Ethereum biweekly vol.51: Ecosystem and projects’ updates, development tools and research articles
18th August — 1st September. ConsenSys acquires Quorum, EF Ecosystem Support Program update, StarkWare launches Cairo, USDT live on the OMG network, MetaMask updates license, Uniswap introduces Token Lists, Sushi Swap announced, and much more!
Greetings, Ethereum family! Another two weeks are in the books, and it’s time for our biweekly summary of all things from the ecosystem!
Thanks to the incredible work of all the Ethereum 2.0 client teams, the Medalla multi-client testnet recovered from a catastrophic error over the last days providing just how resilient the protocol is. Check out Prysmatic’s catalog of events and Ben Edgington’s shorter writeup below. From other client news: SigmaPrime’s BeaconFuzz update on bug finding was published as well as Lighthouse client update, nailing attestation inclusion. Read Lodestar client update which covers learned lessons from Medalla and browser ready light client and a report on these weeks update from the Nimbus team covering the status of their validator client.
As for Layer 2, good news is, StarkWare launches Cairo, the first production-grade platform for generating STARK proofs for general computation. It is Turing Complete, and highly efficient. Previously, StarkWare and dYdX partnered up. Their engineering teams are collaborating on a Layer 2 scaling solution for Perpetual Contracts, based on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine and dYdX’s Perpetual smart contracts. dYdX’s Perpetual Contracts will be powered by StarkEx by the end of this year. What’s more, the USDT stablecoin is now live on OMG Networks Layer 2 transfer layer. The integration will result in a reduction of confirmation times delivering faster payments while fees will be reduced without compromising on-chain security.
It was a pretty significant two weeks for the ecosystem as well. On August 25th, JP Morgan and ConsenSys announced that the Quorum open source project would be acquired and managed by ConsenSys as part of a strategic investment by JPM. The acquisition is a major step in the acceleration of enterprise adoption of blockchain technology and Ethereum-based solutions. By using Quorum with ConsenSys’ other enterprise product offerings, businesses can build highly customizable, secure, and performant solutions. Furthermore, the Ethereum Foundation published its Ecosystem Support Program Update which details how the ESP is supporting projects beyond just giving out money via grants by detailing some projects that received help in the form of AWS credits, social connections and more.
Aave is №1 on DefiPulse for TVL now. Its UK entity responsible for integrations and support, Aave Limited, is now licensed as an authorised electronic money institution. After a lengthy application process, the authorisation was granted in July by the FCA. Previously, in collaboration with Aave, the Opium Team built and launched a Credit Default Swap for Aave’s recent Credit Delegation feature. Uniswap flipped Coinbase for transaction volume and flipped Bitcoin for transaction fees. SushiSwap protocol, an “evolution” of Uniswap that claims to better align incentives for network participants by introducing revenue-sharing and network effects to the popular AMM model via the SUSHI token, was introduced. As for votes completed since the last newsletter, Compound Proposals 20 and 21 passed with effectively unanimous support. mStable summarises the current thinking about how staking will look, the functions it will serve, and the risk reward ratios it will entail. 1Inch team details the mechanics and distribution of the 1inch token, how their liquidity mining program works, and how you can get involved. The next phases of the Aragon Network DAO are here: Phoenix and Firebird. During Phoenix, executive power over Aragon Court will be passed to ANT holders. The Gnosis Safe Multisig now stores more than $1B in digital assets. On August 21, OCEAN moved to a new ERC-20 contract, completing the long awaited token swap. Gemini Trading Widget now available to Brave desktop users. MyCrypto beta 2.1.0 comes with features such as protected transactions, MyCrypto Memberships, and MetaMask multi-account support. The POAP team recaps the last few months of work and project deliverables. And more!
It is Autumn already, and Ethereum 2.0 is getting closer every day! Stay tuned!
Development
GitHub metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Protocol updates
Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #94 [2020–08–21]
Tim Beiko’s notes.
Geth v1.9.20 bugfix release — new blockchain database layout, Go v1.15
Turbogeth weekly alpha release, fixes memory leak and stability improvements
EVM384: can we do fast crypto in the EVM?
Where Regenesis fits in the Eth1 roadmap
Fee market reform: a question of fairness?
