The Merge updates, ETHOnline finalists and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #232 - Ethereum Updates

Transcript

hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the daily gray refuel where we kept the latest news in the ethereum ecosystem i'm your host anthony sosano and today's the 18th of october 2021 all right everyone let's get into it so valve made some moves i guess over the weekend or made some news i should say over the weekend as they banned blockchain games from their platform and nfts as well from the steam platform here now uh in return epic another kind of big games company said that they would be uh you know trying to make it work or at least supporting it on their games platform called the epic game store um just generally this is a really kind of i guess disappointing kind of move from from valve um you know i'm i've been a big gamer for most of my life i'm a very big

valve fan half life is is my favorite game of all time so to see them do this is just very disappointing like i've i've been a huge star kind of like steam user steam supporter for uh for quite a while and supported a lot of the things that valve have done through the years but obviously i don't support this and it's i think it's because that uh they they you know the fact that there's like in-game items that they're that can be kind of like bought and sold and i don't think valve would be able to kind of i guess take a cut from it right at the end of the day but definitely a very kind of like disappointing move uh from them and i don't think they've kind of like responded to any comments uh to any of the press that have asked like why they

did this but i would assume that it's definitely got to do with uh the monetization uh as a monetization aspect of it just sort of like what apple did when they were kind of like banned web3 browsers from the app stores because of the in-app purchases where it would bypass apple's kind of like 30 take 30 revenue take and it's funny because like apple and epic games have actually been in a court battle over this for i guess it's been a while now i think it's like the last year at least or something like that uh so yeah i mean this just again shows you how these centralized tech platforms will obviously use their power to to squash things that they don't want to see but i mean blockchain games and nfts are inevitable look at axe infinity look how big that

game is how much revenue it's generating and it is not on steam you know it's not on kind of like uh any of those kind of big platforms it is on the app store of course and things like that but uh it didn't need steam or it didn't need like epic games it didn't need kind of like these massive game publish publishers to support them uh now it's it's nice to see epic kind of like coming and and saying you know we're gonna support this even even if valve doesn't but at the same time i feel like they're just doing it because valve isn't doing it because there was a comment from our epic games i guess founder uh i think his name is tom tom sweeney or something like that uh there was a comment from him a few months ago or i think it was

more recent than a few months ago where he basically said that he thought nfts were kind of like scams essentially or at least like mixed up with a lot of scams now uh i feel like epic is just doing this because steam is going the other way like i would i would love to have seen you know what epic stance would have been if valve basically gave blessing to blockchain games and nfts would epic have gone the other way and said oh yeah we're gonna we're gonna kind of like ban it but i don't know maybe maybe maybe that i'm just speculating and none of that would have happened but still very very disappointing to see and i'm sure you've seen all the takes from different people on on twitter i think it's generally kind of like the same stuff that i'm seeing where it's just

like well you know we don't need you valve you need blockchain games more than you know blockchain games need you and i think it's true at the end of the day if if a game is good enough and if uh you know if it's providing like real value to people they're gonna play it regardless of what platform it's on like i don't play games uh sorry i don't choose not to play games just because they're not on steam or not on epic the epic game store obviously it's really great discoverability mechanisms for for people uh and it's it's helped a lot of kind of i guess indie publishers get their games in front of people's eyes and you know a lot of blockchain games these days are just from indie publishers so i mean that might be a little bit of a blow there but the long

term i don't know i i see these kind of like being a blow to valve more than blockchain games in general but uh yeah so just a bit of color on that one we'll see if anything changes over the coming months maybe valve kind of like reverses their stance here as a kind of i guess um reaction to epic games basically saying they're going to support blockchain games and nfts but interesting to see more of this stuff just get into the mainstream spotlight as well all right so another all core devs call wrapped up on friday and as usual tim biker has a uh a recap thread here most of the discussion i think was centered around the merge of course uh because of the interoperability week and also because of the fact that uh there's a lot of kind of like core devs working on the merge now on the

