Q4 Roundup
The Ethereum Ecosystem's Q4 Roundup: A Year of Growth and Innovation
As the year draws to a close, the Ethereum ecosystem has seen significant growth and innovation. With the number of new accounts created per day surpassing 100,000 and transaction volume more than doubling, it's clear that the blockchain space is hitting new highs. In this comprehensive roundup, we'll explore the key developments in the Ethereum ecosystem, from Casper and sharding to Remix and Solidity.
Casper and Sharding
Casper, a proof of stake testnet based on pyethereum, has been released. The Casper FFG basics paper has been published, and presentations from Karl Floersch and Jon Choi provide an in-depth look at the technology. Meanwhile, sharding, a specification of version 1, has been released, and development of the sharding client has moved from pyethereum to py-evm.
Py-EVM
Py-EVM, the Python Ethereum Virtual Machine, continues to be a key component of the Ethereum ecosystem. Sharding implementation is underway in the sharding branch, and a JSON-RPC server implementation is also in progress. Light client development continues, with a minimalistic light node now available.
EIPs and Formal Verification
Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are a crucial part of the Ethereum ecosystem, and 12 new EIPs have been merged since the last roundup. Formal verification, which ensures the correctness of EVM code, has received a contribution from Sidney Amani and his colleagues at Data61. Testing has also seen significant improvements, with testeth now checking that test .json files are updated with the test filler files.
Remix
Remix, the popular Ethereum development environment, has seen significant updates. The latest version includes a way to record transactions, use of the standard JSON IO interface for the Solidity Compiler, and improvement on the Solidity Editor. Direct use of the ABI to interact with contracts has also been added.
Solidity
Solidity, the programming language for Ethereum smart contracts, continues to evolve. Work is underway on an optimizer for the new intermediate language IULIA, which will improve the efficiency of Solidity code. The SMT checker component is also being developed, which will enable more advanced verification of Solidity code.
Security
Security is a top priority in the Ethereum ecosystem, and efforts are underway to fuzz-test the EVM and other areas of the platform. A new signer is being developed to enable more advanced use cases where account management is decoupled from the network node.
Python Ecosystem
The Python ecosystem has seen significant updates, with many libraries being migrated to the Ethereum Foundation GitHub. The eth-tester library has also seen improvements, with a new pyethereum backend and updated py-evm backend for the latest Byzantium rules.
EthereumJS Ecosystem
The EthereumJS ecosystem has seen significant updates, with the Byzantium update being well-received and already used by Remix and Ganache. New rustbn.js library for the elliptic pairing precompiles in the VM has been added, and support for merkle proof creation and verification has been added to the merkle-patricia-tree library.
Web3.js 1.0
Web3.js 1.0 is evolving with the help of community contributions, and many developers are already using it for their projects. The web3-accounts package will be audited in the next weeks, which can be used for generating keys and signing messages and transactions.
eWASM (Ethereum WebAssembly)
Progress continues on ewasm-kernel and evm2wasm, which form a prototype VM and transpiler written in JS. Progress also continues on Hera, a VM written in C++ that is compatible with the EVM-C API.
C++ Ethereum
The cpp-ethereum is Byzantium ready from the Byzantium first block. The EVM-C interface is progressing, and an experimental branch of go-ethereum exists where geth is powered by EVMJIT virtual machine through EVM-C API.
Geth
Geth has seen significant updates, with version 2 of the les light client protocol being added. geth --dev is now much faster and uses Proof of Authority instead of Proof of Work.
Mist
Mist, the Ethereum Wallet and Mist Beta, has surpassed the 3 million downloads mark, combined. The latest version, 0.9.3, was downloaded over 450k times. Mist has also seen significant updates, with light client integration and Wallet Dapp adaptations being added.
Swarm
Swarm, a decentralized storage platform, has seen significant updates. PSS, a messaging system built on top of Swarm, is already being used as the backend of the prototype chat application of Mainframe. The features planned for PoC3 are mostly done, and PSS is already implemented.
Whisper
Whisper, a decentralized messaging platform, has started version 6, which offers nodes more control over the network load, explores the use of libp2p in the go codebase, and improves compatibility with the Parity version of whisper.
As the year comes to a close, it's clear that the Ethereum ecosystem has seen significant growth and innovation. With the number of new accounts created per day surpassing 100,000 and transaction volume more than doubling, it's clear that the blockchain space is hitting new highs. As we look to the future, it's exciting to see the continued development of Casper, sharding, and other technologies that will shape the future of the Ethereum ecosystem.