Notes from latest Stateless Ethereum call
Increase gas price for SLOAD to 2300; CALL family, EXT* family and BALANCE to 2500
Eth2.0 Call #46 [2020/8/20]
Eth1 merged into eth2: demo of an Eth1 transfer inside an eth2 client:
What hardware should I buy to stake my Eth?
A script for easy Nimbus deployment
Attestant opensources its distributed remote keymanager
Barnabé Monnot: agent based validator modeling with new strategies and behaviors.
Last week, the Medalla testnet recovered from a catastrophic event and is finalizing again. Prysmatic’s catalog of events and Ben Edgington’s shorter writeup
SigmaPrime’s BeaconFuzz update on bug finding — you can help fuzz eth2 clients using the dockerized fuzzer
Lighthouse client update, nailing attestation inclusion
Lodestar client update, lessons learned from Medalla and browser ready light client
Nimbus: Medalla update — August 21 (take two): An update on last weeks update from the Nimbus team covering the status of their validator client.
What’s New in Eth2–22 August 2020: In this edition, Ben gives a great recap on what happened with the Medalla testnet over the last few days as well as the usual updates and explainers. He also put out another piece earlier in the week about the Medalla testnet incident that’s worth reading.
Tutorial to using rumor for client debugging
An Eth2 clock
A list of Eth2 tooling
Guide: Becoming a Validator on the Eth2 Testnet
Layer2:
StarkWare Launches Cairo: Cairo is the first production-grade platform for generating STARK proofs for general computation. It is Turing Complete, and highly efficient.
Previously, StarkWare and dYdX Partner Up: Their engineering teams are collaborating on a Layer 2 scaling solution for Perpetual Contracts, based on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine and dYdX’s Perpetual smart contracts. dYdX’s Perpetual Contracts will be powered by StarkEx by the end of this year.
Tether Live on OMG Network: The USDT stablecoin is now live on OMG Networks layer 2 transfer layer. The integration will result in a reduction of confirmation times delivering faster payments while fees will be reduced without compromising on-chain security.
Development tools
Improving Eth dev ex: faster compiling/testing, better debugging, better editors/IDEs and more
Test your Solidity code with the Echida fuzzer
Ethers-contract-hook: package to generate hooks from Ethers contract functions
A buidler plugin to easily verify on Etherscan
Using scaffold-eth to build an NFT art sales app on xdai
Create-eth-app v1.4 adds IPFS deployment
A strongly typed fixed point math library to prevent the YAM bug
10 points about the Diamond proxy standard
Identifying orchestration patterns in Solidity: simple (Uniswap), more complicated (Yield) and…Maker.
Sam Sun finds a xSNXa bug
OpenZeppelin upgrades for Buidler and Truffle
Golem wasm and VM payloads alpha release for devs
Dynamic value arrays in Solidity
For new web3 devs, remember: Ethereum code is not a database
Debug and profile together with Tenderly Organizations
Governance and new standards proposals
ERC2917: Staking Reward Calculation
EIP1559 decreases the risk of 51% attacks
EIP 1559 Implementers’ Call #4
Notes from the latest 1559/fee market reform call
Tim Roughgarden contracted to simulate eip1559 and escalator algo
Follow the EIPs repo.
Ecosystem updates
EF Ecosystem Support Program Update: This update details how the ESP is supporting projects beyond just giving out money via grants by detailing some projects that received help in the form of AWS credits, social connections and more.
Quorum moves to ConsenSys. As part of the deal, JPMorgan invests in ConsenSys
Ethereum Cat Herders Update #28: A proposal on gas cost, EVM 384, Medalla testnet, Ethereum client diversity, Peep an EIP, and more community updates.
ETH Gas Watch Launched: ETH Gas Watch is an aggregated gas price feed, with email alerts for when the gas price drops below a user-defined level.