eth1 side as well uh this is the eighth one kind of like core devs call by the way not like the eighth two one um but i guess like those two things are basically becoming the same thing now right as as we get through the merge and there was a bit of discussion about like the difficulty bomb um that's set to golf in december uh unless we kind of like push it back and it's been agreed upon that it'll be pushed back to june that doesn't mean that june is going to be the merge uh kind of like release date but uh there was a bit of comments around this as well where tim basically said uh i think he said like that the team once the kind of like code is done they would want four months before uh i i guess like putting

it to mainnet or something like that i'm trying to find the comments here i don't know exactly what the wording was uh where is it where is okay here we go um so tim said uh this was about the difficulty bomb and then tim goes on to say everyone agrees having a safe well-tested merge is the most important thing uh by far and we're okay pushing the bomb back twice if that is required so the bomb will go be pushed back to june and then it'll be pushed back again if if needed if the merge isn't ready by june and then he goes on to say that we we being the core devs think four months is a generous time frame from having the code done to seeing the merge on main net okay so yeah i was right like if for example uh the code is done by february

uh we you know the the kind of like uh i guess shipping to main net would happen june 2022 which is i mean early q2 right like i did say that late q1 early q2 expect the merge on main net that's my speculation it's not an official date don't take this as an official date either there's still a lot of work to do and a lot of kind of like unknowns as well but at the same time uh very very optimistic about that kind of like timeline there and it wasn't just this that i kind of uh grabbed that timeline from there was a blog post published by tim biker about amphora which is kind of like the merge milestone that i went over last week where everyone was kind of like clapping in that room and you saw the pictures on twitter and stuff

like that and in this blog post i suggest reading it but in this blog post was also a kind of uh graphic here titled the path to the merge where it splits off the on-chain kind of like happenings and the off chain happening so you can see here that it's got like what happened in the past and my camera is cutting off at the very beginning but basically q4 2020 was the deposit contract was deployed in october then the beacon chain launched on december 1st and then we had uh both chains running in parallel we still have both chains running in parallel the eighth one on the e3 chains or the execution and consensus layers uh running in parallel there and then april uh 2021 we had the berlin upgrade august we had the london upgrade october we had altair activate which is the e3 upgrade um and then off

chain during that same period we had the uh may 2021 was the rainism prototype post merge proof of stake devnet so this was something i spoke about back in may around the merge october i guess like the part of the week just passed we had the m4a multi-client interop with the transition done and then q4 2021 to q1 2022 is expected that devnets will will go live and then there already is a devnet live python or pithos um and there'll be there'll be public net networks with hardened specs for the community to test now what's the most interesting is the bottom right here where it says the 2022 the merge proof of stake replaces proof of work now this is strategically positioned right in the middle of q1 2022 and q2 2022 right like

so late q1 early q2 um so this is kind of one of the reasons i'm i'm basing my prediction on on this uh sorry one of the reasons i've given that prediction myself because i'm just basing it on the information that's you know fully publicly available i have no inside information here i don't you know i don't talk to the devs like directly and say hey you know give me some inside information on the merge no i'm just looking at this public data and kind of looking at all the public comments being made and construing it from there but again i mean in ethereum it's kind of like this classic thing where we definitely do tend to overestimate uh i guess sorry underestimate the issues that we may run into and how long it will actually take to get to mainnet so i mean i'm optimistic about a late q1

early q2 kind of uh merge on main net here but at the same time i would not be surprised at all to see it go live in q3 uh-huh at you know i would be a bit surprised about q4 because it feels like something would have had to go catastrophically wrong or something would have had something bad would have really had to happen for a kind of like um a delay like that but again it's not really a delay because there's no concrete dates given these are estimated dates even the date on this chart it's like totally estimated we don't we just don't know it's too early to tell just yet but as we get the clients um building out everything uh for mainnet ready kind of clients and we and we kind of like get these test nets all ironed out and these devnets all ironed out

we'll have a much much clearer picture so i would say that by jan feb we should have a clearer picture about when it's going to go to mainnet at least a much clearer window so we can probably say like within a month of a window there but um there's no kind of like date going to be given until until that's ready which is fine i mean as i mentioned plenty of times uh on the refuel on twitter on the newsletter the merge is the biggest upgrade to the ethereum network ever it is the most kind of like risky upgrade it is the one with the most at stake we need to get it right the first time i've explained before what happens if we don't get it right i've explained how difficult it would be to kind of like guess roll back to proof of work so we

