| Table of Contents |
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Key Points
- Key blockchain alternatives to Hyperledger include: Ethereum, Quorum, Corda
- Hyperledger Fabric has implemented EEA ( Ethereum Enterprise Architecture ) Enterprise stack and can call Ethereum smart contracts now
- Biser Dimitrov's EBC newsletter: https://enterpriseblockchain.substack.com/
- Good news is Ethereum continues to evolve filling in gaps and expanding the use cases it can fit better than most other crypto platforms overall. Bigger than crypto is clearly the growing use of Asset Tokenization and DLT impacting many domains now. Automated governance with Sybal is another expanding focus in 2024.
References
| Reference_description_with_linked_URLs________________________________ | Notes_______________________________________________________________ |
|---|---|
| _compare-fabric-v-ethereum-v-corda-180914122948.pdf | _compare-fabric-v-ethereum-v-corda-180914122948.pdf |
| m Ethereum Smart Contract Concepts | |
| Ethereum Cheat Sheet - 2023 | |
| Ethereum Cheat Sheet code concepts - github | |
| https://www.ethereum.org/beginners/ | Ethereum for beginners |
| https://www.ethereum.org/ | Ethereum |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum | Ethereum |
| https://medium.com/blockchannel/life-cycle-of-an-ethereum-transaction-e5c66bae0f6e | Ethereum transaction concepts |
| https://bitfalls.com/2018/05/31/what-is-an-ethereum-testnet-and-how-is-it-used/ | How to use Ethereum testnets |
Ethereum changes coming: POS, shards, lower gas, burn ether pdf | Ethereum changes coming: POS, shards, lower gas, burn ether |
| Ethereum improvements needed - 2023 - p1 - Vitalik Buterin | |
| https://hackernoon.com/costs-of-a-real-world-ethereum-contract-2033511b3214 | Estimated costs of an Ethereum contract - 2017 |
https://www.slideshare.net/Synerzip/blockchain-application-development-101 blockchain-application-development-webinar-sweetbridge-190905082233.pdf | Blockchain App Development Concepts 101 - slideshare - sweetbridge |
| https://ethgasstation.info/ | Gas station - current gas prices to run a transaction ... expensive |
| https://hackernoon.com/costs-of-a-real-world-ethereum-contract-2033511b3214 | calculating gas prices |
| https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/35539/what-is-the-real-price-of- deploying-a-contract-on-the-mainnet | Costs of a contract deployment |
| https://entethalliance.org/enterprise-ethereum-alliance-advances-web-3-0-era-public-release-enterprise-ethereum-architecture-stack/ | EEA |
| https://entethalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/EEA-Architecture-Stack-Spring-2018.pdf | EEA stack |
| https://entethalliance.github.io/trusted-computing/spec.html | EEA Off-Chain Trusted Computing Spec |
| testnets | |
| https://www.anyblockanalytics.com/networks/ethereum/ropsten/#:~: text=Description, Morden%2C%20the%20first%20Ethereum%20Testnet. | Ropsten testnet about for blockchain development testing before deployment |
| https://ropsten.etherscan.io/ | Ropsten testnet console |
| https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/networks/ | Networks are different Ethereum environments you can access for development, testing, or production use cases. Your Ethereum account will work across the different networks but your account balance and transaction history won't carry over from the main Ethereum network. For testing purposes, it's useful to know which networks are available and how to get testnet ETH so you can play around with it. |
| https://umbria.network/connect/ethereum-testnet-ropsten | Connect metamask to Ropsten testnet |
| Wallets and tokens | |
| https://drive.google.com/open?id=16YzIZpOCFDTR4E0SW5EZ31sdQViWJhE7 | a redeemable bitcoin token for ERC-20 wallets w transaction interop |
| EEA - Ethereum Enterprise Alliance - permissioned Ethereum | |
| https://entethalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EEA_ Ethereum_Business_Readiness_Report_2022_v1.1_June_29_2022.pdf | EEA readiness report 2022 |
| AWS | |
| QLDB slides - 2019 | QLDB slides - 2019 |
| AWS Hosted Fabric BAAS | |
| Facebook Libra cryptocurrency | |
| https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#introduction | Libra whitepaper |
| https://libra.org/en-US/ | Libra home |
| https://libra.org/en-US/about-currency-reserve/#the_reserve | LIbra Reserve Management |
| https://developers.libra.org/docs/the-libra-blockchain-paper | Libra Blockchain |
| https://libra.org/en-US/association-council-principles/#overview | Libra Governance Organization |
| the DPOS Merge 2022 | |
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ethereum-ropsten-merge-incoming-where-235242836.html | Ropsten testnet to DPOS in June 2022 - mainnet merge later merge would combine pow and pos chains |
| Ethereum scaling beyond the Merge | sharding would have been welcomed by users rollup-centric roadmap users can “bridge” Token A to a sidechain, swap it for Token B (quickly and cheaply), and then “bridge” Token B back to Ethereum. A series of transactions that costs thousands of dollars on Ethereum can be done for pennies on Polygon sidechains tend to make compromises to centralization and security in the name of convenience. Rollups, like sidechains, take the stress off of Ethereum by executing transactions on a separate blockchain. Transactions are “settled” on the rollup chain, bundled up, and then “posted” to Ethereum |
Key Concepts
Ethereum Key Features
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According to Vitalik, DAOs are now finally ready to happen. He predicted the surging of the popular Ethereum Name Service (ENS). He mentioned his new roadmap and its named phases: the verge, the purge, the surge, the splurge, and the merge.