Beware of generalized frontrunners: the transaction pool is a dark forest
EthGas.watch: an aggregator of gasprice predictions that will email you when gas prices drop
EthVM: an opensource block explorer from MyEtherWallet
Uniswap frontend now requires that you pick a token list
Video demo of OpenLaw integration with Microsoft Office
Baseline Protocol v0.1, set of standard interfaces for privately using Eth mainnet as the source of truth between enterprises
MetaMask restricts commercial use forks with more than 10k users
How to Conduct Your IDO on Mesa
A Framework for Token Value Flows
SAP Integration with Ethereum Mainnet
Upgrade Your Assets with Ethereum
The Stateless Tech Tree: reGenesis Edition
Projects updates
0x:
0x’s New Request for Quote System Announced: 0x’s new Request for Quote (RFQ) system allows professional market makers to bring CEX liquidity directly to DEX users to support great pricing for medium and large trades.
- The growth of DeFi has been possible because of the major improvements in DEX liquidity in 2020
- DEXs today support small trades well, but struggle to provide competitive pricing for medium & large trades
- 0x’s new Request for Quote (RFQ) system allows professional market makers to bring CEX liquidity directly to DEX users to support great pricing for medium and large trades
- Get started today: RFQ documentation
0x Labs Team Hackathon III: A recap of 0x Labs’ internal hackathon — July 2020.
The team has added several new liquidity sources to 0x API: Bancor, mStable, and Mooniswap:
mUSD, BNT, BUSD, FOAM, PAX, DONUT, LPT, BAND, and OMG are all now available to trade.
BZRX is now available to trade on Matcha.
Aave:
Aave company also got a UK license to provide payment services: Aave’s UK entity responsible for integrations and support, Aave Limited, is now licensed as an authorised electronic money institution. After a lengthy application process, the authorisation was granted in July by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Moreover, Stani Kulechov, Founder & CEO at Aave talked about the innovation of crypto and DeFi lending and its product development on OKExDeFi Roundtable.
Aave is now live on Token Terminal and Instadapp.
Previously, in collaboration with Aave, the Opium Team built and launched a Credit Default Swap for Aave’s recent Credit Delegation feature.
Aragon:
The next phases of the Aragon Network DAO are here: Phoenix and Firebird. During Phoenix, executive power over Aragon Court will be passed to ANT holders. Learn how to help with the transition and what to expect in the coming phases here.
Furthermore, Aragon has now a conviction funding pilot.
ICYMI, the recording of the town hall discussion is up:
Augur:
The Augur Master Plan (Part 2):
- Create beautiful easy to use mobile-first interfaces
- Create open-source tools that make it easier for liquidity to form
- Bring the offline social betting experience online through comments and chat
- Now that the team has built a core platform that people can use, focus on growth and user activation
- Build an open-source betting view for Augur, so it’s accessible to bettors in addition to traders
Brave:
Gemini Trading Widget Now Available to Brave Desktop Users.
WebBundles Harmful to Content Blocking, Security Tools, and the Open Web (Standards Updates #2).
Coinbase:
Welcoming Marcus Hughes, our new GM for Europe
zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators
Coinbase’s perspective on the recent Ethereum Classic (ETC) double spend incidents
Numeraire (NMR) is now available on Coinbase
Celo (CELO) is launching on Coinbase Pro
Compound:
There are currently many active and important discussions in the Compound governance forum. See below for highlights, and please add your perspective:
- “New Vanilla cTokens” — @jared lays out the steps to adding new cTokens to the protocol, so long as they have no special or unique functionality.
- “Faster way to real community governance” — @compoundbart initiates a discussion on giving small COMP-holders and delegates a louder voice in governance.
- “Governance Proposal X: Borrow Limits Comptroller Patch” — @arr00 plans to propose an upgraded Comptroller that includes the ability to implement borrow limits for certain markets.
- “Vesting for the Compound protocol” — @tarun discusses Gauntlet Network’s work in designing a potential vesting mechanism for COMP distributed to protocol users.
Completed Votes
As for votes completed since the last newsletter, Proposals 20 and 21 passed with effectively unanimous support:
Proposal 21: Reduce COMP emissions by 20%
Based on the “Systematically Reduce Emission Quantity” forum discussion led by @tarun, Gauntlet Networks has created Proposal 21 to lower the compSpeed (the emission rate of COMP) to 0.176 COMP per Ethereum block. Their stated intention is to follow up this proposal.
Proposal 20: Upgrade cUSDT Interest Rate Model
- Status: Executed August 21st, 2020
- Proposer: blck
- Voting Results: 898,364 For and 1 Against
- Summary: With help from fellow community member Ar00, blck proposed and passed a new interest rate model for cUSDT, based on the JumpRateModelV2 upgrade that the Dharma team passed for cDAI. Read the community discussion on the proposal here.
