Proof of Track 2023-12-20

Dec 20, 2023

zkOracle and zkCoprocessor

This post looks at the recently popular concepts of zkCoprocessor and zkOracle and compare their differences. TLDR: zkOracle = zkCoprocessor (historical data access type) + zkCoprocessor (zkVM compute type).

🔍 🔑 ZK & Cryptography

just make one big defi zk rollup and don’t bother with cross-domain concerns

"vertical scaling > horizontal scaling". Also Sandeep.

Challenges & Solutions of Onchain FHE: Unlocking the Holy Grail

Hashkey's amazing post on FHE. Key takes: 1. FHE will need to be used alongside ZKPs and MPC to build a truly confidential and secure, shared state system; 2. A foundational limitation of onchain FHE is “who holds the decryption key.” Threshold decryption and MPC offer solutions, however they are generally bound by a performance <> security tradeoff. Also see pmc's post on FHE.

Lean Copilot

LLMs as Copilots for Theorem Proving in Lean.

Introduction of #zkWASM

Different zkWasms. But note that for the Delphinus Lab part, there may be some misinformation. Delphinus' zkWASM is developed and open-sourced for more than 1 yr, and adopted by many projects such as HyperOracle, ZKCross, and some unannounced major DEX.

private-zkp2p

Fork of zkp2p with privacy features. Hide you Venmo id.

🔍 ⛓️ Ethereum & Blockchains

Emerging onchain business models (consumer crypto)

An overview of different business models onchain, including subscriptions (superfluid), referrals (mint.fun), and ads (rabbithole).

Solana Fees Part 1

How Solana’s fees work today, focusing on transaction-based fees.

another approach to readable addresses

Uniquely represent them with just 2-3 words from the seed phrase dictionary. See code.

An Overview of Ethereum Governance

By Tim Beiko. Slides here.

Examining crypto's product-market fit

#1: Alternative store-of-value; #2: Stablecoins; #3: Speculation and gambling; #3b: Cults; #4: DeFi; #5: DAOs; #6: Hybrid applications; #7: Identity and other usecases.

Forked Tornado

Tornado cash fork with blacklist to prevent illegal money laundering.

What might an “enshrined ZK-EVM” look like?

New key properties we want from this: verify Ethereum blocks, multi-client philosophy, auditability, upgradeability, supporting almost-EVMs. Basically, client teams (geth, reth) should shift their focus to zkEVM-based client.

Revisiting the Application Layer

Amazing research on revisting the applications. Cool idea: application = logic + state. Bitcoin: logic = limited scripting, state = just btc; Ethereum: logic = EVM, state = arbitrary asset creation.

it's easy to confuse eip and erc so here's the diff

erc's are interface definitions & a mild discussion on a forum with the occasional "what if we added callbacks" comment. eip's are changes to ethereum that require espionage, psychological warfare, infiltration, sabotage, black operations, getting cut off by core devs at devcon, and in rare cases full blown culture warfare. Lol.

2024 Ethereum Events

A list of events in 2024 for Ethereum.

Ledger Library hacked

Phone as Wallet

A reminder that your phone, yes the one in your pocket, is actually a super secure crypto hardware wallet and you don’t need to buy a special third party phone for that. Browser-based: authn-sign; App-based: geclave.

🔍 🧱 Layer2 & Modular

The State of L2s: Theory and Reality

The stack of a L2, written by Arbitrum.

Stages update: Security Council requirements

On the thought process that L2Beat is changing its formula on security council.

Does restaking inherit security?

Not really, it only inherits slashing condition enforcement.

🔍 🔧 Dev & Toolings

Ethernow

A dashboard for incoming transactions into the Ethereum mempool.

Parsec

Looks like a better version of Etherscan.

why http://etherclients.com has SO MANY MORE nodes than http://ethernodes.org

"ethernodes.org doesn't seem to have enough nodes passively accepting TCP inbound connections, and primarily seems to use UDP based discovery".

If we as an industry really believe that this is what a contract should look like we've already failed

Simple contract comes with ~10 inheritance. The goal is simplicity, not complexity! I remind people that e.g. WETH9 is comprised of only 51 SLOC, is easy to grasp, and has no fancy inheritance.

Is it possible to have a contract self-destruct after every transaction and re-deploy itself to a new random address?

"unlikely to work on L1 with a true self-destruct + redeploy, But L2s already do weird stuff with data compression". The goal is to "make it difficult to argue that the contract in question constitutes "property" that the community/holders have an "interest" in (per the IEEPA)".

The Ethereum Virtual Machine

A full in depth explanation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine and its execution environment.

2024 will be the year of the parallel evm

Another alpha prediction from gakonst. We'll see more investment in EVMs. See also this and this.

How badly could that break things? if make an address an alias of another one

"TUSD vibes".

rETH Instant Deploys

A script to automatically setup a rETH archive node in under 60 seconds.

MEV price prediction

Predict ChainLink price updates from the mempool.

ponder

A backend framework for crypto apps. Better alternative to The Graph?

🔍 🤖 MEV

Timing Games: Implications and Possible Mitigations

Amazing piece. "This post aims to provide context about timing games, highlight their implications, and outline different paths forward. The goal is to initiate a constructive discussion, contributing to an informed decision by the community."

Empirical Analysis of Cross Domain CEX <> DEX Arbitrage on Ethereum

"We investigated the prevalence of CEX <> DEX arbitrages and shed light on the patterns and insights into these opportunities."

The MEV industry keeps inventing fancy new words for old ideas

Intent is a more general term than limit orders tho.

The False Narrative of MEV Protection: How Private Transactions Can Result in a Poorer Settlement Than Sending Publicly

TLDR: 1. Private transaction != better settlement cause your tx may be placed after the top of block bundle; 2. Private transaction may = longer execution time cause you may only send tx to one builder.

Total MEV is only +0.3% APY to the 28M ETH staked $61000000000

So we are avoiding the "centralizing force" of a tiny portion of Ethereum? This data is supported by jaredfromsubway. And from this data we also noticed that "the biggest MEV searcher made 8.8/270 (~3% of all MEV)?".

a bot that appears to have private access to user orderflow that was landing bottom-of-the-block blocks on the Flashbots builder

TLDR: It checks the builder's balance to know "where it is".

an overview of the Intents vertical

The basics, the complex, the present and the future are all covered - as well as some pondering over where all of this is going and what problems lie ahead. By rain&coffee.

Longer block times lead to less CEX/DEX MEV per second but more atomic MEV per second.

The myth is longer block times allow you to do more trades on the CEX during the block and then net the inventory skew out into a single trade on the dex that pays less fees. But besides math, we need to consider the implied sequence.

Ok I solved LVR

Just do require(block.number % 2 == 0); in beforeSwap hook lol. Cause longer block time means more time for MEV.

🔍 📖 Others

Everyone's talking about crypto points.

Just a sarcasm on crypto "points".

Thanks for reading!

I'm not a financial advisor. Proof Of Track is for education and information purposes only. DYOR.

Subscribe Proof Of Track, follow me at @msfew_eth, or connect with me at sny.is.