want to make sure we get it right we want to make sure the network does a safe transition as well not just that it works that it's it's it works safely and we want to make sure that everyone is happy once it's once it's done and also what's critically important is that we want to make sure that end users don't even have to worry about it which if it goes uh you know right they shouldn't because everything will just update as normal as a normal kind of hard fork because really the merge is just hot swapping proof of work out for proof of stake and end users aren't going to notice that uh the one thing end users will notice maybe if they're if they're paying closer attention is uh the layer one block times kind of change uh right now they're at like what 13 14

seconds i don't think i've seen a 14 second block in a while it's been around 13 seconds um in proof of stake that is kind of like a 12 second thing um uh uh from memory i'm pretty sure it's 12 a 12 second blocks maybe even six seconds i mean i can't remember because the spec actually changed at one point um it's either six or twelve uh i'd have to double check on that but essentially if it's 12 i mean that's a very negligible change and if it's six well i mean you that's that's basically half and and users will feel that but at the same time i think most users like i don't pay attention to that sort of stuff and uh at the end of the day like you could do a transaction at kind of like second ten and then you're and then the block gets

mine at second 13 and your transaction technically happened within three seconds right uh uh otherwise you can basically do a transaction at second one and then have to wait uh a full block to get your transaction in so i don't know how many people pay attention to that i feel like people just submit their transactions wait a little bit maybe you just watch it on either scan and then it goes through and they're all kind of like well in daniel they don't actually take a look at how long that block took to mind i don't think people care at that point and as more and more people move to layer twos which i expect by the time the merge happens you know much more end users to be at layer two than at least one it's just gonna be such a smooth transition i i just really don't think

um most end users are even gonna care or realize what's what's happened uh which which is good it's a good thing that the these as i've said before ethereum is a protocol it is not something that most people should have to even think about they will get an experience on ethereum through various kind of like front ends and layer twos and all that sort of stuff and uh the people who actually care and want to be involved in the stewarding of the network will be the ones worrying about these sorts of things so uh yeah but i really like this little kind of like um graphic here uh but yeah i'm i'm kind of like optimistic about early q2 the most i i think q1 at this point from what i'm seeing just the feeling that i'm seeing i think q1 is is probably an op a very optimistic

scenario it would basically require like everything to go right and you know from here with building the clients that would require like no delays in building the clients it would require no kind of like edge sorry like bugs or kind of things being found like everything to run super smoothly not saying it can't happen but you know the chances of it happening are a lot lower than uh than higher there so i would put uh early q2 as my merge mainnet estimate but don't quote me on that and do not attribute that to the core developers this is me in my personal opinion this has nothing to do with uh the core developers or anyone kind of involved with core development um this is just me trying to keep you guys as up to speed with the merge as possible because i know that you're very interested in it

and i know that it is the obviously the next major upgrade for ethereum so a lot of people holding and buying eth and stuff like that are also very interested in it so i totally get that all right so uh speaking of the merge i put out this tweet today where i said uh post merge all unburnt fair revenue will go to eat stakers this is estimated to put staking yields at 10 or more based on current staked ether amount which is around 8 million eighth currently staked then you can throw in an issuance reduction of 90 the triple harvening uh plus the continuous fee burning which makes eighth deflationary uh and i want to say eight is stupidly undervalued i mean you guys know that i think eighth is stupidly undervalued i don't have to explain explain that as much but what i do want

to focus on is that again i think people are underestimating how good the eighth denominated yield is going to be in staking once we have not only the block rewards which are current staked ether map is 5.4 percent uh uh kind of like apr there but then you chuck in the unburnt fear revenue puts it at 10 plus then you also chuck in mav which could very well get us to 15 to 20 percent at current state ether amount now of course if people see 15 to 20 risk essentially risk-free yield i mean it's a very it's still some risk but like essentially risk-free yield on their eat they're going to take it so that's going to end up causing a lot of more eath to be staked and yes yields will come down because of that but logically that 80 is being