Join the Compound governance discussions at Comp.xyz, and be sure to either vote on proposals with your COMP, or delegate your COMP voting rights to a representative of your choice.
Binance Offers cDAI Interest Rates
Binance has launched DeFi Staking, allowing its users to earn interest on DAI by supplying it to Compound, directly through the Binance interface.
Currently, Binance offers three staking options, with customized terms around minimums/maximums, unlock period, and time commitment:
This type of integration highlights the flexibility of the base functionality of the Compound protocol, which enforces none of Binance’s customized terms (it has no minimums/maximums, no unlock period, and no required time commitment), but still fully empowers Binance to design and launch customized interest rate products that make the most sense for its own users and its own business.
Highly programmable, openly accessible, transparent, and reliable — this is the power of DeFi!
Third-party integrations like Binance’s are crucial for broadening access to yield opportunities and simplifying the onboarding experience for users. If you are a developer interested in adding Compound interest rates to your application, exchange, custody offering, or any other product, please feel free to reach out to our team for technical guidance and support.
Decentraland:
Servers Deep Dive Part 3: Using WebSockets: Master advanced tools for creating rich multiplayer experiences in Decentraland.
The 2020Metaverse Summer Party took place:
Gitcoin:
Gnosis:
The Gnosis Safe Multisig now stores more than $1B in digital assets.
Golem:
Onboarding developers to Golem via Gitcoin
Golem GitHub Digest #5: diving into the New Golem alpha testnet
The Alpha Reveal (TNM) of New Golem is Here.
Keep Network:
Playing for Keeps Crosses the Halfway Mark with 7M KEEP Awarded in Prizes
Kyber Network:
KyberSwap is now using Kyber Network Reserve Routing, greatly reducing gas costs for token swaps.
Matic Network is now available on Kyber Network
Maker DAO:
Making Maker: August 2020: A lot has happened since the last Making Maker! August was all about the Dai debt ceiling, the first Maker Foundation hackathon, governance updates, and more.
Executive Vote: Activate Liquidations 1.2, Multiple Other Changes:The Governance Facilitators and the Maker Foundation Smart Contracts Team have placed an Executive Vote into the voting system which will enable the community to approve the following alterations to the protocol.
Therefore, if this Executive passes, the following will occur:
- The cat contract will be replaced as part of the Liquidations 1.2 upgrade.
- The flipper contracts will be replaced for all collateral types as part of the Liquidations 1.2 upgrade.
- The new box parameter will be initialized to 30 million Dai.
- The new dunk parameter will be initialized to 50 thousand Dai for each collateral type.
- The WBTC-A Risk Premium will be increased from 2% to 4%.
- The USDC-A debt ceiling parameter will be reduced from 140 million to 40 million.
- The USDC-A debt ceiling reduction will reduce the Vat global line from 688 million Dai to 588 million Dai.
- yEarn Finance will be whitelisted on the ETH/USD Oracle.
Executive Vote: Approve August 2020 Governance Cycle Bundle:The Governance Facilitators and the Maker Foundation Smart Contracts Team have placed an Executive Vote into the voting system which will enable the community to approve the following alterations to the protocol.
Therefore, if this Executive passes, the following will occur:
- MIP0c13-SP1: Subproposal for Core Personnel Offboarding will be moved to Accepted status.
- MIP13c3-SP1: Declaration of Intent (Forward Guidance) will be moved to Accepted status.
The First Maker Foundation Internal Hackathon Produces Great New Solutions for Dai: At the first Maker Internal Hackathon developer teams delivered valuable projects focused on Dai and the ever-expanding Maker ecosystem.
The Vital Role of the Dai Debt Ceiling in the Maker Protocol: Answers to questions about the Dai debt ceiling, the roles that asset debt ceilings play in the Maker Protocol, and how each is adjusted.
Ten Brief Explainer Videos About Dai and the Maker Protocol: Ten videos that provide brief overviews of the major elements of MakerDAO — from the Dai stablecoin to the smart contracts that power the Maker Protocol.
Melon:
Huobi Global starts trading MLN.
