Building web3 social

There’s a lot of exciting things happening at the moment in web3 social (e.g. Lens and Farcaster), and people are weighing in. Winnie from BlockTower makes the case for product-led protocols in social. McKenna shares a thesis on web3 social and Lens in particular. And w1nt3r shares a more contrarian perspective on the space.

Understanding zero knowledge proofs

ZK is all the rage at the moment, but it can also be a little daunting. Maksym Petkus wrote a great paper to walk you through the math of zk in a very approachable way.

Smart contract security

ConsenSys wrote a security tooling guide to:

help builders navigate the emergent blockchain security space by outlining the top tools available at every stage of development.

It’s a free guide that’s definitely worth checking out.

New protocols and improvements

PartyDAO came out with a new protocol for on-chain group consensus. It aims to provide on-chain functionality to groups to help them form, coordinate, and distribute resources. They have big ambitions for the future of on-chain group activity, and this seems to be just the start.

Uniswap also launched Permit2 & Universal Router. Both smart contracts were originally developed to improve Uniswap but the team believes the contracts have a bigger role to play in improving crypto infrastructure. Permit2 is a safer, more cost-efficient way to manage token approvals across applications. Universal Router is Uniswap’s next-generation router that unifies token and NFT trades into a highly flexible, gas-optimized, secure, and extensible swap router.

Post-merge electricity consumption

One benefit frequently touted about the Ethereum merge was how it would improve electricity usage by the blockchain to be more environmentally friendly.