December signifies a month of ongoing advancements in the Ethereum ecosystem. Investigations into proof of stake and sharding persist after the research crew’s seminar in Singapore in November, the light client gradually improves steadily, Whisper and Swarm progress consistently, and conversations surrounding protocol economics and community governance continue to evolve.
Firstly, privacy innovations on Ethereum, particularly zk-SNARKs (or “zero knowledge proofs”), have been advancing swiftly.
Vlad Zamfir has assumed the responsibility of elucidating the history surrounding Casper, from his perspective:
On proof of stake from my personal viewpoint:
Vlad has also taken it upon himself to speak out against the drawbacks of “economic abstraction” (i.e., the aim of attempting to construct token-agnostic public economic consensus protocols):
Numerous discussions took place regarding monetary policy:
Addressing EIPs…
- Greg Colvin’s proposed alterations for enhancing static analysis capabilities (184) as part of the transition towards “EVM 1.5”
- The Ethereum Name System (launched on the Ropsten testnet in late November) saw an EIP initiated (181) to facilitate reverse resolution of Ethereum addresses
The data storage-oriented “sister protocol” Swarm continues its advancement:
And from the perspective of core client development:
We wish the community a joyful new year and eagerly anticipate further progress in January!
