Week in Ethereum News

News and Links

Layer 1

• What’s new in Eth 2.0, pre-Devcon edition
  
• Explaining validators in Eth 2.0
  
• ewasm testnet is live with a block explorer
  
• EVMC 6.0.0
  
• VDF Research reference. Danny Ryan and Justin Drake explain why Ethereum and Filecoin are partnering for a VDF ASIC.
  
• Jarvis and Friday: two STARK friendly crypto primitives. Could reduce bandwidth by an order of magnitude in a stateless client
  
• Jeff Coleman: even if quantum computing were to some day break Eth, we could still recover using secrets of HD wallets
  
• Improving UX for network storage fees
  
• Introducing the “Minimal CBC Casper” family of consensus protocols from Zamfir, Rush, Asgaonkar, Piliouras
  

Layer 2

• Connext’s payment channel hub spec, v1. How to setup a Connext hub.
  
• Raiden v0.15
  
• Teutsch, Straka, Boneh: retrofitting a two way peg between chains paper
  
• Notes from Plasma implementer call
  
• Elph – sidechain which stores a Merkle root hash on Ethereum to allow validation. live on Rinkeby
  
• Plasma Generator – add complex tx to Plasma Cash
  
• Plasma Nano – extension of Plasma Cash by spreading gas costs over more txs
  
• PrimeHash game for Plasma Prime
  
• Shorter Merkle proofs for Snapps
  
• Kelvin Fichter: Strategies for Plasma Clients
  
• Kyokan to join up with FourthState for a Minimum Viable Plasma reference implementation, targeting Jan 1, 2019 delivery. Checkout Kyokan’s testnet Plasma block explorer
  

Stuff for developers – devcon means new tools and new releases

• Embark v4.0 – new web UI called Cockpit
  
• web3j v4.0.0 alpha
  
• web3x v1.2.1 – web3js port to Typescript now feature complete including support for ENS, Swarm and Whisper
  
• Slither v0.2 new detectors, new printers, Truffle integration, better detector API
  
• Etheno v0.2 – “JSON RPC multiplexer, analysis tool wrapper, and test integration”
  
• Smartcheck – Vyper security tool
  
• Doppelganger – framework for mocking Solidity code
  
• ZeppelinOS v2 with EVM packages, better upgradeability and governance. You can now earn ZEP tokens by deploying an EVM package
  
• CryptoZombies season 2 to learn how to build on Loom Network. And a PlasmaCash tutorial coming soon
  
• EVM to Solidity decompiler
  
• How to migrate your code when you upgrade a token
  
• Intro to Vyper interactive browser tutorial.
  
• OpenProofs – a library to create NFT badges. Similar to Gitcoin’s Kudos
  
• Why NuCypher decided to roll its own networking layer and not use devp2p/libp2p
  
• Web 3 UX Kit from ConsenSys Design
  
• Austin Griffith’s example application that uses meta transactions for gasless tx. Status’ on gas abstraction
  

Live on mainnet

• Create your decentralized organization live on the mainnet with Aragon v0.6. You can also apply as a team for substantial funding to work fulltime on Aragon alongside the original team and the Giveth DAC
  
• Uniswap launches on mainnet. Written in Vyper, incredibly low gas costs, it’s a decentralized Shapeshift/Bancor
  

Ecosystem

• Blockchains LLC ads blanketed Prague during Devcon. Here’s the video of the launch event. NYT’s Nathaniel Popper on Blockchains launch. They’ve pledged to use the Ethereum main net
  
• Lane Rettig’s ‘Twas the Night Before Devcon is impressive
  
• Devcon4 was incredibly well organized.  Thanks to that whole team.
• CornellBlockchain is taking over Bamboo
  
• What are zkSNARKs and why do they matter non-technical explainer
  
• 2fa on Ethereum using biometric data?
  
