Feb 24, 2022
ETHDenver: Rollup Recap
It’s hard to overstate how much fun we had at ETHDenver last week. We’re still coming down from our post-conference high — the inevitable fallout from a week of unabated excitement and dopamine depletion. Call it the ETHDenver detox.
While it’s true that all good things must come to an end, we can at least ease last week’s passing with a quick summary of its events in an attempt to make the glow last just a little bit longer.
What we worked on
It’s safe to say the Optimism team really made the most of ETHDenver 2022 — not only were we lucky enough to mingle with many community members (thanks to everyone who attended OP game night!), we also got to work building a few projects we’re very excited about. Our focus for ETHDenver was on potential improvements to Ethereum itself.
Data-blob-transactions (mini-danksharding)
You may have already seen the tweet thread by one of our team members summarizing the creation of the first data-blob-transaction prototype. If you haven’t, we highly recommend checking it out.
The TL;DR is that mini-danksharding introduces a new “data blob” transaction type to Ethereum. This blob data is only required to be available for a shorter period of time than regular blockdata, and is not directly readable within the EVM. This lowers the hardware requirements per byte of data, meaning that the amount of data can be larger than regular calldata.
Blob transactions have the potential to increase the transaction bandwidth accessible to Ethereum rollups by up to 100x — pretty exciting stuff! And equally exciting to be able to prototype at ETHDenver.
Big thanks go out to everyone involved in this project, including @lightclients, @adietrichs, @asn_d6, @terencechain, @rauljordaneth, @preston_vanloon, @prylabs, and @sigp_io — not to mention @dankrad and @VitalikButerin for coming up with the initial data-blob transaction draft.
Transient storage implementation (EIP-1153)
EIP-1153 introduces two new EVM opcodes, TSTORE and TLOAD, which act similarly to normal Ethereum storage, but are not persisted between transactions. This EIP was first introduced in 2018, and was more recently discussed by All Core Devs. We thought ETHDenver would be a prime opportunity to take a crack at implementing it!
We made a ton of progress, including a full geth implementation with tests, and even a modified Solidity compiler to actually define transient variables! Should we spin up a testnet? 👀
Community Projects
Besides contributions to Ethereum made by our own team members, we also had several projects build on top of Optimism during the conference!
These projects included a machine learning smart contract auditor, a way to get rid of unwanted crypto assets (while being rewarded for doing so), a decentralized live-streaming platform, and more!
This is what it’s about: sharing knowledge and hacking together in an environment where the only limit is your creativity! For a full list of Optimism-integrated ETHDenver projects, check them out here.
Talks and Panels
In addition to code contributions, Optimism team members also added to the forum of ideas at ETHDenver through a handful of talks and panels.
Optimism Chief Musician Ben Jones gave a rousing talk on the past (and future) of Optimism (melodica intro ftw!). He also participated in a panel on the ever-spicy topic of Optimistic vs ZK Rollups — don’t worry, all panelists left the stage unharmed.
Fellow Optimist and smart contractor extraordinaire Kelvin Fichter also participated in two panels: one on the topic of Web3 grants and another on the rollup developer experience.
It’s Been Real, Denver!
Even longtime ETHDenver veterans must admit the energy and excitement of ETHDenver 2022 set a new high watermark. We left it feeling more bullish, hopeful, (and yes, Optimistic) than ever.
Thanks for making it one for the ledger and we can’t wait to see you at the next one!
