Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • quadrable

    Authenticated multi-version database: sparse binary merkle tree with compact partial-tree proofs

    Hey, I think you're making a valid point and I probably should have explained more what I meant by my statement.

    IMO, there's a middle ground we can go between slow PoW on L1 and scaleability. I think that it can be done by having tools that give us the same guarantees like deploying a smart contract on the main chain. It's difficult to explain: But what I want is Plasma but as a framework to develop dapps.

    This project is going that route: https://github.com/hoytech/quadrable

  • vyper

    Pythonic Smart Contract Language for the EVM

    > I need a hero, and by that, I mean that I need a usable methodology for building scaleable decentralized apps. Yes, you've heard that right. We don't need more "Ethereum killers" that can do 10x more tx/s than Ethereum. Those are useless.

    Having worked on large Ethereum smart contracts (running an auction on chain) over two years, I fully agree with this. Ethereum needs better smart contract languages, better compilers and better dev tooling.

    As our smart contract written in Vyper (for ease of auditing) grew larger and larger, eventually we failed to deploy on the testnet, and closer inspection reveal that the compiler was blowing up code size which I had to patch[0]. Down the line upstream further increased gas costs by emitting code that zeroed out every member of an array (note the EVM already has all memory set to 0). To support efficient insertion/deletion of bids we had to handroll a skip list on the blockchain(!), because there are no Vyper libraries.

    On the language development side, things don't look too pretty either, I ended up having to write an EVM assembler from scratch[1], but deeper still are problems such as a lack of a separate call stack in EVM, so procedure calls always end up clunky and implementation-dependent.

    Perhaps eWASM will alleviate some of these concerns. But until then, the entire dev process for writing smart contracts is painful.

    [0] https://github.com/vyperlang/vyper/pull/1488

    [1] https://github.com/ActorForth/evm-assembler/blob/master/docs...

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    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • solana

    Web-Scale Blockchain for fast, secure, scalable, decentralized apps and marketplaces.

  • v1-contracts

    Discontinued 🐍Uniswap V1 smart contracts

    If you're working on "large Ethereum smart contracts" you've missed the point. On chain logic should always be as minimal as possible. Uniswap v1 was two vyper files. One was 46 lines, and the other was 496 lines[1]. It took like 20 minutes to read through the code thoroughly, and was one of the most impactful contracts ever deployed to the network.

    Solidity also matured a lot, which is why Uniswap v2 moved back. If you find yourself writing an EVM assembler from scratch, and you're trying to build something other than a compiler, you have veered way way off course, and need to re-evaluate your system architecture.

    Feature creep might work well if you're trying to leech money from a government contract or something, or being paid by line of code you contribute, but it's fatal in the Ethereum world. I consulted for a number of projects that made the exact same mistake, and most of them aren't around anymore.

    [1] https://github.com/Uniswap/uniswap-v1/tree/master/contracts

  • homebrew-golem

    Golem is creating a global market for computing power.

    Lots of uses other than pure fin transactions. Most people are blind to this.

    E.g. https://golem.network/

  • celo-extension-wallet

    :globe_with_meridians: :electric_plug: The celo wallet browser extension enables browsing celo blockchain enabled websites

    You might consider taking a look at Celo. They have ultra-light client support [0], it's proof-of-stake with single-block finality, and they run a true EVM that you can program in Solidity. It's mobile-first but since it's fundamentally a fork of Ethereum it is also web3 compatible -- there's a metamask fork here that should soon be functional [1]. Gas is payable in multiple ERC20 tokens, and should remain cheap as the network scales. Not sure if this falls under your "ethereum killers that can do 10x transactions/second" so apologies for shilling if it's not interesting to you.

    [0] https://docs.celo.org/celo-codebase/protocol/plumo

    [1] https://github.com/dsrvlabs/celo-extension-wallet

  • go-ethereum

    Official Go implementation of the Ethereum protocol (by geohot)

    Yeah, where author hardcoded himself 25m coins [1] and bans everyone who mentions it from the official discord. Currency of the future indeed.

    [1] https://github.com/cheapETH/go-ethereum/commit/412c38434d8d8...

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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