#roundup 03: Nov 18, 2022
What happened in building crypto this week?
Building crypto social
There’s a lot of exciting things happening at the moment in crypto 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 crypto 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.
does a thorough analysis of how those statements have held up post-merge.