”If Ethereum fails to scale, then Ethereum definitely failed.
If Ethereum succeeds at scaling, but it turns into something centralized, then I think it also failed.
If Ethereum succeeds at scaling and at being decentralized as a blockchain, but nothing interesting gets to build on top of it and no one actually gets any value from it, then it also fails.”
Vitalik predictions 2022
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vitalik-buterin-reviews-past-crypto-161741276.html
Buterin also believes that the coin’s decentralization allows it to survive but not thrive in a harsh regulatory environment. He added that for a successful censorship resistance strategy to work, such a project must be technologically robust and have public legitimacy
Buterin also acknowledged that his whitepaper predicted DeFi but wholly missed seeing the development of NFTs. He also described himself as naive for not considering the social and political hindrances of BTC, but now he has learned a lot.
Vitalik highlighted how he was an apologist for the overwhelming power consumption of PoW in 2012
Regarding PoS and Sharding, he said that he accepts that he made a wrong timing of when these innovations could be live on ETH’s network.
He also said that if developers want stablecoins to remain strong amid the collapse of the USD, they must have good governance.
his vision of the Internet of Money. According to him, this innovation should have transaction fees not exceeding 5 cents for every transaction. ETH is experiencing scalability difficulties, but he explained that his DEV team works around the clock to make solutions.
Ethereum After the Merge Before the Surge
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/citi-ethereum-merge-several-consequences-105135910.html
lower energy intensity, the transition into a deflationary asset and a “potential roadmap to a more scalable future through sharding,” the bank said.
may only increase transaction speeds by 10% by reducing block times, according to the report. It, however, lays the path for the “Surge,” which is the next planned upgrade for the network and promises to bring 100,000 transactions-per-second (TPS) capability to the blockchain
with ether (ETH) eventually becoming deflationary, this may improve the case for the token as a store of value.
The move to PoS turns ETH into a “yield-bearing asset” with cash flows, the bank said, which may be interpreted as a form of revenue for the network. Having potential cash flows would allow the use of a range of valuation methods that are not currently available for the blockchain
Given its “enhanced store of value properties,” it is more likely to be where a growing amount of total value locked (TVL) is secured and transacted
Builders are more important than Miners after Merge - 2022
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/ethereum-overhaul-risks-creating-class-155911993.html
Ethereum Merge to POS moving forward - 2022
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/ethereum-2-0-project-enters-174440315.html
The Ethereum 2.0 project will boost the transactions per second (TPS) capability of the top blockchain for both centralized and decentralized finance, or DeFI, projects — as well as gaming, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), metaverses and pretty much everything else — from its current 12 to 15 TPS limit to 100,000 TPS, developers claim. It will also end its environmental problems
The March 15 launch of the Klin testnet marks the last “test” blockchain before the Ethereum 2.0 Merge that shifts transactions of Ethereum from its current Bitcoin-style proof-of-work consensus mechanism to the newer proof-of-stake (PoS) that competing “Ethereum-killer” blockchain like Polkadot, Cosmos and Solana have been using to steal developers and projects.
When Buterin talked about “the limits on making block time faster” in a recent Reddit discussion thread — which he reposted on Twitter — he was referring to how fast new blocks of transactions are added to the Ethereum blockchain. And that’s a matter that’s more about security than scalability.
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But the ongoing project to convert Ethereum into Ethereum 2.0, built on the greener and far more scalable proof-of-stake consensus mechanism (as opposed to Bitcoin-style proof-of-work mining) will enable it to reach 100,000 TPS.
Aside from scalability that will end the overtaxed blockchain’s staggeringly high transaction fees — generally $2 to $4 but spiking as high as $70 — Eth 2.0 will deal with the transaction delays that occur when the number of transactions outpaces it ability to add new transactions to the immutable blockchain.
