Ethereum Cat Herders Podcast

Meet the Herders is a new series where we talk to the people who make the Ethereum Cat Herders work.

Meet the Herders is a series of interviews with members of Ethereum Cat Herders (ECH).In this episode we speak to Pooja Ranjan who is the Herder-In-Chief. We discuss the history, motivations , workings of ECH & much more.

Today we're going to be talking to Octant. Octant is a decentralized governance platform that awards participation with ETH. It is a project by the Golem Foundation and Octant's mission is to streamline the funding for public goods and to ensure they receive the support that they deserve. Octant is doing this by taking a portion of their staking rewards and using that to distribute to the community, who can give it to public goods projects. We're here with James and we're going to be learning about their app today.

What can you expect from the Merge? What are the challenges and opportunities presented to smaller client developers? What impact will new technologies like Bonsai and Snapsync have for client operators? Learn about all this and more in this Merge special episode of PEEPanEIP.

Do blockchains help with privacy or hinder it? Why do we need transactional privacy? Roman Semenov, creator and builder at Tornado Cash joins us to discuss privacy on blockchains and how Tornado strives to improve it. We also discuss the differences between the original version of Tornado and Nova, the new version of Tornado which is rolling out now.

One of the pillars of the ideology around web3 is that of decentralization. Are we delivering on our promises to create decentralized ledgers, or are we falling into the same snares that gave us the highly centralized internet we see around us? Kristy Leigh Minehan, noted consultant and blockchain hardware specialist joins the podcast to talk about decentralization from a number of different potential centralization vectors.

What could be hard about building a crypto wallet? Taylor Monahan, founder of MyCryto (recently acquired by ConsenSys) and currently at MetaMask, joins the podcast to discuss the intricacies of wallets, the challenges in presenting something decentralized and yet user-friendly to a spectrum of users, and more.

We've all heard of DAOs, but what are they practically? How can you contribute to one if you wanted to? What different challenges do DAOs and those contributing to them face? Chase Chapman, a DAO researcher and contributor joins the podcast to talk about all things DAOs.

Running nodes on the Ethereum network (and other blockchain networks) can be hard. The client software can update frequently and be hard to work with. In addition, they need monitoring and maintenance. The data provided as specified can be difficult to work with too. Yet, nodes are necessary to connect applications with the blockchain. The difficulties and need have led to the rise of providers running nodes as a service and providing an API for app builders to use to connect their application to the blockchain. Alchemy is one such provider. Deric Chang and Omar Ceja of Alchemy join to discuss running node infrastructure at scale, and providing useful data to users.

Building apps that aggregate blockchain data opens up new paradigms in application development. Lefteris Karapetsas, a longtime contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem, joins the podcast to discuss his current project, Rotki, a crypto asset accounting app. We discuss the difficulties of obtaining event data from nodes, the benefits and challenges of developing in the open, and more.

Smart Contracts can hold immense amounts of value in an ecosystem that makes them accessible to anyone. As a result, exploits in smart contracts can have catastrophic results. samczsun, a researcher at Paradigm and famous white-hat hacker, joins us to talk about finding vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Among the topics, we talk about his preferred setup for analyzing contracts, how he picks what to look at, and how he goes about looking at code once he's picked something. We also talk about anonymity in the space and his work at Paradigm and previous.

Nethermind is an execution client for EVM-compatible blockchains. Tomasz Stańczak discusses what motivated him to begin working on creating a new execution client and the specific challenges (and joys) of building and maintaining one. We also discuss some of Nethermind's specific features as a client, and future directions for both the larger Nethermind company and the client specifically.

Smart contracts have opened up new opportunities, and we are still exploring what we are able to build with them. Andre Cronje is the creator of Yearn Finance, Keep3r, and more, and joins us in this episode to talk about building innovative platforms with smart contracts, and the various pressures that can come from being a recognized builder in the space.

