News and Links
Layer 1
Notes from last Eth2 call
Vitalik wants feedback on Eth2 materials
Code for Artemis, the Beacon chain Java client from PegaSys
ELI5: randomness in Eth2 using a VDF
Combining Avalanche RANDAO and VDFs
Backwards-Forwards sync of Ethereum clients through requesting reverse diffs
On raising the gas limit (and storage management fees). Also a hypothetical on how many magnitudes more throughput we can get from the PoW chain
Mustafa Al-Bassam: Towards on-chain non-interactive data availability proofs
Vitalik: discouragement attacks
Layer 2
- Raiden is live on mainnet! (see ahem, the live on mainnet section)
- Economics of Loom Networks’ PlasmaChain validators
- Plasma Winter account model Plasma with with zkSNARK proved state transitions
- Payment channel protocol for light client server incentivization
Stuff for developers
- Truffle v5 is out of beta
- Ganache v2 beta
- MetaMask developer docs
- Solidity v0.5.2
- web3j 4.1 for android out of beta
- ZeppelinOS and OpenZeppelin v2.1 releases candidates with Truffle 5 and Solidity 0.5.x
- State of Zeppelin’s EVM packages
- Optimistic contracts: assume data submission is legit until proven false, verified through bonding/slashing
- Piñata: the power of IPFS as an on-demand CDN
- RLP in Typescript
- Walkthrough of 0x Instant and 0x Launch Kit
- Austin Griffith Burner Wallets 2.0 in action to buy beer at blockchain meetup
- Steve Mark: security issues in meta transactions
- Bingen Eguzkitza’s suggestions to becoming a Solidity dev
- Ocean Protocol’s Squid Libraries in JavaScript or Python to make it easier to build front ends or data pipelines on Ocean. Neat example of app using the Squid libraries and Orbit db from Outlier Ventures
Clients
- PegaSys 0.8.3 – hard fork ready
- v6.0.0-beta.3 of the ethereum consensus tests
- Progress on the Mana client in Elixir
- Eth on ARMbian. Geth and Parity images now hard fork ready (I got it wrong last week, sorry!)
Ecosystem
- EthGlobal 2018 in review. 3,800 hackers (1000+ new to Solidity) from 65 countries. >500 projects submitted.
- Ethereum Foundation’s call to identify impactful Eth dapps
- Amberdata’s Eth 2018 in review data viz.
- Alethio on miners choosing empty blocks for profit
- The VB Foundation donated 1k eth to Prysmatic Labs, Chainsafe and SigmaPrime for their eth2 clients.
- zkDAI: private Dai transactions with SNARKs
- Status proposal for PRBS Whisper alternative
- Radical Address: simple ENS name purchasing
- ENS: Plans for 3-6 character name auction starting at end of q1
- Argent: no more seed phrases, instead a recovery account/multisig that does not have access to your assets. You can use a hardware wallet, a trusted friend or their Argent Guard service
- Universal Logins update. It has a live demo
Live on mainnet
- Raiden is live on mainnet in alpha testing. ie, break it, get bug bounty
Enterprise
- Societe Generale processed the first letter of credit on Komgo
- Bloomberg says Facebook is developing a Whatsapp stablecoin. My guess is that they eventually just give up and use a centralized database because they won’t be able to stomach giving up control.
- Blythe Masters exits Digital Asset for “personal reasons”
- LiquidShare’s pilot platform for European SME post-trade infrastructure opens on Euronext’s markets
- In January, Brazilian National Social Development Bank to launch trial of collateralized real stablecoin on Eth mainnet
- Tyler Smith: blockchain as industry data commons
Governance and Standards
- The dxDAO to launch on April 4th to govern the DutchX protocol, with 50% of tokens going to those who trade on DutchX.
- Maker stability fee at 0.5%, winning in a narrow vote
- All the links for the Gangnam ProgPOW testnet
- ERC820 is in last call
- ERC1667: standard Plasma MVP
Application layer
- The state of Gnosis: how it all ties together
- DDEX is forking 0x as the Hydro Protocol. 0x responds and officially rebrands to 0x.
- 0x ecosystem acceleration grants
- Uport and Ethense educational certificates on your self-sovereign identity
- Update on insurance giant AXA’s Fizzy flight insurance app: 70% flights covered, 10k transactions, mostly “from a B2B deal.”
- Atari games RollerCoaster Tycoon and Goon Squad coming to Ethereum in second half of 2019
- Exploring the emerging crypto debt markets
- MakerScan is pretty slick.
- Aragon v0.6.2
- Golem v0.18.3
- Augur v1.8.6
- DecryptMedia profiles Grid+
- Qoo10 builds ecommerce platform where you can only use their token for purchases and listings.
Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks
- Martin Holst Swende on Zero Knowledge
- St Louis Fed Reserve’s David Andolfatto on Epicenter
- Amir Taaki with Arthur Falls
- Afri Schoedon on 51Percent
- Latest
- Storj’s Shawn Wilkinson and JT Olio on Hashing It Out
- Georgios Konstantoploulos on Hashing It Out
- Liam Horne on Into the Ether
Tokens / Business / Regulation
- Melonomics in a nutshell. I wouldn’t be surprised if many future token models look like this.
- Exploring bonding curve collateral
- Kyle Samani’s questions from the idea maze
- Scott Locklin explains the Fisher equation of exchange and says crypto has velocity all wrong
- Should be interesting to watch Cashbet fraud lawsuit. Charlie Shrem was an advisor and they paid ArsenalFC for an ad.
- Token Taxonomy Act: 3 Rs and 1 D in the US House intro a crypto bill during a lame duck session. Despite what crypto clickbait media may tell you, this does not augur particularly well for the US becoming more crypto friendly any time soon
- Coinbase head lawyer Brian Brooks in NYT: America Could Lead the Transition to a Digital Currency Reserve.
- Jurisdictional arbitrage in action: Swiss government wants to become more crypto friendly
General
- Cosmos Game of Stakes testnet goes live
- Substrate 1.0 beta is out. AdEx released payment channels on Substrate
- Reducing shielded proving time in Zcash Sapling
- Jarvis and Friday vulnerabilities found. Crypto peer review in action
- Swingby: hash timelocked BTC but minted as ERC20 token with collateralized ETH
- wBTC update. First wrapped BTC minted
- Bloomberg thinks Tether has the money it says it does
- Coinbase Earn launches. Gain ZRX by learning 0x
- Facebook gave Spotify, Netflix and the New York Times access to all sorts of user data, apparently including private messages
- Donate Eth to Heifer International (a longtime Nick Johnson favorite) and get an NFT
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new in bold):
- Jan 10 – Mobi Grand Challenge hackathon ends
- Jan 10-Feb7 – 0x and Coinlist virtual hackathon
- Jan ~15 – Constantinople hard fork at block 7080000
- Jan 17 – Aragon vote on funding original AragonOne team
- Jan 29-30 – AraCon (Berlin)
- Feb 7-8 – Melonport’s M1 conf (Zug)
- Feb 15-17 – ETHDenver hackathon (ETHGlobal) next hacker application round closes December 31st
- Feb 23-25 – EthAustin (EthUniversal)
- Mar 4 – Ethereum Magicians (Paris)
- Mar 5-7 – EthCC (Paris)
- Mar 8-10 – ETHParis (ETHGlobal)
- Mar 27 – Infura end of legacy key support (Jan 23 begins Project ID prioritization)
- Apr 19-21 – ETHCapetown (ETHGlobal)
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