Eth News and Links
Eth1
Geth v1.9.3 - maintenance release with Istanbul upgrade finalized
Least Authority’s ProgPow security audit, later discussed on core devs call. “We found no major issues and the design appears to function as intended.”
First call for the finality gadget working group that will use the eth2 chain to finalize the eth1 chain and then drastically reduce mining rewards.
Latest core devs call. Live tweeted notes. Oct 2 testnet fork, mainnet in Nov. Lots of blake2b discussion. Next hard fork after this one named “Berlin.”
Eth2
A Casper FFG explainer. How it adapts PBFT
Bouncing attack analysis and prevention
Lighthouse client update - interop with Nimbus, networking to official spec, 50ms slot times with 8 validators
Prysmatic client update - like Lighthouse, prepping for Eth2 networking lockin
Layer 2
Vitalik: layer 1 techniques on layer 2
A gentle guide to the OVM, and where CEL is building.
Latest Plasma implementer call
IACR paper on lightweight watchtowers
Stuff for developers
Write your first zk snark using Iden3’s circom and snarkjs libraries
Zac Williamson video on PLONK, Aztec’s new snark construction
web3Connect v1.0.0-beta.20 - 92% smaller bundle size, some breaking changes
Chainshot’s intro to ethers.js tutorial
filestorage.js for storage on SKALE sidechains
Build a text notification app with IPFS, Twilio and Eth address for authentication
Runtime Verification announces work on bounded model checker, a symbolic execution tool as a component of K’s Haskell backend.
Stop using Solidity’s transfer. Christian Reitwießner’s response: “We have not yet reached a conclusion on that”
Ecosystem
Mixers and beyond: Semaphore and the MicroMix eth and token mixer (live on Kovan testnet). An outline on making a private DAO with Semaphore
State of mixers - a report on the tradeoffs and progresses of mixers in our ecosystem
Mixicles - Juels, Breidenbach, et al paper with Chainlink. Input payments and decide payouts based on oracle results. two or more parties and yield payouts that are conditioned on oracle reports.
Evolution of Dharma - engaging chronicle of how Dharma has navigated the idea maze
EthBoston submissions and winners. Also two great videos from EthBoston to watch: Albert Ni’s “Ethereum from multiple perspectives” and Raul Jordan’s “Paving the path for the future of Ethereum”
Standards and governance topics
The LAO: an LLC+TheDAO mashup to be a US-compliant DAO for profit. Ross Campbell’s code for how TheLAO extends Moloch
Since everyone is launching a DAO: how to launch a (moloch fork) DAO
ERC2258: Custodial ownership standard
Application layer
Maker’s oracles v2: 0x, dYdX, Set, Gnosis to be oracles and get fees. Also Dai Stability Fee now at 14.5%
DeFi Saver: automatic CDP liquidation protection
pooltogether v2 is live
PoolDai also live: donate the interest from your cDai to a good cause
With any DeFi product, you should be aware of what risks you’re taking. Ameen writes up the risks to using Compound. Compound CEO Leshner’s response
More money markets: Outlet, a wallet aiming to abstract away using the protocols using Plaid as the fiat onramp
Podcrypt: podcast discovery webapp with recurring Eth donations
Majority Report: cataloging Augur’s decisions by REP holders, ie LexisNexis/WestLaw for Augur.
Austin Griffith’s latest DAOG version: Three Queens
Guesser markets are competitive for NFL games
SingularDTV’s SNGLS DAO to incentivize content curation
Tokens / Business / Regulation
Joel Monegro: Ethereum and the 77 dwarfs. Nobody in blockchain ever got fired for choosing to build on Ethereum.
Information asymmetry in crypto. web3 moves fast, some aren’t keeping up.
Mougayar’s PIB framework for comparing crypto tokens
Paxos launches a gold-backed token that takes a fee at the contract layer on transfer. It’ll be interesting to see if this gets wrapped
Dan Robinson’s yTokens idea, collateralized fixed-term lending. Zero coupon bonds for a yield curve.
General
“ETH goes where no Bitcoin has gone before” - William Shatner
80k Hours Podcast talks to Vitalik for a few hours (with transcript!). Lots of “what are blockchains good for” conversation.
China’s digital currency, in the works for 5 years, will be somewhat similar to Libra
LedgerLive finally supports ERC20 tokens
Eric Wall says no to Hedera/Hashgraph/whatever it’s called. Followup.
Missed this back then: in June, Jeffrey Berns closed the deal to buy Kirkwood Bank of Nevada. So we should get another crypto-friendly bank, as promised at Devcon.
For the 2nd straight week, I did an annotated version of the newsletter. Anyone who has bought the NFT can read it. Same link, you can still buy the NFT. See immediately below:
🎂 3 year anniversary 🎂
Just to repeat the advertisement immediately above: you can buy the limited edition NFT for 0.11 Eth which will unlock the annotated edition.
All proceeds will be back into Ethereum somehow, likely donated to a public good, at my discretion. And who knows, maybe there will be future benefits for the 200 NFT holders?
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new in bold):
Sep 9-Oct 21 - Kyber DeFi virtual hackathon
Sep 10-11 - DeFi Summit (London)
Sep 15 - Augur v1 cutoff
Sep 15 - Ethereal Tel Aviv
Sep 16 - Tachyon accelerator application deadline
Sep 15-16- StarkWare sessions (Tel Aviv)
Sep 27 - ErasureCon (password: information) (SF)
Oct 7 - ENS workshop (Osaka)
Oct 8-11 - DeVcon (Osaka) and Devcon social events calendar
Oct 19-20 - Crosslink (Taipei)
Nov 5-6 - Decentralized insurance D1Conf (Malta)
Nov 8-10 - ETHWaterloo
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