EIP-7002 is CFI'd for Pectra Upgrade. Check out this video with Danny Rayan for an overview of the proposal and its benefit to the Ethereum ecosystem. Resources: ----------------- EIP-7002 - https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7002 Discussion - https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-... PeerDAS is a good area of research in ethereum -    • PeerDAS is a good area of #research i...   PEEPanEIP -    • PEEPanEIP   Pectra -    • Pectra (Prague-Electra)   Check out upcoming EIPs in Peep an EIP series at https://github.com/ethereum-cat-herde... Follow at Twitter -------------------------- Danny Ryan -   / dannyryan   | Pooja Ranjan -   / poojaranjan19   Topics covered ------------------------- 0:19 - Intro to EIP-7002 1:44 - Intro to guest 2:26 - Shout out to co-authors Mikhail Kalinin, Ansgar D., Hsiao Wei, Matt Garnett 3:27 - EIP-7002, the problem 4:05 - What is Pubkey? 4:44 - What is a Withdrawal Credential? 5:15 - Withdrawal creds hold all the funds but only an active key can make an exit. 5:52 - Existing bugs/issues 9:00 - EIP-7002, the solution 9:27 - Only allows 0x01 creds but effectively opens it to 0x00 via one time change message 10:27 - Sending a message from the EL from withdrawal creds 11:02 - eip7002 specs 11:08 - Main component of the EIP - System Contract, Cross Layer Messaging via execution payload, New Operation - Execution Layer Exit 12:05 - System Level Contract 13:39 - Fees paid to the contract 16:27 - Validator queue 19:00 - 64 exits per epoch 19:28 - Block validity conditions 21:22 - Why did devs prefer to put it in block body when CL should be able to read the EL? 22:50 - The Consensus Layer 23:27 - Operation is a validator transaction. Difference between user actions and validator transactions 24:34 - CL code with 7002 specs 25:18 - Difference between “process voluntary exits” and 7002 28:20 - Rationale 7002 28:40 - why not just use withdrawal creds or validator index? Why pub key? 30:12 - why an exit message queue? 32:12 - Eigen Layer use case and more 30:50 - rate limiting 32:50 - End of the presentation 33:29 - EIP-7044 improves existing story 34:10 - Were you confident that 7002 will get accepted so easily? 36:15 - Inspiration behind the documentation of EIP-7002 37:47 - Relationship with the Pull design or EIP-4895 at all? 39:40 - What is Process level and system-level operations? Why 7002 is a process level operation? 41:59 - Exit message queue 44:50 - Why is fee calculation added to the proposal? 46:35 - Specific use case 49:00 - Risk or challenges associated 50:40 - Client implementation & devnet 1 52:07 - Analogy to Account Abstraction 55:00 - Message for the community

RIP-7212 is a proposal to add precompiled contract that performs signature verifications in the “secp256r1” elliptic curve. Resources: ----------------- Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/... EIP - https://github.com/ethereum/RIPs/blob... Discussion - https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-... Other Resources: https://gist.github.com/ulerdogan/8e3... • PEEPanEIP • Pectra (Prague-Electra) Check out upcoming EIPs in Peep an EIP series at https://github.com/ethereum-cat-herde... Follow at Twitter -------------------------- Ulas Erdogan - / ulerdogan | Pooja Ranjan - / poojaranjan19 Topics covered ------------------------- 0:43 - About the proposal of the day 1:46 - Meet Ulas 5:30 - Presentation 6:14 - What are Elliptic curves and why are they important to blockchain technology? 6:52 - Signatures Today 7:22 - Special Elliptic Curves 9:41 - secp256k1 in Ethereum 10:27 - Inside an Aquairum: EOA 11:40 - Connecting to the internet with secp256r1 13:00 - Account Abstraction & signature Abstraction 13:59 - Use Cases - Create a Key Pair 15:00 - ENS domains like DNS (Go Daddy) 16:00 - Onchain verifying 17:35 - Onchain verifying with Protocol changes 18:35 - Precompiled Contracts 19:14 - A new Precompiled Contract 21:50 - Story of a new EIP (From EIP to RIP) 25:00 -Birth of RIPs and Roll Calls 25:45 - Migrating to the First RIP 26:25 - Address selection EIP-7587 27:17 - L2 teams implemented RIP-7212 31:30 - Example - A simple RPC Call 32:45 - End of presentation 33:55 - The biggest challenge of the existing curve that 7212 wasted to address? 37:00 - Which is the most gas-efficient r1 or k1 curve? 38:08 - How does 7212 help connect with the internet protocol? 39:42 - Any challenge to move this proposal to Ethereum mainnet 41:35 - Relationship between EVM Max and 7212 42:00 - Any preparation needed to push it to the mainnet 44:32 - Describe your experience as an author 47:13: - How do you envision RIP standards

