stokes @ralexstokes Twitter profile

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

ethereum is first and foremost a cultural project, we just happen to use software for the leverage

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

draft eip to get beacon state roots into the EVM -- required for beacon chain withdrawals feedback welcome :) the intention is to get this into Shanghai

EIP-4788: Beacon state root in EVM by ralexstokes · Pull Request #4788 · ethereum/EIPs

Expose the beacon state root in the EVM by including it in each execution block and introduce an opcode to facilitate reading the roots.

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

the altair hardfork has successfully happened! congrats to everyone involved!

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

EIP-4844 is an upcoming change to Ethereum providing super cheap data availability so things like rollups can scale activity on the network. What does this look like from a builder's perspective? 🧵

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

ropsten merge finalized

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

a friend just asked me: "what is flashbots?" in the interest of sharing info, i'll turn my response into a thread 👇

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

EIP-4788 was just greenlit for Cancun this EIP supports better designs for staking pools, restaking, and bridges; excited for the deployment!

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

You may have heard about the bug in @OpenEthereumOrg today that caused some outages in important services powering the Ethereum network. Let’s walk through the troublesome transaction 👇

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

Miners favor EIP-1559. Summary in thread:

Miners favor 1559

Incentive alignment or bust

ralexstokes.medium.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

sepolia beacon chain is live!

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

Ropsten TTD for approx June 8 merge: 43531756765713534 (thanks afri for finding it) (the merge is happening)

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

the eth2 testnet medalla just recovered from what was essentially a catastrophic error. the recovery underscores how resilient the eth2 protocol is to attack.

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

~10.5 hrs to mainnet; eth2 fork monitor deployed

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

alpha leak: landing blocks with a reth mev-boost builder WIP code: just builds from mempool for now, more sophisticated features coming soon thanks to @mattsse_ @r_krasiuk and @gakonst for the support

MVP builder using `reth` by ralexstokes · Pull Request #112 · ralexstokes/mev-rs

Improves over the "engine API builder" by integrating more directly with the EL software. Also gives us the ability to add proposer payment (which was missing in the prior stream of work).

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

announcing (very alpha) release of a new mev-boost builder, built in rust, extending `reth` if you want to try it out, here's some docs on how to do so: please open issues if you run into problems next up is a beta release in the coming weeks

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

i will not abandon ethereum

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

this is apparently not obvious so its worth stating until it is: blockchains are meant for proving things -- *not* executing things

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

some brief notes on immediate next steps re: beacon chain light clients feedback/thoughts welcome/encouraged :)

Bootstrapping the beacon chain light client ecosystem - HackMD

# Bootstrapping the beacon chain light client ecosystem The Altair fork of the beacon chain introdu

notes.ethereum.org

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

going to do a twitch etc series in the next few weeks where I implement an EVM from scratch what is the best current source material as a spec? yellow paper? EELS? stitching together of various EIPs?

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

feeling grateful i get to contribute to this thing called ethereum. not much else regularly gives me the "wow" feeling when i consider the scope and ambition of what we are all working towards

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

eth2 call 58 notes summary 👇

Eth2.0 Call #58 [2021/2/25]

https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-pm/issues/206

www.youtube.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

i just wrote a brief explainer on the work behind EIP-2537 to add BLS cryptography to the EVM:

What eth2 needs from eth1 over the next six months

tl; dr: support EIP-2537!

ralexstokes.medium.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

bellatrix landed, the merge is next

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

my slides from the sbc mev workshop talking about mev-boost

mev-boost - SBC '22 MEV Workshop

mev-boost today and tomorrow Alex Stokes @ralexstokes SBC ‘22 MEV workshop

docs.google.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

the future of mev means attaching arbitrary predicates to your code to signal suitable execution, not trying to game the gas market 1/n

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stokes

@ralexstokes

9 months

regularly astounded by the quality of people working on ethereum personally, I just started doing cool open source work (and it just spiraled out of control) -- a priori, there is no reason to suspect people of this caliber would just materialize on the internet, but they did

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

I have updated EIP-4895 in preparation for deployment in the next planned Ethereum upgrade Shanghai. Check it out here:

EIP-4895: Beacon chain push withdrawals as operations

Support validator withdrawals from the beacon chain to the EVM via a new "system-level" operation type.

eips.ethereum.org

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

A quick primer on "finality" in Casper proof-of-stake:

How secure is Ethereum 2.0 consensus?