removed from the sub active supply so the price should trend up because of that over the longer term so we could get to a point where i don't know 30 million aesthetics or something like that i don't know what the yield would be around that maybe the yield will drop back down to five percent on the kind of like staking yield here which is still amazing five percent on each which is a an appreciating ass or an asset that people expect to appreciate greatly over time like if it actually does go to a hundred thousand dollars like i think it will um earning five percent from today on your eat steak it that's that's gonna add up over time right uh and and you know that just obviously sits there and kind of um it grows over time as you stake so from that point of view it's

like a balancing act where the higher the yields the more heat that's going to get staked and then if people decide to remove their stake the yields go higher get higher for everyone else and then if people decide to put their their stake in while the yields get lower but the price logically should go up because of the fact that there's less eating circulation less each to buy and we have so much demand like it's obviously not just the scarcity aspect to it i think a lot of people get the wrong idea whenever i talk about the eat scarcity engines because ethan has an incredible demand side as you know as we've seen from like the fee revenue as we've seen for i think i've got a tweet about the fear of a new here yeah yeah i mean i look the fear revenue here is the demand side right generating

one billion dollars of fear revenue over the last 30 days of which 82.45 was burnt that is incredible demand for ether as an asset just to pay fees this isn't including each uh the demand for eth as a staking asset the demand for as money nfts and stuff like that to use eighth as d5 collateral to uh use eight as a story of value to just stack eighth for institutions to buy eighth for their clients all these sorts of things eth has just as much demand drivers as it has scarcity drivers so those things together are going to create just such an awesome kind of like uh relationship for eth with within the network and kind of like within its value as well and i i expanded on this in today's daily

newsletter but basically some people will hit back sometimes and kind of like say to me you know this is super bearish that the fees are really high i mean this isn't something this is actually the common kind of like thing that people think it's like well the fees are really high on ethereum kind of like layer one this is bearish and i don't get that because if you annualize this fear revenue right now um ethereum is generating 12 billion dollars of fear revenue technically 12 billion dollars of revenue a yeah so the ethereum network i think of you know a good analogy or a good kind of way of thinking about it is the ethereum network can be thought of as a company this company is generating 12 billion dollars of revenue okay well what is that company selling to generate that revenue it is selling decentralized

block space which is scarce like there's only so many transactions you can fit into a block because the blocks are hard limited by the gas limit um and i mean you can raise the gas limit over time but that doesn't that doesn't happen very often so that finite resource that everyone wants how do we how do you kind of like um uh give people priority well you have the um uh sorry the the fee rate uh the favorite fee mechanism where people basically outbid each other to get there uh to get their transactions in a block and that leads to the fees going up like it's as simple as that so why would you be bearish on a company that's making incredible amounts of revenue and then people will hit somebody sit back to me being like okay well maybe this is bullish for ether as

an asset but it's bearish for ethereum adoption at the network level and i mean i can understand why people uh i guess get confused here because this modular blockchain stuff that i obviously have been talking about a lot lately is is definitely a new kind of like term for people but at the same time it's not like the the kind of like uh i guess things inside modular blockchains like sharding and roll-ups haven't been around for quite a while now so the way i explain it is basically that well ethereum layer one is a settlement layer we want ethereum layer one uh kind of like uh uh to be generating as much revenue as possible to be settling as much value as possible and then we can basically scale via layer two via the roll-ups which act as kind of i guess a a transaction uh compression uh

mechanism essentially where you have user transactions uh sorry the layer two is paying for the fear of a new on layer one uh and the user is not having to pay that anymore so you you know as a these numbers aren't accurate but just like as an illustrative illustrative example here say that there's like ten thousand transactions that are done on layer one well each of those transactions are going to cost like say fifty dollars each in kind of like fees that's going to be a lot of a lot of fees for ten thousand transactions from ten thousand users now how about you put those ten thousand transactions on a layer two um from those ten thousand users you compress them all together and then you only put one proof and the call data onto layer one well that's why it becomes considerably cheaper but that