Topics Covered: ------------------------- 0:34 - Importance of Solo Staking 1:30 - Need for decentralization 2:13 - Incentive alignment discussion 4:23 - Future incentive alignment 5:23 - Transition from pools 6:24 - Smoothly landing page 6:58 - Rewards accrual details 9:02 - Oracles' role importance 10:01 - Introduction to Oracle operators 12:02 - Pool fees sustainability 12:47 - "Slide" campaign incentives 13:30 - Smoothly dashboard demo 18:04 - Claiming rewards 20:03 - Exiting the pool 22:57 - Withdrawing the bond 24:30 - Smoothly components overview 26:04 - Future plans 28:29 - Development reflections 31:56 - How can the community Support Smoothly is live at: https://smoothly.money/ Follow at Twitter -------------------------- Kody Sale @ksale001 | zkDoof @zkdoof Other resources --------------------------    • Meet The Herders     • Ecosystem Project Demo     • NFT     • Non-EIP PEEPanEIP     • Community     • PEEPanEIP  

Topics covered --------------------------- 00:46 Introduction 01:35 Getting started with Ethereum 06:00 Getting started with Etherum Cat herders ECH 06:39 Why did you join ECH? 08:10 Taking meeting notes for ECH 12:58 Learn to earn 16:34 ECH website 21:18 Causes & Passions 22:10 Advice for new joiners 25:00 Shoutout Show notes -------------------- George Hervey:   / georgeh0x   Haresh:   / h_gedia   Other resources --------------------------    • Meet The Herders     • Ecosystem Project Demo     • NFT     • Non-EIP PEEPanEIP     • Community     • PEEPanEIP   Connect with Cat Headers -------------------------------------------- Website: https://www.ethereumcatherders.com/ Twitter:   / ethcatherders   LinkedIn:   / ethereum-cat-herders   Youtube:    / @ethcatherders   GitHub: https://github.com/EthCatHerders

Other resources -------------------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cwHXAawZxqFcgyfjAcUAeoanC2RgUbFhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cwHXAawZxrhbMXuCqMsCiwx1lwu_cNshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cwHXAawZxpUmj2UjD4BtfgC1nAAyv3phttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cwHXAawZxpby7LszzOnyuAyQl8WLLvhhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cwHXAawZxr020waJCI0dZAfPAW2naK1https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cwHXAawZxqu0PKKyMzG_3BJV_xZTi1F

resources ----------------- eip - https://eips.ethereum.org/eips/eip-7251 discussion - https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-... ethereum specs & research are open and accessible -    • ethereum specs & research are open an...   ethresearch is a great place to start with ethereum -    • ethresearch is great place to start w...     • nft     • ercs     • peepaneip     • non-eip peepaneip   follow at twitter -------------------------- dapplion @dapplion | mike neuder @mikeneuder | pooja ranjan @poojaranjan19 twitter -   / 1754565837187690614   topics covered ------------------------- 1:00 - about the eip & authors 2:00 - meet dapplion 2:30 - meet michael neuder 3:21 - motivation eip7251 4:54 - scope of the mainnet problem today 5:29 - why do devs want eip7251? 5:50 - a funfact about aggregators 6:45 - why do devs want single slot finality? 8:37 - would lmd ghost and ffg be retired? 9:18 - what is auto-compounding? 11:16 - core features 12:00 - security considerations 12:34 - security of committees 13:22 - churn invariants 13:58 - what is churn? 16:00 - in-protocol consolidation 21:27 - consolidation and churn limit 22:37 - other features - custom ceilings 23:42 - el triggered partial withdrawals (eip7002) 25:00 - slashing risks 28:30 - will pools consolidate? 30:22 - implementation complexity 31:33 - is it critical? 33:21 - pros 34:06 - cons 36:50 - end of presentation 37:47 - use of indexes 39:20 - correlation penalties 41:47 - which scope would you want for electra upgrade? 43:02 - consolidation is optional 45:00 - churn variance is a core design of the eip 46:30 - inactivity of 27 hrs? 48:02 - message to the community