grants are donating $250K each to support ETH execution-layer client teams. This project is the result of several months of work, and will supplement the significant funding provided by the Ethereum Foundation this year. This fundraise will have no impact on the EFs continued financial support for these teams.”

Recipients of Ethereum Foundation’s fund

The official blog post also stated that the Ethereum Foundation has allocated more than $10 million on execution-layer client R&D since the beginning of 2019 and that it remains on its highest priority list.

The foundation reportedly picked five of its client teams- Besu, Erigon, Geth, Nethermind, and Nimbus to receive the funds. It will offer the necessary infrastructure for the network after the unification of ETH 1.0 and ETH 2.0. The non-profit organization asserted to the community that the additional grants will not influence its current financial support efforts.

Besides, TWJ had earlier reported Kraken’s contribution to the Ethereum Foundation to support the open-source developer teams behind ETH 2.0. In addition to the cryptocurrency exchange, the six entities include Uniswap, Synthetix, The Graph, Compound Grants Program, and lastly, Lido Finance.

Revealing the main intention behind this approach, the foundation said,

“Part of our goal with this first round is to lessen risks that come from reliance on any single team or entity as we all work to maintain quality open source products in a diverse, decentralized, and sustainable way. We continue to work towards more decentralized funding mechanisms for Ethereum’s public goods, and this is one more step that enables larger groups of participants to directly support client development and maintenance.”

Ethereum [ETH] dodged a bullet after mending severe threat, reveals foundation

by

Ethereum Foundation has come clean and divulged fresh details about a major severe threat against the Ethereum platform, which was a clear and present danger up until the recent implementation of the Berlin hard fork.

In a blog post, the foundation explained that the threat was an “open secret” for a long time and was even publicly disclosed by mistake without revealing the explicit details. After the execution of the Berlin hard fork, the Ethereum Foundation speculates that the vulnerability is low enough to calls for transparency at this time.

The platform stated,

“Since the Berlin, the upgrade is now behind us, and since geth nodes by default are using snapshots, we estimate that the threat is low enough that transparency trumps, and it’s time to make full disclosure about the works behind the scenes. It’s important that the community is given a chance to understand the reasoning behind changes that negatively affect the user experience, such as raising gas costs and limiting refunds.”

Ethereum’s denial-of-service [DoD] attack that never transpired

Security researchers of the ETH network namely Hubert Ritzdorf, Matthias Egli, and the author of the paper ‘Broken Metre’, Daniel Perez had united in 2019 to “weaponize an exploit”. The exploit, in question, purportedly triggered “random trie lookups” which could potentially induce block times in the minute range.

Another disclosure submitted during the same time revealed that the delays, as a result, would eventually become longer as Ethereum’s state grows, thereby enabling streamlined denial-of-service attacks against Ethereum network “with transactions whose execution time is close to the block interval even on modern, fast hardware.”

Following this, Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin joined forces with Martin Swende after many proposals from developers were turned down throughout 2020. As part of the team-up, Buterin and Swende were tasked to author EIP-2929 and EIP-2930. These upgrades involved raising the gas prices to prevent the attack which was subsequently introduced beside the Berlin upgrade in mid-April this year.

In short the Berlin hard fork is estimated to have brought down the efficiency of the exploit by 50 times.