means that ethereum's block space demand is basically flying from the users uh paying for it themselves to the users going to this kind of like layer 2 that pays for on behalf of them so it's kind of like a public transportation system is another way to look at it where um we know when you're riding the the the train or you're riding like a bus or whatever um you're still using the same roads right you're still using uh petrol like because the bus is using petrol but the cost is actually shared among all the people kind of are riding the bus so it's considerably cheaper than owning a car and then driving the car having to pay for the fuel yourself um so it's the same thing with ethereum where the layer twos are kind of like these public transportation systems where the the cost is like split and

then we we can kind of like fit more people in there and basically uh take up less space on the on the layer one as users but the layer two just basically fill up that space and you know just imagine kind of like a city that was all buses instead of cars like literally it was all buses around the city you'd be able to pack a lot more people into that and it would be a lot a lot more density there than just people driving cars around and it would be net cheaper for everyone that's exactly what's happening with the layer 1 versus layer 2 dynamic and the thing is is that just because the uh you know a bus is using the road instead of a car it doesn't mean that bus is not paying for that that road as i said right still paying for petrol it's or

gas um it's still gas right at the theorem it's the same kind of like thing there but it's still paying to use the roads it's still paying uh you know the taxes are still being paid to manage the roads and all those sorts of things registrations are being paid all that sort of stuff it's the same thing with these layer twos acting as buses for ethereum where they're still paying ethereum player one um but they're they're kind of like splitting the cost and and and kind of like compressing things down so when i explain that to people and use those analogies they tend to get it uh depending you know some people don't want to see reasons some people just like want to see their bags pumped from ethereum killers and whatever i'm not interested in educating educating those people but generally once i lay it all

out it makes sense for people who see reason and i you know i've laid it out so many times on the refill at this point but i think it's always worth reiterating and kind of like looking at it from a different point of view as well because i get people are frustrated by the fees but at the end of the day i just don't see it as a bearish thing for ethereum at all like at all i i see no angle where this could be bearish the only angle actually where it could be bearish or the only reality where it was bearish is if ethereum didn't have scaling solutions and ethereum layer one was basically just the whale chain and eventually what ended up what ends up happening is that the whales are basically the only ones who can do anything and then all the all

the kind of like uh new users stop coming in or the all the kind of like uh uh actual users uh go away and it's just the whales left and the network just loses its value over time developers leave you know that's kind of like the bearish case but that's not happening at all we have more scaling solutions than than uh we've ever had before and these scaling solutions are getting more used than pretty much all the layer ones combined all the other layer ones combined uh and you know ethereum is still generating enormous amounts of fear revenue regardless of uh of you know people not wanting to pay the fees it's just an insane amount and they're being burned so you know taking it all together is a is a kind of really great thing when you when you look at it from that point of

view i think and speaking of uh i guess like fee burning in the ip1559 uh trent van epps put out kind of like tweet where he says still worth repeating that two and a half repeating two and a half months later in that one five five nine did not increase gas prices unprecedented nft demand for block space did it's impossible to prove a counter but i strongly believe that without 1.559 gas prices would have been much higher especially in the hours after drops i fully agree with this as i've said talked about this on the refuel before 1559 did not increase gas prices there is no evidence to support that anyone pushing that narrative is uh woefully misinformed or trying to i guess like uh purposely mislead people it's just a coincidence that uh the nft

demand spiked at the same time that one five five nine went live and to jen's point here i also strongly believe that without 1.559 gas prices would have actually been much higher than what they are um especially in the hours after nft drops right where things get really crazy like if you you've all noticed that right things get really crazy sometimes they go one thousand two thousand gray but they actually come down much much faster because of the way one five five nine acts as a balancing mechanism there and with this dynamic kind of blocks block size so uh sorry dynamic gas limit i should say so from that point of view uh i i fully agree with trent here and for those of you who don't know trent it has been one of if not the most involved people in 1559 from both a kind of like

