Around the Block, Issue Nº12: STORAGE featuring GasToken, The Graph protocol
This week’s theme is storage, as we look at several proposals to more effectively conserve or access it. Beyond that, I’ve been tracking a Tweet thread by Ghilia Weldesselasie who is developing Ciel, an open source tool for accessing event data from Ethereum.
Effective storage is becoming more important for blockchain size reduction, the variety of storage mechanisms is increasing and with that the need to access and query the data. The early effort is focused on cost and easy programmable access. Over time, we will expect granular permissions and performance guarantees — so the work has only just begun.
💎 Ethereum
Philippe Castonguay turns smart contracts into gas factories
When storage variables are deleted from the blockchain, the sender of the transaction receives a gas refund (or negative gas) which can substantially reduce the cost of a transaction. A GasToken Factory is a smart contract that allows third parties to delete some of its storage variables in exchange for receiving the gas refund. One example could be token sale contracts, which become useless after the sale is over, yet contain a lot of data.
📚 Blockchain Science
Jacob Arluck claims Blockchains are not Startups
Winner-take-all-markets of Web2 encourage companies to accumulate tens or hundreds of millions of users before addressing the thorny, longer-term issues that require more cautious governance. This start-up approach applied to blockchain would run contrary to the vision of decentralization, because today’s informal blockchain governance models make forks that go against the original founders unlikely. The global, decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies makes it likely that capital and developers will face little to no friction of movement across platforms and base layer protocols will differ widely with respect to governance model and culture. Tezos differentiates by aiming to evolve through a liquid democracy model, reserving forks for emergencies.
Evangelos Deirmentzoglou covers Long Range attacks
Long Range attack is a scenario where an attacker goes back to the genesis block and forks the blockchain. The new branch will be populated with a completely (or partially) different history of the main chain. Once the newly crafted branch becomes longer than the main chain, it will overtake it. This is a real possibility with Proof of Stake blockchains (unlike PoW blockchains). Three Long Range attack types are covered. Moving Checkpoints, Context-Aware Transactions, Key-Evolving Cryptography and the Plenitude Rule in addition to the Longest Chain Rule are discussed to ensure protection.
⚡️ Protocols and DApps
EOS Main net is launching
EOS have released their main net source code and announced their launch plans. The general opinion of the community seems to be that 1) not a lot of proven technology has been shipped to-date 2) however, we need to wait and see how the $4 B war chest from their year long ICO will be deployed 😎🍿.
💻 Developer Tools
The Graph is announced
Graph is a GraphQL-based query protocol for decentralized applications. Today, reading complex data from current storage mechanisms (IPFS and Ethreum) requires a separate indexing server. Graph provides a GraphQL API for handling these queries.
😅 Misc
- Crypto Against Humanity was one of the top 5 entries of ETH Buenos Aires
- Parity wallet issue
- Ethereum will be the backbone of the new internet by Loom Network
🚀 Releases
🙏 Feedback
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