Proof of Track 2024-06-03

Jun 04, 2024

Types of Crypto Papers

I will actually implement these if I gonna do a PhD.

🔍 🔑 ZK & Cryptography

Security of ZKP projects: same but different

Conclusion: Learn from hardware circuit synthesizers? 1) HDL-to-netlist ≈ Program-to-constraints – same, but different; 2) History of bugs and tooling; 3) Testing methodologies.

Ouragan a Tornado Cash offramp

Ouragan is designed to never directly interact with or be linkable to the TC contract, to avoid to be blacklisted.

Will ZK Eat The Modular Stack?

The most pressing issues to figure out are how value and information can flow safely between different modular components without sacrificing speed or cost, as well as abstracting it all away from the end-consumer so that they don't need to be concerned with bridging between different chains, switching wallets, etc.

powdr-brainfuck

different Brainfuck implementations as powdr VMs.

Quake II deathmatch on SGX server just to avoid doing any real work

"Just to break things".

Ligetron 1.0

A memory-efficient ZK system powered by Ligero Proofs. The first proof in the world for the Llama2 7b model, achieving a 1024x improvement in memory and 66x in speed performance compared to the previous best attempt by modulus. Wei Dai's comment.

How to fool your users with your deployed SNARK application?

Only publish the verification keys; 2) Not publishing the phase 2 setup transcript...

STARKs and @bitcoin a 3-part love story

STARK efficiency with OPCAT in the future.

ZK update conflict issue

The issue is when multiple parties update the same state. For most zk protocols, they just avoid conflict, by only computing over immutable data or sequencing data before updating.

a little note to explore the ZK-friendliness of Verkle proofs

“TLDR: Compared to binary Merkle proofs, it's hard to say which is more ZK-friendly; it will come down to a bunch of implementation details.”

zkML Bootcamp: Reproducibility in ML

Reproducibility / deterministic in ML.

How did you first discover zero knowledge?

Answers: devcon, Algorand talk, Mina, IC3...

Bonsol: Verifiable Compute for Solana

solana + risc0. Read blog here.

if anyone is using TEE for anything you should use an Xbox One

Cause never hacked, and tons of researchers have tried and failed over the years. Watch this.

Monadic DNA

Using R0. Privacy preserving personal genomics for health and ancestry.

zkLLM: Zero Knowledge Proofs for Large Language Models

Just ~15 minutes to generate a proof for LLM. probably highly quantized version of the model? See also anand's tweet.

BInius: highly efficient proofs over binary fields

"The core idea in Binius is treating the same data as a hypercube, and as a grid. Here's an example (using regular integers)". See also "Today someone invented a new ZK proof system that is several percentage points faster than the prior state of the art on a curated set of metrics.".

SNARKnado

Four-Round Verification of SNARKs on Bitcoin by Alpen Labs.

powdr-brainfuck

ZK proofs for Brainfuck execution using powdr.

circom101

Circom circuits explained in depth.

zkrollup_tutorial

Tutorial of ZKRollup written in circom.

StarkyX

A library for writing AIR constraints with composable and typed constraints.

Zero Knowledge Federated Learning is obscenely underrated.

"verify the execution of each participant's local machine learning model and protect the privacy of user data".

IMT-vs-SMT

An opensource project to compare the gas usage of Incremental Merkle Tree (IMT) and Sparse Merkle Tree (SMT) inside Circom zero knowledge circuits.

zkRust

CLI tool to prove your rust code easily using either SP1 or Jolt.

FHE split the decryption key

FHE teams How are they going to split the decryption key.

Jolt Skill Tree

"Milestones are mostly bifurcated into a Binius subtree and an elliptic curve subtree."

Introducing ZKBoost

The fastest available XGBoost implementation using ZKML, completely open-source and with comprehensive benchmarks.

verified-logs

Verify a log is present in a block.

how “ZK unfriendly” RISC-V is

TLDR: off by a factor of 2 naively.

🔍 🧠 AI

Payman

An AI Agent tool that gives Agents the ability to pay people for tasks they cannot do themselves.

Deepfake Issues

When AI models are getting better, they are also getting better in dangerous stuffs.

Open Source AI and Closed Source AI

You are HERE: open-source AI will outperform closed-source AI.

Verifiable AI compute

One of the core issue is floating point arithmetic which is very non-determinitic.