2 layer architecture separates contract execution from consensus
The Eth 2.0 blockchain differs from Ethereum in one key fashion: Instead of a single “Layer 1” blockchain that handles everything, Eth 2.0 will have an execution layer, on which all smart contracts run, and a consensus layer, which only records transactions. That takes a lot of pressure off, allowing the consensus layer to scale massively without interfering with — or interference from — the smart contracts running DeFI exchanges, games, metaverses, supply chain management projects and all the rest.
Much lower GAS fees with POS?
Some than 10 million ETH tokens, worth more than $26 billion, have been staked — locked into a contract that replaces mining as the means of securing the blockchain and adding new transaction data in exchange for newly minted ETH tokens.
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https://time.com/nextadvisor/investing/cryptocurrency/ethereum-hits-new-all-time-high-price/
until that ( the Merge ) happens, experts are waiting to see how investors and companies building their tech on Ethereum’s platform respond to the changes.
Ethereum has bounced up and down in recent weeks, following an immediate drop below $2,400 on Feb. 23 after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine. Experts also point to other factors like the crypto market tracking the stock market, more mainstream adoption, and slumping prices in recent months as contributing to what we’re seeing with crypto prices right now.
US CBDC impacts?
Government officials have also continued to show an interest in more crypto regulation and even the possibility of creating a government-issued digital currency. Bitcoin’s price has had a similarly rough stretch lately.
Ethereum price volatility
Ethereum has ranged between $2,100 and $4,000 in the days since. Despite the slow start to 2022, many experts are still bullish, predicting Ethereum’s price could potentially hit and exceed $12,000 this year. In January 2021, Ethereum’s price was just a little over $1,000.
“The real question is, owning these coins, are they going to continue to experience compound, exponential growth? Nothing in the fundamentals of cryptocurrency tells me that answer is yes,” says Jeremy Schnieder, the investing expert behind Personal Finance Club.
Crypto price forecasts - 2022
A veteran trader and analyst, Peter Brandt has predicted a drop in Bitcoin, Ethereum and most other altcoins, comparing it to the 2018 crash.
Brandt became popular in the crypto community with his 80% BTC price drop prediction in 2018.
Analysts observing a 2018-like bearish structure in the Bitcoin price chart, set a downside target at $27,000.
Analysts believe Bitcoin price is at risk of close to a 50% drop, and $25,000 is the downside target for BTC.
Ethereum crashes on Bored Ape trades
https://fortune.com/2022/05/01/bored-ape-metaverse-frenzy-raises-millions-crashes-ethereum/
Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collection of NFTs, launched a sale Saturday of virtual land related to its highly anticipated metaverse project, raising about $320 million worth of cryptocurrency in the largest offering of its kind. Demand was so strong that activity related to the event caused ripple effects across the entire Ethereum blockchain, disrupting activity and sending transaction fees soaring.
Each plot cost a buyer around $5,800 based on ApeCoin’s price of $19 as of Saturday, plus transaction costs, or “gas fees,” in Ether, which skyrocketed after the sale went live at 9 p.m. New York time as the land grab attracted heavy demand. Transaction costs just to mint Otherdeed NFTs after the launch reached $123 million, with each Otherdeed requiring about $6,000, or 2 Ether, in transaction fees to mint, according to data from Etherscan -- or more than the price of the deed itself.
Should transaction fees on a blockchain be fixed or based on short-term supply and demand?
Ether price driven by: the Merge timing, NFT volume, competitive platforms
in theory, after the Merge and full staking levels for POS consensus, Ethereum will have:
- high scalability
- lower, stable platform fees ( gas )
- climate friendly environment
Ethereum POS fork hacked 220919
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For example, if a DApp’s server is infiltrated, it may be possible to populate the web interface with false information. This could cause users to make decisions they otherwise wouldn’t have. Or maybe a user’s wallet provider is overtaken. It would be possible to cut the wallet provider off from the network and not propagate user transactions to miners, thereby censoring their ability to transact with the chain.
It’s clear that if DApps simply didn’t rely on Infura, the impact from the chain split would’ve been reduced drastically. So why do most DApp interfaces not get their data from Ethereum nodes directly?
First of all, most users don’t run their own nodes. Running a node is costly and requires experience to setup correctly, especially in a production environment. Therefore, the burden is shouldered by DApps.
DApps to routinely use Infura as their single source of truth.
API that allows any developer to write software that interfaces with the Ethereum network. The product they’ve built is excellent, and is often more economical than being self-sufficient. This causes DApps to routinely use Infura as their single source of truth.