ecosystem perspective but also from community and get a community perspective and getting in touch with different kind of like wallet providers and infrastructure providers getting them on at one five five nine pushing things like that so if anyone knows what he's talking about it's definitely trent but i would say that it's not just him saying it it is definitely a lot of people in the know that aren't trying to spread false narratives saying it as well so definitely listen to the people who know what they're talking about all right pauline is back on the refuel i know you guys missed them so they put out a kind of like tweet which i really liked uh i guess the other day yesterday where they said soon we'll be laughing at how we used to get 10 000 plus notes to all reprocess the same transactions 10 000 times ludicrously

inefficient and downright stupid instead you could have darth vader do it once and everyone has a succinct zkp or zero knowledge proof with compressed results guaranteeing validity and and they go on to say it's the model t moment for the blockchain industry this is how we go from ten thousand people building ten thousand cars to the same ten thousand people now specialized in an assembly line building one million cars monolithic blockchains are obsolete just like the model t versus horse drawn carriages now for those of you who don't know the model t was i don't think it was the first ever car but it was i think was the first ever production car that came from ford uh and it basically uh came with the production line that all cars are basically built or the assembly line that that you know cars are built on today and it basically

revolutionized the supply chains and it made things much much more efficient that is exactly what is happening with blockchains today with the modular blockchain revolution and um that's exactly what paulina are saying here where basically it's just it seems like we're in like this very very manual world right now with these monolithic blockchains where they're so inefficient they just do not make sense to do things like this um you know what they're currently doing with verifying all the same kind of like transactions across you know all the same nodes where we could basically move that execution to a layer 2 and and as as they say here use kind of like darth vader as an example like the most evil person ever to do the transactions at layer 2 but still know that they were processed because of a zero knowledge proof which is absolutely

absolutely amazing really i mean these technologies i i just i can't stress enough how insane zero knowledge technology is and it's not new technology it's been around for 30 years or more it's just that the applications are new now people actually have a reason to use this technology in an applica in a kind of like um a practical sense rather than just in theory and just in kind of like labs and things like that so that's why it is such a massive kind of like paradigm shift here and i've talked about this ad nauseam i've written about in my newsletter i'm not going to go to go on too much about this but again i just love reiterating this this fact for you guys because i want you guys to spread this message i want you all to be out there spreading the the modular blockchain narrative and i want

you to be armed with the right information to do so uh and i've seen a few of you doing it already and like supporting the message educating people in the discord channel and i really really love that and that's kind of like why i keep repeating myself a lot of the time uh but i don't think you guys are bored of that i think you guys like uh you know see me be excited about this sort of stuff for sure all right so bartek put out another great thread on layer twos today where he basically spoke about censorship resistance at layer two and how they're going to approach it and kind of like how other approaches will vary so i suggest reading the thread it's a short one it's only eight tweets in it but essentially uh bartek believes it's going to be kind of i guess uh the

censorship resistance for la2 is going to be one of the key differentiators between them and i believe so as well because for those of you who don't know um censorship resistance at layer 2 is actually much weaker than it is at layer 1 because if you only have one uh kind of like sequencer processing transactions well then that one sequencer can censor you it can basically say well i'm not gonna process transactions from this address um see you later you could still process your transactions on layer one of course and you could still um get your funds back out of layer one but there's no fun in that right that's just crappy like you're using a layer two because you wanna get the benefits of them and if someone's censoring you well that's really shitty so the way around this or the way to kind of rectify this issue is

that you decentralize the sequencing right you decentralize the validation and sequencing of the layer 2 network and by doing this you basically have like a network of nodes that process it all and then it becomes just much harder for you to be censored because those nodes would have to collude to sense you right those sequences would have to collude and that kind of like mirrors what we have on layer one today where if the whole network wanted to censor you all the miners would have to collude to do that right or or at least like a majority of them so from that perspective uh uh it definitely um you know maps pretty well to layer one there but this i i definitely do believe this is gonna be a key differentiator for for different layer twos and they're gonna have different approaches to it some of them will try really hard to

