Roundup Q2
Ethereum's Rapid Growth and Metropolis Testing Efforts
In the last month and a half, the Ethereum network has experienced a rapid growth in usage, with the number of transactions per second reaching levels comparable to Bitcoin. To accommodate this increased load, the community has come together to increase the gas limit to 6.7 million, with the Ethereum Foundation rapidly putting additional resources toward increasing the efficiency of the network.
Research and Development
The Ethereum research team has been actively working on various topics, including Casper, sharding, and Ethereum protocol economics. A prototype of Casper, the Friendly Finality Gadget/Fork Choice Rule, is close to being finished, and a new version of "the Mauve Paper" is underway, discussing specific considerations and categories of attacks.
Metropolis Testing
Metropolis testing is rapidly moving forward, with the team actively seeking additional help to finish testing. A guide on helping with the Metropolis testing effort has been written, and a public support channel for those who want to help with Metropolis testing has been established.
Mist Team
The Mist team has had a team meetup in May-June, where they discussed the current codebase and future roadmap. They have outlined features that they could implement to help prevent user errors and other related issues, including more options for node switching and better options for account management.
Web3.js
Web3.js is coming along well, with the new whisper API recently added to the old 0.x.x and the new 1.0.0 version. Whisper v5 is currently only available in geth and needs to be started using --shh.
Security
The Ethereum community has received several bounty submissions for vulnerabilities in EthereumJS, Solidity, and Cpp-ethereum. The team has also set up an automated AFL-based fuzzing of Solidity and has implemented a benchmarking suite for the Geth EVM to ensure that the gas prices for new opcodes and precompiles are within reasonable bounds.
EVM 1.5
The "EVM 1.5" proposals are now EIP drafts for "Subroutines and Static Jumps for the EVM #615" and "SIMD Operations for the EVM #616". Discussion and critique are welcome at the GitHub conversations.
EthereumJS
The EthereumJS team is still looking for community contributors to help the Ethereum Javascript client reach Metropolis compatibility. A video walkthrough "Intro to Core Development with Ethereumjs-vm" has been released.
Remix
The main Remix feature in the last month is the alpha release of Remixd, which allows access to a shared folder from Remix IDE. The team is also improving the UI interface and has started ENS integration.
Formal Verification
The progress in the eth-isabelle project was mostly from external contributions, with better separation logic tactics allowing much shorter proofs about Ethereum contracts.
Solidity
The Solidity project has been quite active in the last months, with most of the updates not yet directly visible on the user side. The team has added a feature that allows export of the full abstract syntax tree with all type annotations and has extended the inline assembly language with structured elements.
Swarm
The swarm team has onboarded new members and held an in-person Swarm Summit in Berlin in June, 2017. The team has also developed a suite of example applications highlighting the architectural and implementational peculiarities of Swarm-hosted distributed web applications.
Conclusion
The Ethereum community has made significant progress in the last month and a half, with rapid growth in usage, increased gas limits, and advancements in research and development. The team is actively working on Metropolis testing, with a focus on improving the efficiency and scalability of the network. The community is also making progress in security, with the implementation of a benchmarking suite for the Geth EVM and the setup of an automated AFL-based fuzzing of Solidity. As the Ethereum network continues to grow and evolve, it will be exciting to see the impact of these advancements on the real-world applications and use cases of the platform.
Why this matters: The Ethereum network's rapid growth and advancements in research and development have significant implications for the future of decentralized applications and the blockchain ecosystem as a whole. The increased efficiency and scalability of the network will enable more complex and widespread adoption of decentralized applications, while the advancements in security will provide a safer and more reliable platform for users.
Real-world applications: The Ethereum network's advancements will have a significant impact on various industries, including finance, supply chain management, and healthcare. For example, decentralized applications can be used to create secure and transparent financial systems, track the origin and movement of goods, and store medical records in a secure and decentralized manner.
Forward-looking thoughts: As the Ethereum network continues to grow and evolve, it will be exciting to see the impact of these advancements on the real-world applications and use cases of the platform. The community's focus on improving the efficiency and scalability of the network will enable more complex and widespread adoption of decentralized applications, while the advancements in security will provide a safer and more reliable platform for users.
