"November 3, 2018" because Devcon
Devcon4 edition, a very well organized event. Aragon and Uniswap live on mainnet
News and Links
Layer 1
Explaining validators in Eth 2.0
ewasm testnet is live with a block explorer
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: if quantum computing were to some day break Eth, we could still recover using secrets of HD wallets
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.
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 with demo, block explorer and SDK
Plasma Generator - add complex tx to Plasma Cash
Plasma Nano - extension of Plasma Cash by spreading gas costs over more txs
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.
OpenLaw Core - Javascript API, Scala shared library, OpenLaw virtual machine. OpenLaw also released new tools for licensing, fractional ownership and royalties
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
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
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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Housekeeping
Link: http://www.weekinethereum.com/post/179786646738/november-3-2018
Note: This issue came out a bit late. Hence the quote marks on the date. 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
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