Or, what is Casper finality?

ralexstokes.medium.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

8 months

Regarding ePBS; The bloxroute incident the other day has re-opened the discussion around ePBS in the core development community. I think moving to an enshrined regime is a top priority to mitigate the issues we all know too well with mev-boost. 1/

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

Sufficiently decentralized stablecoins are geopolitically neutral money. Such a thing has _not existed_ in the history of nation-states.

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

we have successfully launched the eth2 beacon chain. it is hard to describe the excitement seeing the culmination of all the hard work by countless contributors over the years. here's to a smooth launch and the exciting things coming next 🚀

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

I just published an overview of the finality gadget for Ethereum 1.x, why we want it and how to get it.

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stokes

@ralexstokes

10 months

path is clear for core development in 2024: petra HF by devcon with: 2537 7002 7549 7251 parallel work on Verkle, peerDAS, and 7547 (ILs) tees us up to ship blob count increase early 2025, Verkle mid-2025, and ILs sometime in 2025

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

🚀 announcing `mev-boost-rs` 🚀 a pre-alpha version of an implementation of the `mev-boost` software validators can run after the Merge to collect mev

GitHub - ralexstokes/mev-rs: a gateway to a network of block builders

a gateway to a network of block builders. Contribute to ralexstokes/mev-rs development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

wait until they find out about daos

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

announcing the first release "alabaster" of `ethereum-consensus`, an implementation of the `consensus-specs` written in @rustlang it is feature-complete for `phase0`, `altair` and `bellatrix` and next I'll be optimizing for performance check it out!

Release alabaster · ralexstokes/ethereum-consensus

The first feature-complete version of the ethereum-consensus repo, implementing the consensus-specs in Rust. This version implements the phase0, altair, and bellatrix forks of the spec and passes v...

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

it's mev security szn i have a proposal for a "relay monitor" to ensure relays in the upcoming mev-boost network (an implementation of proposer-builder separation live at the Merge) are held accountable for their actions -- check it out!

relay monitor design doc - HackMD

# relay monitor design doc thanks to @metachris, @bertcmiller and @thegostep for helpful discussion

hackmd.io

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

Nothing quite captures the imagination like ethereum.

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

incoming post on reslashing, as a technique to mitigate negative externalities of restaking

Ethereum Research

Civilized discussion furthering Ethereum research

ethresear.ch

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

evm go brrrrrrr

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

i guess i'm biased but it is hard to see where the ethereum ecosystem could be in 5 years and not be overwhelmingly excited

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

👀

MVP builder using `reth` by ralexstokes · Pull Request #112 · ralexstokes/mev-rs

Improves over the "engine API builder" by integrating more directly with the EL software. Also gives us the ability to add proposer payment (which was missing in the prior stream of work).

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

btw ERC-4337 account abstraction infra is the most direct way to start experimenting w/ "MEV rebate" designs in the next year and composability means it can just be a layer on top, don't need to go forking e.g. Uniswap

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

Early draft of an EIP to add BLS12-381 precompiles to the EVM: important for next-gen blockchain interop, including Eth2.0, and secure zk-snarks

Precompiles for BLS12-381 - HackMD

# NOTE: This is a draft EIP that is currently incomplete; this version is circulating for discuss

hackmd.io

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

sepolia shapella finalized!

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

i am so proud of the ethereum community, i could not imagine a more special group of people constantly humbled to work alongside so many talented, driven individuals

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

👀

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stokes

@ralexstokes

8 months

first official mev-boost improvement proposal remove withdrawals from block scoring will discuss on this week's community call!

mev-boost improvement proposal #0 - HackMD

# mev-boost improvement proposal #0 Exclude withdrawals to fee recipient when computing a payload's

notes.ethereum.org

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

sepolia just forked to shapella, looking good so far

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

just landed a sepolia block using the `mev-rs` stack end to end mev-build-rs (reth extension) mev-relay-rs (will announce url once I do more load testing) mev-boost-rs

Sepolia Blocks #4623569 | Etherscan

Ethereum Block Height 4623569. The timestamp, block reward, difficulty, gas used and the number of transactions in the block are detailed on Etherscan.

sepolia.etherscan.io

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

have a full (rust) end-to-end mev pipeline working on a local devnet builder (mev-build-rs/reth) -> relay (mev-relay-rs) <-> boost (mev-boost-rs) <- lighthouse proposer will spin up {holesky, goerli, sepolia} instances this week :)

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

First call for the eth1.x finality gadget working group in ~14 hours! Join if you want to help out — we will be mainly organizing on this one!!

