Ethereum News and Links
Protocol
- At EthCC, Vitalik announced PlasmaCash. [Outside, Karl Floersch was giving an abbreviated talk on the steps]. This design framework – coins deposited on Plasma chain as NFT thus you can track only Merkle branches for your own coins – comes from Plasma with much less per-user data checking in last week’s issue.
- Karl released a PlasmaCash spec.
- VB: “Plasma is not a sidechain/drivechain. Sidechains and drivechains let 50% of the miners on the sidechain steal all coins in the side/drive chain. Plasma relies only on the security of the main chain”
- Machinomy: We built a Generalised State Channels framework
- A state channels adventure with counterfactual Rick from Spankchain
- Latest Eth/RChain Casper standup
- Sharding: A new account type in abstraction.
- Sharding: Guaranteed execution gas for transactions in collations
- Scaling now with Parity bridge – initial deployment connecting PoA chains
- You’ve probably already seen their CryptoZombies series, now LoomNetwork announces its first DappChain (one DPoS sidechain per dapp written in Go; there’s a decentralization tradeoff). You can apply to use their beta SDK, which is aimed at game developers.
Stuff for developers
- Echidna – smart fuzzer for Solidity code from Trail of Bits
- Merkle Airdrops: a (much) better way to airdrop. Can also be used for NFTs
- Gas Token – store gas when it’s cheap to use when it is expensive by using the storage refund. For more, Reddit thread worth a read due to Phil Daian participating.
- Is the geth console going away? They’re soliciting opinions
- uPort guide using Truffle boxes
- Off-chain whitelist with on-chain verification?
- O(1)Labs released Snarky: A high-level language for verifiable computation
- Alex Sherbuck is doing a series on each coding error that has been done in Soldiity
- sails.js Truffle hook
- Ethereum + IPFS + Create-React-App tutorial
- SwarmCity releases IPFS consortium code – group agreements to maintain IPFS data. Github.
- Updated version of using Zeppelin and Truffle for token sales
- Ujo’s current tech stack
- MAIAN – security tool from the recent academic article.
EIP/ERC
Release
- Solidity v0.4.21 – choose your EVM, new features, bugfixes, etc
- ENSNow: Get an ENS subdomain and point it at your wallet instantly
Ecosystem
- Lane Rettig’s notes on the Eth Magicians governance gathering at EthCC
- EtherVis – visual Eth address explorer
- Cool correlations graphing from Etherchain
- A front end for Christian Lundkvist’s Simple MultiSig
- EthPrize.io – bounties for things the ecosystem needs. first bounties for EthPM package manager and open source block explorer
- Nearly 13,000 Ether are lost due to one character typos
- All videos from EthCC. I particularly liked Karl’s.
Project Updates
- “Augur’s contracts are done” after Zeppelin audit
- Docker’s ex-CEO is joining Storj as interim CEO
- Propy records first US (VT) real estate transaction on blockchain
- Updated how Numerai works
- $5 DIY hardware wallet Firefly is shipping kits to early backers
- Washington Post is now verified as a BAT publisher
- Iconomi announces 3 new uses for its token
- LivePeer’s path to decentralization
- Digix to deploy to mainnet this week
New Projects
- Arithmetica – decentralized SETI, reusable for different problems. Github
- EDDITS – putting identities onchain using ERC725 and ERC735
Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks
- Software Engineering Daily hits Ethereum hard this week. First, PoS with Karl Floersch, then talking MetaMask with Dan Finlay, and talking web3 with Fabian Vogelsteller. And last week Luis Cuende and Raine Revere. What’s great about these is that they have transcripts.
- Joe Lubin SXSW interview
- More Lubin on 11:FS (interview starts around 30:05)
- CodePodcast on security with Yoichi Hirai, Matt Condon, and Santi Palladino
- Amber Baldet with Laura Shin
- Christian Lundkvist talks to Max Sklar
- Corey Petty talk on Social Implications of Blockchain
- Zero Knowledge talks to JP Smith from security auditors Trail of Bits and to Parity’s Robert Habermeier
- Just to reiterate: all videos from EthCC
Tokens
- Jez San: “The potential market of blockchains that use smart contacts, like Ethereum, dwarfs that of ‘store of value’ chains (i.e. bitcoin)”
- Why Dharma Protocol isn’t (yet?) doing a token sale
- Cofound.it: fundraising options for blockchain startup founders
- TrueDigital and ConsenSys create a reference rate for Ethereum, a crucial step for derivatives
- Robby Greenfield on the Venezuelan dictatorship’s Petro scam
- SEC: 5 things you need to know about ICOs
- Bloomberg: SEC has subpoenaed some crypto funds
- USV’s Nick Grossman: why tokens are fundamental to web3
General
- Vivek Singh: web3 in context of the history of the internet
- Politico on PoW mining in Eastern Washington
- IMF head Chrstine Lagarde acknowledges downsides to cryptoassets but “we must welcome their potential.”
- ConsenSys announces tech support for Quorum
- Caitlin Long on getting Wyoming’s blockchain bills enacted into law, “a US version of Switzerland’s “Crypto Valley””
- US House congressional hearing on cryptoassets. You may get annoyed when Brad Sherman (D-CA) comes on.
- Sierra Leone put raw presidential voting results on Ethereum as a backup
- Coinbase lands Barclays as UK banking partner
- Crypto segment on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.
Dates of note
Upcoming dates:
- March 27 – Pathfounder: Cryptoeconomics in London. 15% off with discount code EVAN.
- May 3-5 – Edcon in Toronto
- May 11-12 – Ethereal (NYC)
- May 16-17 – Token Summit (NYC)
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