A challenging month for the ecosystem as a whole, with FTX's collapse bringing collateral damage and an atmosphere of distrust across the space. Naughty influencers capitalizing on the mood to joke about Wrapped ETH and fun experiments with Open AI's ChatGPT provided some cheer as we head to the end of the year.

On Etherscan's side, we released a new browser extension and added MEV information into our Block pages.

In this issue our guest post looks into early Ethereum archaeology while the quiz looks into one of the bright lights for Ethereum's future: EIP-4844 or Proto-Danksharding! Learn more about it while having a chance to win $10 in ETH.

An Archeological Trip Across Early Ethereum Contracts

We stroll through some of the earliest contracts released on Ethereum and verified on Etherscan, including:

• The original 'soul-bound' token
• Gambling and ponzis
• Public goods
• Arguably the first NFT

FEATURE

Etherscan Browser Extension

This beta release focuses on gas prices. Let us know new features you'd like us to add!

FEATURE

MEV Info Tab in Block Page

Displaying MEV information per block such as proposer fee recipient and MEV reward.

The Epic Collapse of FTX: A Timeline

Fallout from FTX's collapse continued into November, leading to the company's bankruptcy and a hack worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

coindesk.com

An Update to Consensys's Privacy Policy

An update to the privacy policies of Metamask and Infura caused a storm of debates about the tracking of IP addresses by RPC endpoints. ELI5 here.

twitter.com/WuBlockchain

Crypto Exchange Kraken Lays Off 1,100 Employees

Layoffs occurred across the industry, with Kraken, Bybit, Dapper Labs and BitMEX among those who had to let people go.

cnbc.com

Proof of Reserves Wall of Fame

With exchange reserves under the spotlight, the community turned attention to Proof of Reserves. Nic Carter's Wall of Fame was a highlight.

niccarter.info

Open Sourcing the Flashbots Builder

The move by Flashbots was done to encourage competition among builders and improve censorship resistance for users.

writings.flashbots.net

Testnet ETH Claim for Prior Ethereum Developers

Addresses who've deployed contracts on Mainnet, Goerli or Sepolia before Nov 15 are eligible for a one-time claim of 10 Goerli/Sepolia test ETH!

collect-test-eth.org

Solidity Developer Survey 2022

The annual survey for improving dev experience in Ethereum returns. This year, receive a POAP for submitting it!

cryptpad.fr

List of RPCs and their Privacy Policies

Chainlist now tracks whether RPCs track your IPs based on their privacy policies, the better to inform you of which RPCs to use!

twitter.com/0xngmi

What in the Ethereum Application Ecosystem Excites Vitalik

Categories of Ethereum apps highlighted includes money, governance, social coordination, on-chain finance and on-chain governance.

vitalik.ca

Transaction: 93 ETH Spent in Transaction Fees

An MEV bot paid approximately $113,000 in transaction fees to make $3,400 in profits from arbitraging DEX transactions.

Address: FTX Accounts Drainer

An address that drained hundreds of millions worth of dollars out of FTX. At one point, an address related to it held the 34th highest balance of ETH!

Questions received last month:

How do I know Etherscan reports the right balance for an address?
You can validate our reported account balances with other nodes such as those by Infura and Chainstack by using EthValidate, an open sourced tool you may even download and run locally.

Why are there 0-value token transfers being sent?
The ERC-20 standard allows for 0-value token transfers. While token balances are not affected by them, be careful not to fall for schemes purporting to send you tokens in return for action that expose you to hacks.

Confused with some terms in this newsletter?
Remember to check the Etherscan glossary!

Looking for a job in crypto? Check out these roles below:

Editor at crypto.news | Remote

Marketing Lead (CMO) at Autonomy Network | Remote

SRE / DevOps Engineer at Blocknative | Remote

Rust Engineer at Toposware | Remote

Content Producer at Nervos | Remote

POLL

Quiz: EIP-4844

Answer this quiz on proto-danksharding and stand a chance to win $10 in ETH!