9:30am, Weds 19th Oct 2022, Draper Startup House My Khe Beach, Danang, Vietnam

Key Words: Devcon, Proof of Stake, NFT bridging and minting, Oracles, protecting privacy and preventing hacks

Contents

• Introductions

• Devcon summary video

• Video explainer of Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake

• Ethereum Block Times have improved under PoS

• Quix NFT bridge

• Ultrasound Money

• Degenerate NFT purchase – Bork Town on mint.fun

• Splat By Devotion NFT

• Pocket Universe and Transaction Safety

• Chainlink and Oracles

• Metamask

• Draper NFT and $DEN token

• Celsius breach of privacy

• POAP claim

• Mirror article

• Glossary

Introductions

We asked each group member to introduce themselves and say if they had any topics or questions to discuss. A lot of our session came from group-suggested topics.

Devcon summary video

Played the summary video of recent Devcon (Ethereum) conference in Bogota:

There is a recommendation for Devcon to be held in Nha Trang, Vietnam, next year. We highly support this!

Video explainer of Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake

Probably not many people know a lot of details about how Ethereum’s new Proof of Stake consensus mechanism works. This video is very helpful for getting up to speed with it, and understanding it:

Ethereum Block Times have improved under PoS

Believe it or not, the move from block times of 13 seconds on average under PoW to 12 seconds regular under PoS is exciting, beautiful, and useful! Users are (nearly) guaranteed to get their transaction confirmed within 12 seconds, unlike sometimes 40-100 seconds sometimes under PoW. See Twitter thread and graph:

Quix NFT bridge

In previous weeks we lamented the lack of bridges between Ethereum and Layer 2s. And the very next day, Quix released their NFT bridge, see this announcement:

Here is the bridge:

Ultrasound Money

Bridging involves Ethereum mainnet transactions. Time it to have low gas prices using Ultrasound Money gwei graph:

Degenerate NFT purchase – Bork Town on mint.fun

Once again I was goaded into buying a useless NFT on mint.fun! It was Bork Town. Bought for 0.003 ETH gas, this time I am not hopeful of selling it for more than I paid. (Moral is – don’t be degenerate, you degens!)

Splat By Devotion NFT

A group member suggested we look at Splat By Devotion NFTs. These were inspired by someone throwing tomato soup on a Van Gogh painting at a physical gallery. For the Splat NFTs, the idea is you can splat any other NFT with your virtual soup. This makes Splat a derivative NFT (an NFT of an NFT) – very interesting concept! Here is the collection on Gem marketplace:

Also we had fun looking at the Splat NFT contract trying to find which method is called to get another NFT splatted:

Pocket Universe and Transaction Safety

Pocket Universe was recommended by a group member for checking that a contract is genuine before interacting with it. This could help keep newcomers safe:

Chainlink and Oracles

We discussed the need for external price feeds to be brought into smart contracts, and that an “oracle” is the recognised way of doing this, e.g. for a smart contract to have access to the GBP/USD price feed from the real world. The leading oracle network is Chainlink, which aims to provide feeds for all kinds of external data in a decentralised and secure way. Smart contracts can pay Chainlink contracts in the $LINK token to access the oracle data. Good oracles help prevent hacks of decentralised finance apps:

Metamask

We had crypto newcomers attending who had not used a wallet before. These types of discussion sessions are great for helping people to onboard. Installing Metamask is a major step to getting set up, here is a link to the official Chrome extension (be careful to review any wallet extension before installing, check it is genuine):

Draper NFT and $DEN token

Aaron presented to us about the new Draper NFTs with utility, and the $DEN token which also will have utility in DEN’s Singapore location, and hopefully other locations in future.

Celsius breach of privacy

Celsius published a 14,000-page document detailing every user's full name, linked to timestamp & amount of each deposit/withdrawal/liquidation:

This type of breach of privacy is a result of giving a centralised custodian a mass of personal information, and it then going bankrupt and dealing badly with said information. Hopefully decentralised services can fix this, by not requiring the personal information in the first place.

POAP claim

Claim a free NFT on the Gnosis chain for attending this event. You can also download the POAP app for your phone. Here is an example claim link:

Mirror article

Each week we publish the meeting notes in a web3 native way using Mirror!

Glossary

POAP – Proof Of Attendance Protocol, free NFT for attending an event

NFT – Non Fungible Token, a unique token people can hold, transfer or sell. Uses the ERC721 standard.

Token – like a private currency on the Ethereum blockchain, all (fungible) tokens are the same and can be held, transferred, or swapped. Uses the ERC20 standard.

Oracle – a method for getting real-world data onto the blockchain for smart contracts to consume

Smart Contract – a program on a blockchain which controls the flow of digital assets, e.g. a lending protocol which automatically gives interest to deposits.

PoW – Proof of Work, miners use a lot of electricity to secure a blockchain by making a lot of calculations such as hashes, to try and find a hash with unusual properties such as many leading zeros

PoS – Proof of Stake, validators stake their coins in order to participate in making new blocks on a blockchain, getting rewards for good behaviour, or slashed for bad behaviour, as defined by the code of the protocol.

Degen – a “degenerate” gambler, someone who buys small market cap NFTs or tokens, and tries to “flip” them for a quick buck. Usually loses money, unless lucky.