MetaMask:
MetaMask Updates License: MetaMask will be published under a new license going forward. Developers can still copy, modify, and distribute versions of MetaMask but developers that copy, modify, or fork the MetaMask codebase for commercial use with over 10,000 monthly active users are invited to enter into a formal commercial agreement with MetaMask.
Ocean Protocol:
The new Ocean Protocol Token Contract is live: On August 21, OCEAN moved to a new ERC-20 contract, completing the long awaited token swap.
Raiden Network:
Fresh Raiden Weekly is out.
Set Protocol:
Set Community Update #13 — July 2020
-The team updated the TokenSets News Feed Newspaper
- Added Spanish translation to TokenSets Flag of Spain
- Onboarded new Social Traders
Status:
The Life of a Message: This article describes the architectural building blocks of Status messenger and illustrates the journey of Alice’s message to Bob through different layers of the protocol stack.
Nimbus: Medalla update — August 21 (take two)
Status AMA Recap — Kyber Network: A follow up on the first ever AMA inside of the Status public channel #status.
Storj:
Private, Multiregion File Transfer with Tardigrade and FileZilla.
Synthetix:
Introducing the New Synthetix Visual Brand: The new Synthetix visual brand is now live. The vision for this initiative was to create a distinct and characterful brand identity for the protocol, while expressing the energy of the Synthetix ecosystem.
The team also detailed their upcoming Pollux release here. During the first phase, exchanges will be disabled but SNX/Synth transfers will still work.
Uniswap:
Uniswap flipped Coinbase for transaction volume
And flipped Bitcoin for transaction fees
Uniswap introduces Token Lists, a new standard for creating lists of ERC20 tokens. This is a community initiative to improve discoverability and trust in ERC20 token lists in a manner that is inclusive, transparent, and decentralized.
Unbundling Uniswap: The Future of On-Chain Market Making
Discover new trending Uniswap pools:
Zilliqa:
Share in-depth reviews of Zilliqa on Revain for a chance to win $RVN tokens
Other project’s updates:
POAP’s Recap of First Half of 2020: In this update, the POAP team recaps the last few months of work and project deliverables.
MyCrypto Beta 2.1.0 Released: This new beta version comes with features such as protected transactions, MyCrypto Memberships, and MetaMask multi-account support.
MTA Staking Update: In this update, mStable summarises the current thinking about how staking will look, the functions it will serve, and the risk reward ratios it will entail.
Delegated Funding DAO Vaults: Delegated funding DAO vaults are a new product being deployed to the Yearn Finance protocol. Funders provide YFI into the fair launch Vault. This works as per a normal delegated vault, you receive your LP share based on your contribution.
Yearn also launched their insurance product.
Yam V2 Governance Portal Now Live: If you hold YAM, you can now vote on and submit proposals using the new governance portal.
1Inch Token and Liquidity Mining Program Announced: In this post, the team details the mechanics and distribution of the 1inch token, how their liquidity mining program works, and how you can get involved.
Introducing SushiSwap: SushiSwap protocol is an “evolution” of Uniswap that claims to better aligns incentives for network participants by introducing revenue-sharing & network effects to the popular AMM model via the SUSHI token.
Frontier Raises $1.85 Million Seed Round: Decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator Frontier has raised $1.85 million in seed funding. The round saw participation from several investors, including FTX, Alameda Research, NGC Ventures, CoinGecko, Bitcoin.com Exchange’s Danish Chaudhry and Matic Network’s Sandeep Nailwal, among others.
DODO Announces Seed Round: DODO has closed a seed round, led by Framework Ventures and followed by DeFiance Capital. Other seed round investors include SevenX Ventures, Alexander Pack, Robert Leshner (founder of Compound), Bobby Ong (founder of Coingecko), Jason Choi, Spencer Noon, Maple Leaf Capital and more.
Introducing Seed Club: Seed Club is a social token incubator run by a group early social token issuers, technologists and thought leaders collaborating to help creators conceptualize and launch Social Token projects.
Fair Launch Capital Announced: Fair Launch Capital is a community resource providing free access to capital for new Fair Launch networks and projects. They are not a VC fund, rather, they provide fair launch capital.