• Anonymous reputation risking and burning with SNARKs
  
• Truffle hits a million downloads
  
• EthSimple: an ENS name for every address
  
• POA Network, Compound and ConsenSys announce Mana, a client implementation in Elixir running on Beam, the Erlang VM. Github
  

Enterprise

• Pantheon Java client from PegaSys is released. Why they built it – enterprise-grade under Apache 2 license, public chain compatible. with POA, IBFT v2 coming. Enterprise Alpha in Q1 2019
  
• EEA releases Client Spec v2
  
• The EEA releases Off-Chain Trusted Compute Specifications v0.5
  
• Microsoft releases eEVM: C++ implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine for enclaves/SGX
  
• EY implements zero knowledge on the public Ethereum chain
  

Governance and Standards

• How to render the Melon protocol self-sustainable without the centralized company
  
• There was an MIT piece that some BTC maxis misinterpreted as Vitalik leaving Ethereum. What most people don’t understand is that Vitalik has been working for years to get himself left out of decisions.
  
• ERC1537: Auditable storage passing
  
• ERC1538: Transparent contract standard
  
• ERC1553: dividible asset token contract
  

Project Updates

• Augur is around 10k ETH in open interest and Maker nears 1m locked up ETH
  
• Augur dispute round analyzer
  
• Maker’s new CDP portal with a much nicer UX
  
• Ujo lets artists register for free by using IPFS
  
• Storj v3 whitepaper and first release of public alpha
  
• Cent evolves beyond bounties-only and incorporates posting/voting functionality similar to Steem
  
• Status deactivated their Slack on stage at Devcon and is now using Status.
  
• SingularDTV’s Prospect movie opens in theaters
  
• OpenLaw Core – Javascript API, Scala shared library, OpenLaw virtual machine. OpenLaw also released new tools for licensing, fractional ownership and royalties
  
• The Mattereum litepaper
  
• AirSwap: how we’re approaching OTC trading for private security tokens
  
• Grid+ Lattice Safe Cards demo
  
• Melt and send ERC1155 tokens in the Enjin wallet, plus 2 new games
  
• The state of the OmiseGo ecosystem
  

Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks

• Devcon4 streams
  
• Vest’s Axel Ericsson on Zero Knowledge
  
• Loom Network’s James Duffy on Decentralize This
  
• Gavin Wood on Epicenter
  
• USV’s Dani Grant on Digitally Rare
  

Tokens / Business / Exchanges

• IDEX to block NY IP addresses, institute KYC/AML
  
• CoinbasePro listed Brave’s BAT
  
• Nick Tomaino comes out against “professor coins” and “VC coins” (not his terms) because of the importance of community in a basechain
  
• Tokenizing corporate stock by Gabe Shapiro
  
• Partially Decentralized Orgs – argument to use web3 where it is most needed
  
• Ziade: Token Ranked Lists
  
• Alex Tabarrok: When can TCRs actually work?
  

General

• Not just Sergey Brin’s kid is mining Eth. Google CEO Sundai Pichai’s 11 year old son is also mining for Eth. “I realized he understood Ethereum better than how paper money works.”
  
• “We are big believers in Ethereum” – JP Morgan blockchain head Umar Farooq
  
• William Shatner tweets about Ethereum.
  
• Two new block explorers: Blockchain.com and BTC.com
  
• Ethereum Foundation donates 15k ETC to the ETC Coop. The Peacebridge is funded and ETC’s Mantis client will support ETH.
  
• ConsenSys acquires asteroid mining company Planetary Resources.
  
• BlockReduce – Karl Kreder’s paper on a scaling through hierachical merge-mined chains
  
• EOS Diligence Report – as Owocki puts it EOS has “misrepresent[ed] TX/sec nos, calling it a blockchain when no cryptographic verification or immutability”
  
• ZCash’s Sapling release activated without problems
  

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new additions in bold):

• Dec 7-9 – ETHSingapore hackathon (ETHGlobal)
  
• Jan 10 – Mobi Grand Challenge hackathon ends
  
• Jan 29-30 – AraCon (Berlin)
  
• Feb 7-8 – Melonport’s M1 conf (Zug)
  
• Feb 15-17 – ETHDenver hackathon (ETHGlobal)
  
• Feb 23-25 – EthAustin hackathon (EthUniversal)
  

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I own Week In Ethereum. As such, editorial control has always been 100% me.  If you’re unhappy with editorial decisions, feel free to tweet at me.

Housekeeping

Note: This issue came out a bit late. Devcon issue is hard, even when you skip Prague sightseeing and lock yourself in a hotel room.

Most of what I link to I tweet first: @evan_van_ness