Finality gadget for Ethereum1x Working Group

Topic: Finality gadget working group - call #0 Time: Aug 15, 2019 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting ^^^ call details for our first meeting in ~17hrs. This first call is mainly...

ethereum-magicians.org

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

tracking progress towards a validator withdrawals testnet here:

withdrawals progress - HackMD

# withdrawals progress goal: cross-client testnet implementing validator withdrawals by the end of

notes.ethereum.org

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

mev is the value leaked from coordination failure

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

updates on EIP-4788 providing trustless access to consensus state inside the EVM execution changes (heavily revised): consensus changes (new!):

add `EIP-4788` feature by ralexstokes · Pull Request #3319 · ethereum/consensus-specs

Beacon block root in the EVM also relevant: ethereum/EIPs#6859

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

9 months

sepolia just forked to dencun... things are looking good so far!

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stokes

@ralexstokes

7 months

such a good piece from @benjaminion_xyz I regularly reference it when I want to refresh my BLS12-381 details (which happens somewhat regularly working on 'eth2')

BLS12-381 For The Rest Of Us - HackMD

Everything you always wanted to know about BLS12-381 (but were afraid to ask).

hackmd.io

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

my mev policy is to make sure you don't break ethereum xoxo

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

announcing EIP-4863: beacon chain push withdrawals this EIP provides an alternative to the "pull"-based flow that offers tighter integration with the core protocol

EIP-4863: Beacon chain push withdrawals by ralexstokes · Pull Request #4863 · ethereum/EIPs

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

giving a talk on block-builder innovation next week at the SBC MEV Workshop leaking an outline of my thinking to get feedback on what you want to hear/learn about

Block-builder innovation post-Merge

Block-builder innovation post-Merge Alex Stokes @ralexstokes SBC ‘22 MEV Workshop

docs.google.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

here's my talk from @EFDevcon looking at the block building landscape, its relation to MEV, and what's next on the horizon

Alex Stokes - Block Building After the Merge

Block building after the Merge mev, moving forward Alex Stokes Researcher, EF

docs.google.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

god help me im writing a smart contract

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

“why is blockspace valuable?” blockspace is essentially an implementation detail but what it provides is an exclusive lock over the global state of the chain. to the extent that effects with this state are valuable, blockspace is valuable

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

inb4 telegram is the new identity and wallet layer of crypto and becomes a mev kingmaker when selling its intents flow

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

Literally watching all the inefficiencies of traditional finance melt away w/ DeFi

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

now supports all 4 production-ready eth2 clients deployed for pyrmont testnet

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stokes

@ralexstokes

6 years

well that #devcon was surprisingly emotional. i guess this is what happens when you have this many dedicated people working on a shared goal you care about

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

One day, I’d like a world computer. Until then, I can gratefully make do with trustless computation.

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stokes

@ralexstokes

7 months

who wants to write some software to pull blobs from local node and turn into torrents? I think many would help seed data, but having nice software to 'auto-deploy' torrents would be nice

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stokes

@ralexstokes

1 year

announcing another mev-boost community call see you there!

MEV-Boost Community Call #5 - 17 August 2023

Meeting Info 17 August, 2023, 15:30 UTC Duration: 90 minutes Recording: https://youtu.be/dEmJS9fZYOM Zoom: Launch Meeting - Zoom Agenda Deneb updates spec updates builder-specs RFC: RFC: Use `MAX_B...

collective.flashbots.net

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

Tentative mainnet TTD by timbeiko · Pull Request #585 · ethereum/execution-specs

Tentative mainnet TTD, to be confirmed on ACD 145

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

9 months

verkle kind of opens the door to the death of the execution client will write thoughts longer-form soon, as it deserves more and framing is a bit inflammatory ;)

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

wouldn't it be funny if we got all the tradfi ppl really into mev and then just funneled it into making ethereum a well-oiled public goods funding machine

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

mev hot-take: if you have to put "fair" in the name of your ordering protocol, it probably isnt good night twitter

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

claiming auctions aren’t the best way to manage MEV is equivalent to claiming fee markets aren’t the best way to allocate blockspace has any successful blockchain system been able to avoid a fee market for blockspace (bc of a better design)?