USDC Upgraded to V2: The “USDC 2.0” update will allow services that offer USDC support to pay transaction fees (gas) for their users.
Perpetual Protocol Raises $1.8mil: Perpetual Protocol said the round was led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, CMS Holding, and Alameda Research. The protocol will use the fresh capital to launch its mainnet in September.
SneakrCred Buscemi Drop Announced: Keep an eye out for this new NFT series from SneakrCred founders Casmir and Justin. Digital artist Cryptohydrate debuts 4 rare colorways, inspired by his painting “The Void,” and will be giving one away to fans and followers. The drop also features digital sneaker designs commemorating the launch of Augur v2, Compound, and innovative new blockchain technologies from 0x.
GoodGhosting Launches: GoodGhosting is a gamified savings account. You simply specify how long and how much you would like to save, and the platform will match you with others with similar goals.
Zapper Raises $1.5m Seed Round: This week, the Zapper team announced that they have raised a $1.5M seed round to expand DeFi accessibility led by Framework Ventures and Libertus Capital with participation from MetaCartel Ventures, Coinfund, The LAO, CoinGecko, and Zee Prime Capital.
MCDEX Adds New Perpetual Markets: These markets include SNX-PERP, LEND-PERP and COMP-PERP that you can now trade on MCDEX’s decentralized exchange.
DefiDollar is Live: DefiDollar is a stable asset backed by an index of stablecoins. DUSD is a hedge against volatility and provides portfolio risk diversification.
Introducing Phonon DAO: In this post, Justin from the GridPlus team details how a DAO will sustainably govern the Phonon Network. The team also announced that the GridPlus Lattice1 firmware is officially locked and entering the release process.
DAOhaus V2 Announced: DAOhaus v2 is an upgraded, community-operated, sustainability-focused product to spawn magic internet communities.
Introducing xSNX: xSNX is a managed fund where staking returns and trading fees accrue to the Net Asset Value of the token. You buy once to get in and you sell once to get out.
Goodghosting is live: multiple people save regularly using Aave, those who don’t miss a payment get the interest of those who miss a payment.
Opinion and research articles
A Philosophy of Blockchain Validation by Vitalik.
Vitalik defends the beacon chain’s preference for liveness over consistency when a choice needs to be made.
The State of Client Diversity in Ethereum.
An analysis on the effectiveness of the mechanism used by the Eth2 beacon chain.
The ConsenSys TX/RX team has made a simulator that runs an Eth1 client in an Eth2 sharded environment (so-called Phase 1.5). Now you can run it too.
Podcasts
Joseph Lubin on How JPMorgan’s Quorum Will Fit In at ConsenSys on Unconfirmed.
Making Money in DeFi with Su Zhu on POV Crypto.
Investing in DeFi Paradigms | Charlie Noyes on Bankless.
Antonio Juliano, Founder of dYdX on Bankless.
🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of August 2020: a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to last month!
Videos
Talks from EDCON are available.
Lots of good Eth2 stuff:
- Vitalik from Eth1 to Eth2, opportunities and challenges.
- Watch Danny wrestle with his cat while demonstrating a simulation of the Eth1/Eth2 merger.
- Hsiao-Wei talks Phase 1 shard data chains.
- Aditya on weak subjectivity.
- Afri on the final road to Eth2.
- And Terence (Prysm) and Paul (Lighthouse) with more client-focused presentations.
Finance
Information from Etherscan.io:
Validated, staking on eth2: #5 — Why client diversity matters by Carl Beekhuizen.
Roadmap
Vitaliks Eth2 and beyond flow chart:
An annotated version of Vitalik’s Eth2020 roadmap.
To date, the Ethereum network has undergone eight hard forks, including Byzantium and Constantinople — sub-sections of the massive Metropolis upgrade.
Check out the original timeline for the Ethereum development stages and the intermediate hard forks here.
Eth2 — Serenity
Serenity is the last stage of Ethereum development. It will introduce Eth2, the new Ethereum blockchain that will finally have Casper, a new Ethereum Virtual Machine, and much more. The goal of Serenity is to improve the scalability, security, and programmability of Ethereum. Instead of 15 TPS on a single chain, Eth2 will process thousands to tens of thousands of transactions per second without compromising on decentralization.