Llama 3 Open Sourced!

Will we run out of data? An analysis of the limits of scaling datasets in Machine Learning

the stock of high-quality language data will be exhausted soon; likely before 2026.

LLaMA-Factory

Unify Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ LLMs.

LLM Pricing

Compare and calculate the latest prices for LLM (Large Language Models) APIs from leading providers.

gpt-researcher

GPT based autonomous agent that does online comprehensive research on any given topic.

BIG-AGI

the AI suite for professionals that need function, form, simplicity, and speed.

QLoRA

Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs.

LaVague

Large Action Model framework to develop AI Web Agents.

MLC LLM

Universal LLM Deployment Engine with ML Compilation.

jailbreak_llms

In-The-Wild Jailbreak Prompts on LLMs.

llm-scraper

Turn any webpage into structured data using LLMs.

lm-hackers

Hackers' Guide to Language Models.

Can Language Models Solve Olympiad Programming?

Paper Link.

Fooocus

an image generating software (based on Gradio).

raspy

An interactive exploration of Transformer programming.

discovering_latent_knowledge

Discovering Latent Knowledge in Language Models Without Supervision.

gpt-engineer

Specify what you want it to build, the AI asks for clarification, and then builds it.

Llm aggregator

"a DeFiLlama for every industry loll... (or is it actually

http://pump.fun

or dexscreener lol)", by sui414.

generative-manim

GPT-4 for video generation.

Crypto x AI Flowchart

"Long term I think Crypto x AI wins because the most powerful technology of our generation can be owned, governed and iterated by an incentivized global community vs a centralized black box".

🔍 ⛓️ Ethereum & Blockchains

EIP-3074 && EIP-7702

The trend of account abstraction and smart contract wallet is back. See 3074: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. See 7702: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Also Notes on the Account Abstraction roadmap.

Anoma as the universal intent machine for Ethereum

"Anoma brings a universal intent machine to Ethereum, allowing developers to write applications in terms of intents, which can be ordered, solved, and settled anywhere in the Ethereum ecosystem."

Is there any reason why restaking is fundamentally more suitable for Ethereum than Solana?

"the most natural use case for restaking is extending the function of the base layer to do something that it should do, but isn't; so, eigenDA and roll ups; solana doesn't need either of those though".

Beyond Layers

Blockspace Is a Fuel; Blockspace as a Veblen Good; Blockspace as a Giffen Good; Jevons Blockspace.

what are the gas limits and block times of various high performance EVM L1s and L2s?

Avax C-Chain is 15m gas, 2sec block time; Pulsechain L1 is 10 second block interval and 30M gas limit; Polygon PoS 30M gas limit, 2s block time. Also opBNB. See final table. "TPS" must be removed from every scientific conversation about blockchain performance unless it refers to pure payment txs.

announcing world chain!

Hubble -> Polygon -> OP app -> OP chain.

WHAT THE HECK IS CATVM?

A breakdown of Taproot Wizard's recent CatVM proposal, what it actually is, and what it could be useful for. Scheduling > Scalability.

BITCOIN HISTORY

"Bitcoin didn't simply appear out of thin air - it was built upon decades of work and came after many failed digital currency projects."

is pooled security a good or bad thing?

"general purpose blockchains are pooled security for smart contracts".

State of light clients in 2024

Full table here.

The Untold Story of ditto-b

“The story of an anonymous developer who fixed a critical flaw in Bitcoin's code.”

how much txs would cost in an L2 that uses Bitcoin as it's DA layer

TLDR: it's very expensive, if L2 would achieve the same compression rate as Optimism; Sequencer would fit all the data in segwit space; uniswap trade would be as simple as they get, with one hop and no permits used.

Halving Fee Chaos

On more fees, Runes, Simplification vs Game Theory, and sniping asset issurance... Wen Bitcoin MEV.

ethereum community members privately expressing the wish that it had stuck with pow instead of transitioning to pos.

For "centralization risks" and "balance of power".

The cryptoeconomics of slashing

Cool thing I learned is: slashed funds can be used for security instead of just burning.

Slashing Proofoor

verifying a validator got slashed onchain. Code.

Griefing Bitcoin's Testnet

A deep dive into manipulation of block generation on testnet and a call to reset the network to fix several issues.

a timelapse of crypto / ct

Gud vid.