Ethereum clients need 3rd party advanced services
Ethereum clients are only good at answering simple queries such as “What is Alice’s balance?”. More complicated queries are prohibitively expensive to answer using only an Ethereum client. Even if users did have their own local node, they still wouldn’t be able to get the answer to queries like “How much did Alice spend between March and April?”
DApps often rely on these rich queries, and are therefore relegated to maintaining their own off-chain databases to support their application
MetaMask wallet has security risks
users connect to Infura by default via the MetaMask wallet
Although Infura is a prominent example of centralization in the Ethereum ecosystem, it’s far from the only one. Etherscan, oracles, DApp APIs — even a singular connection to the internet — are all susceptible to coercion. Relying on any one of these services for information would result in completely trusting that operator.
It’s surprisingly difficult to be self-sovereign using a technology whose primary goal is self-sovereignty. So don’t trust, verify.
Fixing decentralization on Ethereum
The goal is to allow everyone to interact with applications, without needing to trust any institution — to do that, the tooling must improve.
The status quo is to use a single source of truth when interacting with the chain. This inherently centralizes the flow of information and requires trust in that source. It is also in great contrast to full nodes, which connect with 25-50 unique peers. Full nodes can maintain an accurate view of the network even if only one of their peers are honest
There are many techniques that will make this easier, including light clients, block witnesses, state proofs, data retrieval networks and zero-knowledge proofs.
In the meantime, it’s important to be aware of the points of failure that exist today.
Do we want decentralization or just the benefits of decentralization?
Ethereum Platform Roadmap from 2022
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It would allow validators, who have deposited ether tokens on the blockchain in exchange for a yield, to withdraw their staked coins, to hold or sell.
The staked ether crypto coin - viewed as a bet on Ethereum's long-term success as it cannot be redeemed until Shanghai happens - is trading at nearly parity with ether at 0.989 ether, according to CoinMarketCap data, indicating confidence in future upgrades.
Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, said: "Ethereum's future needs to, and will, scale to hundreds of millions of transactions a day."
The Merge and future upgrades also dent the investment appeal of so-called "Ethereum killer" blockchains like Solana and Polkadot, said Adam Struck, CEO of venture capital firm Struck Crypto.
Longer-term, though, the switch to PoS is expected to decrease the rate at which ether tokens are issued - potentially by up to 90% - which should drive up prices.
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layer2-Vitalik Buterin outlines endgame roadmap for ETH 20.pdf
both optimistic and zero knowledge proof rollups
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ethereum-no-longer-one-chain-123000149.html
Ethereum is no longer a one-chain ecosystem. In order to achieve scalability, the Ethereum community will need to offer layer 2 technologies capable of handling transactions from billions of users. 2021 proved to be the first step in experimentation with both optimistic and zero knowledge proof rollups, and the two finally began to take significant market share in daily transactions away from Ethereum L1.
Ethereum Enterprise Architecture - #EEA
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https://www.hyperledger.org/use/avalon
Hyperledger Avalon is a ledger independent implementation of the Trusted Compute Specifications published by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. It aims to enable the secure movement of blockchain processing off the main chain to dedicated computing resources. Avalon is designed to help developers gain the benefits of computational trust and mitigate its drawbacks.
Avalon Notes gdoc
Avalon Overview lessons
Avalon extends computational trust to off-chain execution enabling.
- Improved blockchain throughput and scalability
- Improved transaction privacy
- Attested Oracles, trusted reporters of data generated outside of the blockchain.
https://lists.hyperledger.org/g/avalon/topic/71882826
There are a couple of key challenges with blockchain that probably don’t surprise any reader of this blog: scalability and confidentiality. One approach to both of these limitations is to perform some operations “off-chain.” In a traditional view of a blockchain, the data and validation logic for every transaction takes place on every node of the blockchain network or “on-chain.” It’s this redundancy and transparency that provides a network with its integrity but also comes at the cost of performance and confidentiality. By offloading some work, participants can trade off resiliency and integrity for performance and confidentiality. Of course, everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, and so the use of the use of “trusted computing” is intended to maintain resiliency and integrity guarantees as much as possible while affording the additional performance and confidentiality. Trusted computing includes a variety of techniques to ensure that computation was done correctly and secretly. Hyperledger Avalon will realize these as different Worker types and include TEE (Trusted Execution Environments like Intel® SGX), MPC (multi-party compute), and ZK (zero-knowledge proofs).
For example, IBM prototyped this Hyperledger Fabric integration with Avalon [2 links: https://github.com/jeffgarratt/hyperledger-member-summit-2019-tcf-demo-app and https://github.com/jeffgarratt/fabric-prototype].
