Release 2.4.0. (#449)

* Feat(standalone): Add debug tracing of remaining gas values (#391)
* Balance type refactoring (#386)
* Remove standalone binary (#403)
* Eth Address cleanup (#387)
* Fix(dep) Pass std feature on to rjson library (#402)
* Feat(benchmarks): update gas bounds after wasm cost reduction (#406)
* Feat(tests): Mock touching trie nodes (#408)
* Fix: Only allow owner to call deploy_upgrade (#410)
* Feat(tests): Uniswap multi-hop swap benchmark (#415)
* Fix(engine): Return revert error message during contract deploy (#424)
* Move engine transactions module to engine-transactions crate (#418)
* Avoid using wasmer directly (#420)
* Fix compilation after #418 merge
* Use default git attributes for Cargo.lock (#421)
* Switch to rebranded blake2 (#422)
* Remove unused unused (#423)
* Chore: make aurora compatible with latest nightlies (#425)
* Chore: upgrade to the recent nightly (#426)
* chore: upgrade to the latest nearcore version (#427)
* chore: move to 2021 edition (#428)
* Benchmark contract performing only pure arithmetic and memory operations (#429)
* Fix(engine): Require chain_id (#432)
* chore: make sure aurora is using the latest cost config (#435)
* Fix(test): make uniswap benchmarks reproducible (#437)
* Fix(test): lower gas limit on OOG test; this is needed because the solidity compiler got more efficient, not because of a regression in EVM gas metering correctness
* Fix(engine): Cache generation values to avoid repeated state reads (#438)
* Fix(engine): Optimize is_account_empty (#439)
* Fix(test): update uniswap wasm fraction; this is needed because optimizations from #438 and #439 together lowered the fraction of gas spent on IO
* Fix(engine): Upgrade to latest SputnikVM (#445)
* Fix(engine): Simple cache to stop consecutive duplicate reads (#446)
* Version update and change log

Co-authored-by: Aleksey Kladov <aleksey@near.org>
Co-authored-by: Evgeny Ukhanov <evgeny.ukhanov@aurora.dev>
Co-authored-by: Michael Birch <michael.birch@aurora.dev>

CHANGES.md

@@ -7,6 +7,31 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ## [Unreleased]
 
+## [2.4.0] - 2022-02-16
+
+### Changes
+
+- Performance improvements by [@birchmd] and [@matklad]; the engine should now consume much less NEAR gas: ([#427]) ([#438]) ([#439]) ([#445]) ([#446])
+- Security improvment: only Engine contract owner can use the `deploy_upgrade` method by [@birchmd]. ([#410])
+- Bug fix: Engine now returns the error message in the case of a revert during an EVM contract deploy, previously it would always return an address (even when the deploy failed) by [@birchmd]. ([#424])
+- Security improvment: Engine will no longer accept EVM transactions without a chain ID as part of their signature by [@birchmd]. This should have no impact on users as all modern Ethereum tooling includes the chain ID. ([#432])
+- Improvements to code quality by [@mrLSD]: ([#386]) ([#387])
+- Improvements and additions to internal tests and benchmarks by [@birchmd]: ([#408]) ([#415]) ([#429])
+
+[#386]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/386
+[#387]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/387
+[#408]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/408
+[#410]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/410
+[#415]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/415
+[#424]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/424
+[#427]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/427
+[#429]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/429
+[#432]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/432
+[#438]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/438
+[#439]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/439
+[#445]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/445
+[#446]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/446
+
 ## [2.3.0] - 2021-12-10
 
 ### Added
@@ -180,7 +205,8 @@ struct SubmitResult {
 
 ## [1.0.0] - 2021-05-12
 
-[Unreleased]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/compare/2.3.0...master
+[Unreleased]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/compare/2.4.0...master
+[2.4.0]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/compare/2.3.0...2.4.0
 [2.3.0]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/compare/2.2.0...2.3.0 
 [2.2.0]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/compare/2.1.0...2.2.0
 [2.1.0]: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/compare/2.0.2...2.1.0
@@ -209,3 +235,4 @@ struct SubmitResult {
 [@mfornet]: https://github.com/mfornet
 [@mrLSD]: https://github.com/mrLSD
 [@sept-en]: https://github.com/sept-en
+[@matklad]: https://github.com/matklad