The majority of developers foresee these main phases of Eth1’s evolution to Eth2:
- Phase 0: Beacon Chain (Q1 2020)
- Phase 1: Shard Chains (2021)
- Phase 2: eWASM (New Ethereum Virtual Machine) (2021/early 2022)
- Continued Improvement (2022)
Phase 0 — Beacon Chain Shipping in late Q2/early Q3 of 2020
On the beacon chain, we will finally see Casper. The Beacon Chain will be a separate blockchain from the main Ethereum blockchain. This new chain will have a PoS consensus algorithm, and it will run in parallel to the main PoW Ethereum blockchain. Initially, the blockchain will be created for simplicity and will not support smart contracts or accounts.
Phase 1 — Sharding Shipping in 2021
Sharding will be introduced on the Beacon chain, and it will have initially 100 shards. Validators will validate transactions from their own shard, and in the first phase, they won’t approve any smart contract, account or asset.
While sharding will bring more scalability, there are a few setbacks to take into account. Validators have a small pool of transactions to validate, which makes it easier for a 51% attack, as they only need 51% computing power (or stake) of the shard they are in, instead of the whole network. This technique can also lead to higher centralization, as each shard can be validated with a small group of validators.
It will be fascinating to see how this stage is implemented, as it still needs thorough testing to ensure all validators are randomly selected to avoid centralization and any risk attack.
Phase 2 — State Execution Shipping in late 2021/early 2022
During Phase 2, the foundational aspects of the previous Eth2 releases will come together and provide functionality for the updated network. A new operational mechanism called Ethereum WebAssembly (eWASM) will be launched instead of Ethereum’s Virtual Machine. eWASM will work much faster.
One of the main issues with the current EVM is that it processes transactions sequentially. With the PoS and Sharding changes, there’s a need to process transactions in parallel, and the current EVM won’t be suitable for this.
The new EVM called stands for Ethereum WebAssembly, an open standard defining a portable binary code format for executable programs. This new architecture for the EVM will allow for much better performance and will make it possible to support smart contracts, accounts, states and much more on the new blockchain. The current status of the eWASM development is at the very early stages, as it is planned to be released in 2021. There’s still a lot of research to do around this phase.
Continued Improvement
Continued Improvement is the code name to encompass all the future changes, fixes and improvements of the previous stages, and whatever comes along. The following technologies to be implemented:
- Cross-shard transactions
- Lightweight clients
- Super-square charting
- Closer ties
See the Eth2 Phase 2 Wiki for current progress, discussions, and definitions regarding this work. The Eth2 Project Management repo holds ongoing notes and meetings.
Other
Upcoming events
- Sep 1 — BlockVigil’s free online Eth developer bootcamp starts
- Oct 2–30 — EthOnline hackathon
- Nov 6–7 — virtual Trufflecon
- Nov 16 — MetaMask Provider breaking changes
Check out Ethereum virtual events list.
Social media metrics
There is strong stable growth in the Ethereum community over time. The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Ethereum Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com
Ethereum blog — Official announcement channel.
r/ethereum — plain Ethereum development discussion. News about projects, links to interviews, podcasts, upcoming events.
Keep price discussion and market talk to subreddits such as r/ethfinance or r/ethtrader.
Keep mining discussion to subreddits such as /r/ethermining.
Do you have any question that feels really dumb? Try r/ethereumnoobies
Don’t forget to check out /r/ethdev for the Ethereum developer community.
Check out /r/ethdapps.
Surfwith r/ethstaker. The future is at stake!
YouTube (Ethereum Foundation) — Videos from conferences, meetups, Ethereum Core Devs Meetings, Eth2 Implementers calls, etc.
Check out Gitter, Ethereum Community and Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians forums.
Twitter (Ethereum Network) — News from dApps .
Twitter (Ethereum Report) — Retweets from the official announcement channel and team members’ pages.
This is not financial advice.
Subscribe to detailed companies’ updates by Paradigm!
Medium. Twitter. Telegram. Reddit.
Main sources
Ethereum official media channels
Core Devs Meetings
Eth2.0 Implementers Calls
Week in Ethereum by Evan Van Ness
What’s New in Eth2 by Ben Edgington
Projects build on Ethereum official blogs
Ethereum in news