Avalon Architecture Overview
https://github.com/hyperledger/avalon/blob/main/docs/avalon-arch.pdf
Avalon Intro Video - 1 hr
Avalon project proposal
https://github.com/hyperledger/avalon
https://hyperledger.github.io/avalon/
Avalon Introductory Blog - 2019
https://www.hyperledger.org/blog/2019/10/03/introducing-hyperledger-avalon
ZeroMQ - the messaging framework for Avalon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeroMQ
The ZeroMQ API provides sockets (a kind of generalization over the traditional IP and Unix domain sockets), each of which can represent a many-to-many connection between endpoints. Operating with a message-wise granularity, they require that a messaging pattern be used, and are particularly optimized for that kind of pattern.
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ZeroMQ implements ZMTP, the ZeroMQ Message Transfer Protocol.[5] ZMTP defines rules for backward interoperability, extensible security mechanisms, command and message framing, connection metadata, and other transport-level functionality. A growing number of projects implement ZMTP directly as an alternative to using the full ZeroMQ implementations.[6]
Avalon concepts
- Avalon does off-chain processing
- messages sent to smart contracts to record results
- messages sent to database network to record off-chain database
Avalon enables privacy in blockchain transactions, moving intensive processing from a main blockchain to improve scalability and latency, and to support attested oracles.
It is designed to help developers gain the benefits of computational trust and mitigate its drawbacks. In case of the Avalon a blockchain is used to enforce execution policies and ensure transaction auditability, while associated off-chain trusted compute resources execute transactions. By using trusted off-chain compute resources, a developer can accelerate throughput and improve data privacy.
Preservation of the integrity of execution and the enforcement of confidentiality guarantees come through the use of a Trusted Compute (TC) option, e.g. ZKP (Zero Knowledge Proof), MPC (Multi Party Compute), or HW based TEE (Trusted Execution Environment). While the approach will work with any TC option that guarantees integrity for code and integrity and confidentiality for data, our initial implementation uses Intel@ Software Guard Extensions (SGX). Avalon leverages the existence of a distributed ledger to:
Maintain a registry of the trusted workers (including their attestation info)
Provide a mechanism for submitting work orders from a client(s) to a worker
Preserve a log of work order receipts and acknowledgments
Avalon uses Off-Chain Trusted Compute Specification defined by Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) Trusted Compute Task Force as a starting point to apply a consistent and compatible approach to all supported blockchains.
Figure 1 System Overview
The figure above depicts an example of blockchain with N member enterprises. Each enterprise has Requesters, a blockchain node and one or more Trusted Workers (hosted by a Trusted Compute Service). Requesters submit Work Orders, and Workers execute these Work Orders. Work Order receipts can be recorded on the blockchain. While each of the enterprises in the figure above contains all three major components, this is not necessary. For example, Requesters from Enterprise 1 may send Work Orders to a Worker at Enterprise 2 and vice versa. Ultimately, an enterprise is free to host any combination of the three elements depicted on the figure above (blockchain node, Requester, off-chain Trusted Compute Service). Accessing resources across multiple enterprises increases network resilience, allows more efficient use of resources, and provides access to greater total capacity than most individual enterprises can afford.
Avalon Architecture
Trusted Compute Service (TCS) hosts trusted Workers and makes them available for execution of Work Orders (WO) submitted by Requesters via front end UI or command line tools. Work orders also can be submitted by (Enterprise app specific) smart contracts running on the DLT.
TCS APIs
TCS catalog lists available TCS and provides blockchain address and/or URI where about their corresponding Workers can be discovered
Worker registry that lists Trusted Compute Workers. It includes attestation verification report, public RSA encryption key, and public ECDSA SECP256K1 verification key
Work order processing API that allows submit Work Order requests and receive corresponding responses with data encrypted end-to-end between the Requester the Worker. Both the request and response may include multiple data items independently encrypted by different parties using different keys. The Requester may optionally sign its requests. Even if the Requester doesn’t sign the request (aka an anonymous request), there a mechanism enforcing Work Order request integrity. The enclave always signs its responses.
Work Order receipts API that can be used for payment processing, auditing, and dispute resolution. The receipts may be submitted and signed by the worker, Requester, or other participants (e.g. data owners). A work order may have zero, one, or more associated receipts
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Ethereum has struggled along with the wider crypto market since peaking in late 2021, with the collapse of the non-fungible token (NFTNFT 0.0%) market and the evaporation of interest in a decentralized internet built on the ethereum blockchain, known as web3, weighing on prices.
Crypto ?? as designed not going anywhere
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