Hello everyone, I spent some time with my Canadian friends in Toronto after presenting “Ethereum: The World’s Computer” at the Blockchain Education Conference last month, and wanted to give a quick update on some interesting things happening in the Ethereum development ecosystem. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, so let’s dive in!
project
Fog
The Ethereum wallet has received significant improvements over the past few months, expanding support for arbitrary contract interactions through the “Custom Contracts” tab. This is a huge improvement over sending transactions from the command line, which was often required in Frontier. With several new team members working with the Ethereum Foundation, a new version of Mist is being released and will include improvements as Geth and Eth are integrated. If you are using an older version, update to: Mist 0.8.0 For the latest products.
Screenshot Mist 0.8.0
remix
After all the effort put into reorganizing the C++ codebase, the CPP team switched gears from mix to remix as the IDE now targets the web. Remix has released its first alpha version, published as an online demo. Check out that repository. https://github.com/ethereum/remix For more information. In general, EVM IDEs are not yet popular, so this could be an important step forward in terms of accessibility. Online Solidity Compiler It is done. New security tools including: EVMDIS It is expected to be released to the community. Work is also underway to enable formal verification to detect recursive calling patterns. More information can be found at Christian. C++ development updates.
Ens
ENS Hierarchy Example Diagram with Multiple Records
Although not an official project, Nick Johnson, who is closely associated with many projects, has started working on the Ethereum Name Service. It includes a smart contract-based resolver with standard APIs. The specification supports name components (separated by “.”) and several types of per-record delegation. It is possible to build a gateway to plug into existing systems such as DNS. The current draft specification is as follows: A solid reference implementation is provided. and discussions are ongoing. grid. This could have a major impact on the general usability of many services on the Ethereum network, from wallet aliases to friendly Swarm node names.
protocol
light client
What we need to take a closer look at is the introduction of light client functionality. public testing phase. Zsolt has been working on this code for several months, and the team appears ready to merge it into the main repository soon. The new code reduces chain sync time to less than 30 minutes for the first block, and less than 1 minute when used weekly. This builds on the work Peter did for the fast sync feature, which is now a standard feature in Mist (–fast). More work is being done to improve log/receipt retrieval, and we expect multiple iterations of the protocol over time, so this won’t be the last you’ll hear about LES!
Tweets from a light client running on an embedded device
corps
Swarm is also being actively tested as a PoC2 to demonstrate an economically self-sustainable storage and deployment layer. Viktor, Dani, and Aaron have been working hard to ensure that the code is bug-free before releasing it on testnet. Nick has developed simulation scripts for network and communications verification that will be a huge help in this effort. One of the interesting features of their operation is the accounting and incentive system that allows for long-term storage and retrieval of data. If you’d like to learn more, the Swarm team has been featured in several articles. youtube video It explains how everything works.
Data storage and retrieval in Swarm
Although it goes by many different names, it enables the vision of a decentralized repository where you own your own data. There are currently a few blockchain-based apps, but full use of Swarm will allow these blockchain-based apps to become full DApps and run 100% decentralized within Mist.
IPFS & Leiden
On a joint note, ongoing discussions between the IPFS and Ethereum teams will lead to shared protocols in the future, allowing both ecosystems to benefit from their respective network effects. Additionally, the work towards Raiden and Swarm has been shown to be complementary as the solutions strive to solve similar problems. I heard that the Raiden Network could be used as a payment channel for the Swarm incentive system. This will help us redouble our own efforts while solving some of our privacy and scalability issues. Knowing that they are stepping up makes me even more excited about what the future has in store!
finish
Devcon2 is starting soon. Sessions are scheduled for September 19th, 20th, and 21st during the Global Blockchain Summit in Shanghai, China. The Ethereum Foundation’s information website is now online. ethereumfoundation.org/devcon More information about Summit can be found here: Blockchain Week2016.org. Despite being a larger venue, space is still limited, so register now!
We hope 2016 will be a pivotal year for blockchain. UI/UX is improving faster than what was available just a few years ago, and solutions like Raiden for state/payment channels have alleviated some of blockchain’s privacy and scalability issues. Combined with research advances targeting Serenity, we are on pace to overcome many of the obstacles Vitalik once listed. conundrum.
Keep calm and turn on the code