Fees generated by socialfi apps in last 7 days

Fantasy Top = $9.31M; 2) Friend Tech = $4.8M; 3) PumpDotFun = $3.14M.

Why did Satoshi choose an upper limit of 21000000 BTC?

Answers: half of 42; max value of 64 bit integer; unbeatable hand in 21 game, and also there's a poker client in the Bitcoin codebase.

🔍 🧱 Layer2 & Modular

Who wins the Data Availability race... if any?

Eigen DA, Celestia, Avail, NEAR DA...

DA Trap: When a DA Attack Becomes Significantly Easy

"The probability of attackability increases rapidly when the degree of redundancy of data holding nodes falls below a certain number like 200."

Introducing Ethereum Blobspace Derivatives

"financial markets for Ethereum blobspace, designed to increase efficiency around price discovery and improve the user and developer experience for data publication on Ethereum".

The @conduitxyz team is on fire - chains launched using their RaaS product now account for 49% of the total data posted to Celestia

RaaS launches most rollups now.

Arbitrum disclosed two serious vulnerabilities in the recently released OP Stack fraud proofs

Arbitrum is helping Optimism to fix their fraud proofs.

temporary chains

"think of a 5-day blockchain for coachella each year for ticketing and payments on the ground". Sounds like flash rollups to me.

Proposal for updated Bitcoin Layers risk framework

🔍 🏦 DeFi & AMM & TradeFi

framing of Terra

luna is insolvent because ust mcap > luna mcap; luna is solvent because luna "equity" value = enterprise value - debt; luna has always been insolvent because the market valued it as a ponzi not as a business.

“How do I approach a token launch?”

a16z's guide to token launches.

Mert's take on memecoins

"memecoins are not the reason founders don't find PMF; the lack of PMF in the industry is due to the perverse incentives normalized by literally everyone — not just VCs, not just memecoins, everyone; there are still plenty of crazy, mission-oriented founders interested in building the future of the internet — let's take more risk and support them".

Founders should be aware of the VC ponzi scheme.

Boost up the valuation number on paper, and milk the management fees.

ETH financial freedom

Stake with Lido -> Put stETH into Aave -> Borrow stables -> Make sure only borrow <10%, yield pays for some debt.

"Bitcoin is too complicated!"

However, modern financial system is a hopelessly archaic sprawl.

BlackRock will launch a Lending Protocol on Ethereum.

"You think you can play onchain without us? I'll soon knock on your door".

Cardano’s brilliance was having a high concentration of Japanese investors

"With a capital gains tax of up to 55% they are pretty much forced to diamond hand til there is no capital gains to tax".

In Web3 the amount of money raised and the amount of value created is highly uncorrelated.

"Bitcoin raised $0".

rebrand TVL

"to mean all the potential value that is wasted and inaccessible due to being stuck in an antiquated financial system". As "Total Value Lost". Read also "Total Value Redeemable".

CAC/CLV of airdrops

Airdrops are expensive, but they are also a great way to get users.

we live in a society

"the FBI calls crypto money so they can arrest you for money laundering; the IRS calls it property so they can tax you on capital gains; the SEC calls it a security so they can sue every exchange; the CFTC calls it a commodity so you can’t use it as a currency"

Tokenomics a few years ago vs now

Insiders are taking more and more of the pie. Token distribution is critical in determining the distribution of power in blockchains.

v2-on-v4

Uniswap v2 on Uniswap v4 implemented with hook.

"don't burn your hands" implementation of concentrated liquidity

The dangers of concentrated liquidity.

AMM Quiz: In which case is the user usually getting a better deal on their trade? (As measured by subsequent markouts of performance)

Under the condition that "Sometimes user trades are preceded by a top-of-block CEX-DEX arbitrage. That arb might be in the same direction of the trade, or the opposite." Answer: it's actually the same direction. See also discussion here.

Price Prophet

Trade against real historical price data across dozens of tokens in a risk free environment.

Vulnerability Report: Binance PoR Dummy User Attack

According to this attack, Binance has the ability to add dummy (non-existing) users to their userbase with an equity (positive) position in low-quality assets and a debt (negative) position in high-quality ones as long as, when converted to dollars, the net balance is greater than 0. Discussion here.

ReGOOSE: Updated goals for Lido in the light of MVI and restaking

"Support Ethereum-aligned validator services, starting with preconfirmations, without exposing stakers to additional risk."