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

in light of this morning's events, it is a good time to drop a sneak preview of a fork monitor i've been working on for the eth2 beacon chain:

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

just pushed version v0.1.0 of `mev-rs` which implements v0.1.0 of the builder spec:

Release v0.1.0 · ralexstokes/mev-rs

v0.1.0

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

in preparation for @EthCatHerders PEEP-An-EIP next week, I've put together an outline of the talk I'll give about validator withdrawals in Shanghai in the meantime, it will make a nice thread so here we go 🧵

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

arrow glacier is live!

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

who has the best “grand theory of blockchain sequencing”? i’d expect it to look kind of like a SoK paper or i do need to go write it…

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

here's a proposal for building a "circuit breaker" into consensus clients to mitigate an unlikely but serious scenario where a fault in the external builder network could cause liveness issues on-chain. feedback welcome! will discuss on the next CL call

mev-boost circuit breaker proposal - HackMD

# mev-boost circuit breaker proposal ## what? the merge supports an "external builder network" whe

hackmd.io

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

programmable money, programmable order flow, programmable preference expression — what if ethereum is just an instrument we all use to compute the Public Good

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

mev exists for everyone, in all forms, at all times, for any reason

horsefacts

@eth_call

2 years

"Conference swag is a form of MEV" (change my mind)

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

the more time i spend researching the "eth1 -> eth2 transition", the more i realize just what a huge undertaking it is. "decentralized cat herding" just on a 30B$ network...

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

we are working on a long-standing devnet for our early interop efforts towards the Ethereum Merge. i've deployed a version of the consensus-monitor that supports this network:

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

gonna be a big week

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stokes

@ralexstokes

3 years

after some discussion around EIP-4788 and the "pull" style withdrawals, core devs are interested in investigating a "push" style withdraw method i've started on a geth prototype to explore this route: expect another EIP spec'ing this route soon

core, params: prototype withdrawal transactions by ralexstokes · Pull Request #24468 · ethereum/g...

PR prototyping "push"-style withdrawal transaction processing from the beacon chain to the EVM. TODO: add block validations for tx collation to Wei clean up tx hash Open ques...

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

5 years

why do i like talking about ethereum so much

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

👀

GitHub - ralexstokes/relay-monitor

Contribute to ralexstokes/relay-monitor development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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stokes

@ralexstokes

9 months

a blockchain is not just a data structure, you need a religion attached

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stokes

@ralexstokes

4 years

eth2 deposits as a @MakerDAO collateral type

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stokes

@ralexstokes

2 years

here's a cool privacy-respecting MEV design: users "arb" themselves by running a registry of searcher code against their local order flow and only revealing upon successful match-making; the proof becomes a "bearer instrument" for the MEV opp like PBS but for users-searchers

Geometry

@__geometry__

2 years

In ZK we typically consider computations ran on private data. But what if we wanted to hide the computation? What applications can we unlock? 🧵⬇️ 1/6

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@ralexstokes

2 years

me: <thinking I know better than the rust compiler>

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@ralexstokes

8 months

next mev-boost community call is scheduled for 21 Feb! we'll be discussing dencun readiness and some improvements to the mev-boost protocol hope to see you there!

Mev-boost community call #8 - 21 February 2024

Meeting Info 21 February 2024, 15:00 UTC Duration: 90 minutes Recording: https://youtu.be/WZ-ON7yAm1Q Zoom: Launch Meeting - Zoom Agenda Deneb updates spec updates v0.4.0 release of builder-specs...

collective.flashbots.net

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@ralexstokes

2 years

broke: "toxic" mev woke: protocol-owned mev bespoke: mev for public goods

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@ralexstokes

2 years

data availability (DA) is a subtle property of a system but is critical for scaling blockchains, eg in rollups without DA, operators of optimistic rollups can break safety (“your coins are mine now”) in zk-rollups they can break liveness (“coins are stuck unless you pay up”)

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@ralexstokes

2 years

first mev-boost community call happened earlier today, check the recording if you missed it! (notes, agenda in first comment)