Remove @ethersproject/abi Dependency

[pcaversaccio]

In hardhat you have multiple dependencies on @ethersproject/abi, e.g.:

• hardhat/packages/hardhat-core/package.json

  Line 101 in dd19b66

  "@ethersproject/abi": "^5.1.2",

• hardhat/packages/hardhat-verify/package.json

  Line 42 in dd19b66

  "@ethersproject/abi": "^5.1.2",

Due to that dependency, you still have to rely on the old elliptic and vulnerable version GHSA-vjh7-7g9h-fjfh through ethers sub-dependency on @ethersproject/signing-key. The TL;DR is that if wallets strictly follow RFC-6979 (nonces are derived deterministically from the hashed message) and doesn't allow custom nonce injection, everything should be safe. In any case, it would be nice to remove this dependency and switch over to ethers v6 if possible. Thoughts?

[kanej]

Thanks for bringing this up. We should switch to the newer version.