decentralize sequences out it has to make sense from an economic standpoint as well because obviously these sequences have to run hardware uh to to process the transactions they're going to have running costs stuff like that so this is why i say another reason why there's going to be tokens for these l2s because that definitely makes sense in that context but they don't have to have tokens but they will but then um you know for staking and stuff like that and then they're also going to be able to generate fear revenue from the l2s as well as kind of like payment for processing these transactions so i think that uh all of you know i wouldn't say any of the l2s are further along in this than any of the others they all pretty much have centralized sequences right now and centralized operators but i know for a

fact that they're all thinking about this and they're all trying to to kind of like decentralize the sequences out over time but it's just not a priority right now the priority is getting this stuff out there upgrading it getting users getting network effect then you can worry about decentralizing it out and you know sometimes the l1s will make these arguments as well they say oh we can start totally centralized and we'll just decentralize over time no no this is totally different l2 decentralization is very different to l1 because l2s are not doing consensus on transactions still they are just processing them and executing them the consensus still happens at layer 1 ethereum where they where layer one ethereum uh nodes or validators and mine or miners or validators come to consensus on the proofs that are posted to layer one so it's very very different

l2s have a much easier path to decentralizing than l ones do uh at least from a kind of a technical standpoint social standpoint it's a different thing altogether uh but i would still argue that l2s probably have a better um chance at decentralizing over l ones there all right so eth global's uh eth online finalists are now live so there's 17 finalists here i was a judge uh last week at this it was really awesome to to kind of judge all the projects in there a lot of great projects coming out of eth online uh as usual i mean these eighth global kind of hackathons produce some amazing projects definitely check out this thread it's willing to the youtube description i'm not going to go through it all i just wanted to highlight the thread and i know i'm running out of time here so i'm going to

kind of leave it leave it at that there uh zk sync posted an update on unisync so uni sync was that uni swap kind of like port that they did where they ported it to their zk avm zk roll up network uh since launching late last week they've already processed over 590 000 transactions uh but they did not expect this for their test net so their force set apparently was not designed to handle such loadings having issues uh they will be looking into this tomorrow which i guess is is today maybe or tomorrow the 19th or something like that um which is which is cool now is this organic usage probably not it's probably people farming the air drop because it's so kind of cheap to do so it's literally i think free to do so or near free to do so yeah it's not free i think it was like

um 10 cents or something like that but i would wager there's a lot of people just trying to farm the air drop right of a zk sync token because zk sync have already announced that they're going to be doing a token so people are like well i better farm it maybe they're farming on multiple addresses stuff like that uh i don't know what their airdrop is going to look like of course um we'll have to see but still great to see people just using it to begin with i'd be curious to see how many of these people would how many of these were unique people rather than just like um you know people using different addresses to kind of farm an airdrop but it's kind of really hard to tell right at the end of the day all right finally just wanted to give a

quick shout out to this project that i'm actually involved in as an advisor called math blocks uh the reason i joined it and it's an nft project basically um they're producing uh math themed nfts and generative art the reason why i joined on as an advisor is because uh they're doing a lot of stuff around public goods funding with this they basically want to be able to raise money or i guess like sell nfts and use that money to fund uh like stem education so uh science technology engineering and math education um you know math content creators and online communities i am a really really big proponent of anything that does public goods funding obviously i'm a big proponent of get coin i always talk about them i i do a lot of funding

there and i i have grants on there for like for the delegate and eth but i want to go like i want that to go beyond git coin i want public goods funding to go beyond i mean we have optimism obviously doing it as well but i wanted to go further than that i wanted to start kind of like touching communities that we haven't kind of like served before and that's exactly what math blocks is doing with uh uh with kind of like their uh mr themed nfts and generative arts so if you haven't checked it out yet uh definitely do so you can read this thread to learn more about them you can join the discord channel as well it's very active in there uh but yeah just like obviously disclaimer that i am i'm a kind of advisor to to this project because i

want to help get attention on it and i want to help them do what they want to do which is essentially fund all this education and obviously i'm a big proponent of education as well so yeah i was really excited to kind of like given the opportunity here to to kind of get involved with this um but i think on that note i'm gonna leave it at that so thank you everyone for listening and watching be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet give the video a thumbs up subscribe to the newsletter join the discord channel and i'll catch you all tomorrow thanks everyone