v4.1.0 - Beta Istanbul Support

This is the first feature-complete Istanbul release, containing implementations for all 6 EIPs, see the HF meta EIP EIP-1679 for an overview. Beside this release contains further unrelated features as well as bug fixes.

Note that Istanbul support is still labeled as beta. All implementations have only basic test coverage since the official Ethereum consensus tests are not yet merged. There might be also last minute changes to EIPs during the testing period.

Istanbul Summary

See the VM Istanbul hardfork meta issue #501 for a summary on all the changes.

Added EIPs:

• EIP-152: Blake 2b F precompile, PR #584
• EIP-1108: Reduce alt_bn128 precompile gas costs, PR #540 (already released in v4.0.0)
• EIP-1344: Add ChainID Opcode, PR #572
• EIP-1884: Trie-size-dependent Opcode Repricing, PR #581
• EIP-2200: Rebalance net-metered SSTORE gas costs, PR #590

Other Features

• Two new event types beforeMessage and afterMessage, emitting a Message before and an EVMResult after running a Message, see also the updated section in the README on this, PR #577

Bug Fixes

• Transaction error strings should not contain multiple consecutive whitespace characters, this has been fixed, PR #578
• Fixed vm.stateManager.generateCanonicalGenesis() to produce a correct genesis block state root (in particular for the Goerli testnet), PR #589

Refactoring / Docs

• Preparation for separate lists of opcodes for the different HFs, PR #582, see also follow-up PR #592 making this list a property of the VM instance
• Clarification in the docs for the behavior of the activatePrecompiles VM option, PR #595