Blockchain Developer Monthly Newsletter ⛓

The 2nd Edition of Blockchain Developer Monthly!

Hey everyone! Markus here. What's this all about?!

Well there are lots of blockchain newsletters out there that will hype you up on the latest NFT project or predicting some new token that's going to the moon.

They're not all shills though. Some are really great reads... ex: the guys at Milk Road do a great job.

But it's hard to find any that actually go deep into things that are relevant for developers working in the space.

That's why I created this - a newsletter dedicated to developers who want to stay up-to-date and excel in the world of web3.

In case you aren't already convinced... Being a solidity, blockchain, & ethereum developer is a fantastic career option.

Regardless of whether you love or hate crypto, there's no denying blockchain is an exciting technology with tons of job opportunities. You can work around the world, you get to work on solutions to big problems, and you're on the cutting edge of the tech sector.

But things move FAST.

So staying up-to-date with the constantly evolving ecosystem can be tough. If you're still reading this, maybe you want to be a top-performing developer within the web3 landscape, but probably don’t have time to find, read, and synthesize all the articles, videos and podcasts that come out each month.

So this monthly Blockchain Developer Newsletter is born.

I'll keep you up-to-date with what's happening within the web3 industry, without wasting your valuable time, by curating the most important articles, guides, news, resources, podcasts and videos from the past month.

This newsletter was inspired by Andrei's Web Developer Monthly + Python Monthly and Daniel's Machine Learning Monthly so I hope I can live up to those.

Ok, let's dive into this issue. I hope you enjoy!

Let's dive in. Here's what you missed in August 2022 as a Blockchain Developer…

1. ‘The Merge’ is Happening!

Yes it’s finally happening. The Merge date has been announced.

Right now Ethereum has the old Proof of Work chain and the new Proof of Stake chain running in parallel. Until now the Proof of Stake chain, called the Beacon Chain, has only been used for testing purposes.

After The Merge, the Beacon Chain will become the single source of truth.

As this requires merging two chains into one, both chains need to be upgraded. The Beacon Chain will be upgraded first on:

• 11:34:47am UTC on Sept 6, 2022

...followed by the Proof of Work chain which is automatically triggered once the difficulty of the chain reaches 58750000000000000000000. This is estimated to happen:

• Between Sept 10-20, 2022

And then we will have Ethereum with Proof of Stake. No more Proof of Work!

What changes for you as a Blockchain Developer?

Mostly nothing. But notably you can use a new opcode called DIFFICULTY which eventually Solidity will support of course. But you should be aware of the security considerations before using it.

2. My Own Work

The Ultimate Merkle Tree Guide in Solidity

You may have heard of Merkle Trees by now. They are used everywhere in the world of blockchain. In this guide I explore all the details about what they are and how one uses them in Solidity smart contracts. It includes:

• What are Merkle Trees
• How to implement a Merkle Proof in Solidity
• How Merkle Trees are used in Bitcoin
• How to implement ERC20 and ERC721 Airdrops using Merkle Trees
• Proving Ethereum Smart Contract State
• And a potential future improvement called Verkle Trees

3. Tornado Cash is Sanctioned

On August 8th, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash, a currency mixer, which is essentially just a smart contract on Ethereum (I have written a technical explanation on how Tornado Cash works a while ago if you’re interested).

Putting it on the sanctions list has wide implications and from now on makes using the protocol illegal for anyone in the US. In fact, even some Dapps like Aave have blocked sanctioned addresses from using their frontend.

The sanctions also reveal a poor understanding by regulators of how blockchains function.

People have already started receiving 0.1 ETH from Tornado Cash by unknown people. This resulted in many famous people like Justin Sun being banned from using Aave.

Effectively you can now get any Ethereum address you want sanctioned by sending 0.1 ETH to it. We will see how this plays out in the coming months.

Additionally, Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was arrested on August 10th by Dutch law enforcement.

Initially the reasons why were not clear and it caused community protest for just arresting an open-source developer. The story is still evolving, but allegedly Pertsev has ties to the Russian FSB which his wife is denying.

4. Tools & Other Interesting Finds

• If you read last month’s newsletter, you will remember Huff. It’s a new, very low-level smart contract language intended for experts to save more gas. You can now find some common Solidity contracts implemented in Huff here and a new Chainlink Starter Kit for Huff.

• A critical bug in the Openzeppelin Contracts allowed for signature malleability. You are only affected if using the ECDSA.recover function taking a single byte's input parameter. More details on signatures can be seen in my previous post about ecrecover.

• Foundry added support for Sourcify. If you don’t know these tools you can read more about it in my previous posts on Foundry and Sourcify.

• And lastly, I’ll be a mentor at ETH Berlin this month. If you happen to be here, drop me a message in the #blockchain channel in the ZTM Discord!

See you next month!

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Blockchain Developer Monthly.

Something missing? Have an idea of what to include in a future post? Let me know.

See you next month, Markus

By the way, I teach people how to code in Solidity and get hired as a Blockchain Developer in the most efficient way possible. Come check out a few of our Blockchain & Web3 Courses below and try out some of the free preview lessons.