Quick Take

• Finality is restored on the Holesky testnet.

• Edge case attack on the Sepolia testnet.

• Coinbase plans perpetual futures in the U.S.

• BackedFi launches tokenized COIN stock.

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Holesky Testnet Restores Finality

Ethereum developers, alongside the ethPandaOps team, successfully restored finality on the Holesky testnet at Epoch 119090, which occurred around 18:56 UTC on March 10th. The achievement comes after nearly two weeks of non-finalization caused by a configuration bug during the Pectra hard fork on Holesky. More than two-thirds of the validator stake on the testnet has attested to the correct state. Finality is typically reached every two epochs, approximately every 12.8 minutes. Affected nodes on Holesky should clear their datadir and sync from the last finalized state. A state backup is available at holesky-rescue.ethpandaops.io.

Sepolia Testnet Edge Case Attack

Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden outlined an edge case attack on Sepolia’s deposit contract following the recent Pectra upgrade on the testnet. An issue with Sepolia’s deposit contract led to empty blocks. Developers temporarily replaced problematic transactions with higher-paying ones while preparing to ship a coordinated fix. However, they discovered that the issue causing the empty blocks persisted due to an attacker exploiting an edge case, allowing the attacker to send 0-token transfers to the deposit contract, which triggered the issue. To address the attacker, developers privately deployed a fix to a few nodes to avoid alerting the attacker before the official coordinated update was rolled out.

Coinbase Perpetual Futures In U.S.

Coinbase announced plans to launch perpetual-style futures for U.S. users, offering 24/7 markets for Bitcoin and Ether perps trading. The platform will likely support USDC as collateral. Perpetual futures are contracts without an expiration date, allowing traders to hold positions indefinitely as long as they maintain margin. The perpetual futures platform is still under development and is being designed to comply with U.S. regulatory standards with guidance from the CFTC. Coinbase aims to provide a competitive alternative to existing offshore futures platforms.

BackedFi Launches Tokenized COIN

BackedFi, a tokenized real-world asset issuer, introduced wbCOIN, a tokenized representation of Coinbase’s COIN stock, now available on Base. Fully backed 1:1 by COIN stock, wbCOIN provides a legal claim to the value of COIN stock while remaining freely transferable. Users can access it on CoW Swap, with liquidity provided via Aerodrome. The token is not issued nor affiliated with Coinbase. BackedFi currently holds over $20 million in TVL in tokenized RWAs.

Other News

• Doubling blobs with Gossipsub v2.0

• SafeWallet restores services

• SEC drops ATS rulemaking

• Phi integrates EFP

• T2 migrating to Lens Chain

• wstETH goes live on Lisk

• Introducing Ether Guild

• Devcon is hiring

• Updated stablecoin bill

• FDIC resists transparency

• Movement mainnet beta

• Complexity isn't always obvious

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