🔍 🤖 MEV

Only motive I can think of is money laundering

Weird sandwich bot behavior, large sandwich that only they see with no bribe.

in retrospect MEV-boost was a mistake

"we'll likely need centralized block production, a builder, and more trustless exchanges between proposers and builders."

Anatomy of CEX/DEX Arbitrage

"CEX/DEX arbitrage transactions are not frictionless due to the EIP-1559 basefee and other factors."

Economics of the intent-based interop stack of ERC 7683

"Threw arbitrary numbers that intuitively will probably make sense and that can be argued looking at the dynamics seen at the tx-based MEV supply chain".

Surrogeth

Tricking frontrunners into doing good. Not harmful like salmonella, but tricking frontrunners to be the relayer of your tx.

Rolling in the Shadows: Analyzing the Extraction of MEV Across Layer-2 Rollups

The main question this paper asks is "Are sandwich attacks possible on L2?" Like: someone submits a L2 swap on its L1? Some cross chain DEXes do this.

🔍 🔧 Dev & Toolings

inkmate

a set of gas-efficient smart contracts written in Rust on Arbitrum Stylus.

GPU-EVM

The most performant parallel-EVM in the world by 100x.

Incredible Squaring AVS

a simple example on building an AVS.

the best swag I ever got at a crypto conference @ETHBerlin

"a book of all final EIPs and ERCs".

usdc.cool

Dashboard for USDC issued (native + bridged).

Uniswap Labs Metrics

See how many fee Uniswap Labs is accumulating.

Unconventional Functional Solidity

"While convention dictates contract object inheritance and internal libraries are the best way to modularize Solidity code, breaking conventions to try something new is a defining characteristic of the industry."

etheasy.xyz

a rust-powered toolkit that aims to help make ethereum development easier.

this transaction makes lots of crypto tools sad

"it emits 10,000 logs". Hash: 0xe46be63574f47b245cf6e8315e302449ccba5727fe2826e10abf8e8a75e64969. "~$1,072 in event gas for one tx".

How large is an Ethereum Archive node in May 2024?

Reth: 2.1T, Erigon: 2.6T, Besu: 17T (FOREST), Nethermind: 18T, Geth: 18T, Lighthouse: 269G (Tree-States, w/Blobs), Lighthouse: 592G (Vanilla, 2048 SPRP, w/Blobs), Teku: 636G (2048, w/Blobs).

CuEVM

Cuda implementation of EVM bytecode executor.

savvy

An interface for the EVM in the browser, to simulate and visualize your onchain activity.

GasliteDrop

Hyper Efficient Airdrops. Gas Bad.

ragequit

"Moloch DAO ragequit", make it so people can take tokens out of your account without a proposal by burning other tokens ("redemption", and those other tokens, "loot").

tx-coverage

Reveal unused code of a live smart contract by collecting coverage from historical transactions.

blob-preconfs

blob preconfirmations.

callthis

Build a transaction, send a link for someone else to execute it.

The ideal PR is 50 lines long

Based on researches, median PR size of 50 lines.

What's the best no-code solution for deploying ERC-20 token contracts?

Answers collected: ThirdWeb, DeFiBuilder, OpenZeppelin Wizard, OnThis, CreateMyToken...

Flare

Execution extension for reth to support indexing Arbitrum sequencer batches.

ERC-20 should have enforced 18 decimals.

Projects gain little value from setting a different number of decimals, but they impose technical debt on the ecosystem by forcing developers to handle multiple decimal systems.

🔍 🛸 Cosmos

🔍 🕸️ Web

building a GPU from scratch with no prior experience

A thread on building a GPU from scratch, including learning the fundamentals of GPU architectures, creating the GPU, writing custom assembly language, and writing matrix multiplication kernels...

MS-DOS

The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25, 2.0, and 4.0 for reference purposes.

Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know

rem

An open source approach to locally record and enable searching everything you view on your Mac.

rpcs3

PS3 emulator/debugger.

Apple's new "Crush" ad (let's call it "2024") is a visual & metaphorical bookend to the 1984 ad.

1984: Monochome, conformist, industrial world exploded by colourful, vibrant human; 2024: Colourful, vibrant humanity is crushed by monochrome, conformist industrial press.

Most and least common 4 digit PINs

Visualized as heatmap.

Thanks for reading!

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

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