It’s always exciting to hear about new funding as they’re announced, but what occurs after the declaration? In this series, we’ll revisit a few initiatives that are making progress – or already completed. Continue reading to discover some recent milestones and accomplishments by recipients of the grants!
Imapp for EVM Gas Cost Estimator
Gas prices in Ethereum are a continuous subject of discussion and enhancement. The typical user only notices what they are charged to execute a transaction – whether the gas limit is exceedingly high, exceedingly low, or simply fluctuating. But where do those proposed gas limits originate?
No two smart contracts are identical; each encompasses a unique set of commands, or OPCODEs, to be executed in the EVM. Gas serves to remunerate miners or validators for the computational expense of carrying out these OPCODEs, i.e. the tasks their machines must perform. Computational costs are highly inconsistent, even among various validators executing the same smart contract. The OPCODE directives, program context, and the node’s hardware and software setup all contribute to the actual expense.
The imapp team focused on more precisely estimating real-world computational costs, supplying crucial data that will steer discussions among core developers about modifying the OPCODE pricing. Considering all of these elements to enhance the precision of gas cost estimates allows for accomplishing more within the gas limit, as well as:
- Making sure that developers aiming to optimize for gas expenses are also optimizing for the genuine computational costs imposed on nodes
- Preserving network diversity by ensuring miners and validators have adequate motivation to maintain network security even when operating on consumer (as opposed to highly optimized) hardware
- Averting DoS attacks or other code that takes advantage of discrepancies between estimated and actual costs
- Alleviating factors that could lead to a less predictable fee market for users, such as miners favoring specific contracts over others for inclusion in a block
Imapp initially secured a grant in late 2020 for Stage I of the initiative, which included preliminary testing, research, and analysis and was completed earlier this year. A subsequent grant was awarded to finance Stage II, building upon the work from Stage I. The methodology in Stage II is organized into three main areas:
- Program generation: creation of EVM bytecode programs from which measurements will be collected
- Instrumentation and measurement: executing the generated programs in a controlled setting and measuring the time to compute each instruction
- Analysis: statistical evaluation and verification of measurement data
The Gas Cost Estimator Stage I Report provides a comprehensive overview of the project background, findings from Stage I, and plans for Stage II. You can track progress on Github, or stay updated with the imapp team on Twitter.
Rock Logic for Stereum
As Ethereum shifts to Proof of Stake, the network’s security relies on a vast and decentralized validator community. Eth2 client teams have concentrated on reducing entry barriers like hardware constraints or technical know-how, while numerous community efforts are in motion to make staking as approachable as possible for anyone who possesses the necessary 32 ETH. One such project is Stereum, which seeks to minimize technical barriers for solo stakers by simplifying the process of establishing a validator node.
The concept behind Stereum was first materialized as prysm-docker-compose. With Stereum’s docker images (software packages that merge code and configurations for hassle-free setup), solo stakers were able to install and configure the Prysm eth2 client, server environment, and monitoring services all at once. The team was granted funding in late 2020 and a second grant in 2021, to expand that functionality to more clients and develop additional tools and resources for stakers.
The Stereum team regularly shares updates on their website and Twitter. You can also follow and engage on Github, or support their Gitcoin grant!
Are you engaged in something you believe could improve Ethereum? Visit our grants page to discover more about what we seek in the projects we support.
