Smart Contracts might be illegal in the EU 😲, Launch DApps on Google Play 🔥, Lens Protocol V2 🚀 & More

Web3 News for Devs: July 12 - July 17, 2023

Launches

Google Play Pushes for Blockchain Support, Will Apple Respond?

On Wednesday, July 12, Google Play is updating its policy to allow blockchain-based digital content transactions (NFTs etc) within apps and games. Here’s what you need to know:

• 🔒 Developers are required to be transparent with users about tokenized digital assets, clearly declaring if an app or game sells or allows users to earn them.

• 🎲 Apps that don't meet gambling eligibility requirements cannot accept money for a chance to win assets with unknown real-world monetary value, including NFTs.

• 🍏 In October 2022, Apple updated its rules - cryptocurrencies cannot be used as an alternative payment option but apps could use in-app purchases to sell services related to NFTs, such as minting, listing, and transferring. However, NFT ownership could not unlock features or functionality within the app.

• 💡 Consider developing applications and games that utilize blockchain technology on Google Play.

• Source here

Sui Foundation Launches Order Book for Building DeFi Tools

DeepBook is a decentralized central limit order book (CLOB) designed to facilitate the development of DeFi tools on the Sui blockchain.

• 💻 DeepBook is expected to help developers build apps that seamlessly exchange tokens.

• 💱 DeepBook supports both limit and market orders, allowing traders to buy and sell assets at chosen prices.

• Fees

  • Creating pool is permissionless, and it will incur a 100 SUI fee for creating a pool.

  • The current default maker rebate fee rate is 0.15%, and the default taker commission rate is 0.25%.

• 📊 DeepBook offers transparency into the order process and is designed to be permissionless, aligning with Sui's ethos of fairness and decentralization.

• Learn more

ZkSync launches new STARK-based proof system

ZkSync Era is undergoing a cryptographic upgrade to transition to a new STARK-based proof system called Boojum. Boojum offers improved performance, reduced hardware requirements for decentralization, and ease of extension.

• it’s called Boojum and requires only 16 GB of RAM for GPU provers, reducing hardware requirements for decentralized proof generation.

• In March 2023, they launched zkSync Era with a SNARK-based system underpinning our zkEVM that has been powering zkSync Lite on Mainnet for almost three years.

• Boojum is Rust based but the computationally heavy parts of the GPU prover are written in CUDA C++

• For the ZK enthusiats

  • it uses a PLONK-style arithmetization, which is a way of representing numbers in a way that is efficient for ZK circuits.

  • Boojum also uses the FRI commitment scheme, which is a way of committing to a polynomial of bounded degree. This means that it is possible to prove that a certain polynomial is equal to a certain value, without revealing the coefficients of the polynomial.

  • The witness generation in Boojum is automated and parallelized, which means that it can be generated quickly and efficiently.

  • Boojum also allows for the addition of custom gate types, which gives developers flexibility in how they build their ZK circuits. e.g. developers can add custom gates that support specific operations, such as arithmetic operations or logical operations.

• the ZKSync team is wrapping STARK proofs with SNARK proofs. This means that the STARK proofs will be enclosed in a SNARK proof. The SNARK proof will then be verified on Ethereum.

  • The advantage of wrapping the STARK proofs with SNARK proofs is that it makes the proofs smaller and cheaper to verify. This, in turn, makes the transactions themselves cheaper.

• Read more

  

Coinbase Launches Base - an Ethereum Layer 2 Chain based on Optimism

Coinbase has introduced Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network designed to provide a secure, low-cost, and developer-friendly platform for building decentralized applications (dapps) onchain.

• 🌐 Base aims to be an open-source platform and invites developers to contribute to creating a standard, modular, rollup agnostic Superchain powered by Optimism. Base is joining Optimism as a Core Dev on the open-source OP Stack.

• 💸 Base is launching an ecosystem fund to invest in and support early stage projects (pre-seed to seed) building on Base. The ideal project will be built by crypto-native founders that have not yet launched their protocol and are looking for a chain to call home. (DeFi, Gaming, NFTs etc)

• Read more

Lens Protocol releases version 2, integrating 'Open Actions' and ERC-6551

The update includes features such as Open Actions for executing external actions directly on Lens, Collective Value Share for rewarding beneficial actions, Profiles V2 with enhanced profile security and composability, and various trust and safety features.

• The entire Lens V2 codebase was rewritten, refactored and optimized for readability, open source contributions and developer experience.

• 🤝 Open Actions: Lens Protocol V2 introduces Open Actions, allowing users and developers to execute external actions directly on Lens. e.g. through an OpenSea “mint” Open Actions, users could simply click ‘mint’ on a Lens post and it will mint an NFT via the OpenSea contract directly on Lens.

  • Examples of Open Actions include minting NFTs, buying/selling ERC-20s or NFTs, joining a DAO, donating with Gitcoin, buying virtual land, and more.

    

• 💳 Collective Value Share: Lens Protocol V2 enhances value-sharing opportunities among users, algorithms, curators, and apps.

• 🎭 Profiles V2: Lens Protocol V2 introduces ERC-6551-powered profiles as wallets, allowing NFTs to have their own social relationships, voice, and monetization opportunities. The 'follow' relationship now occurs between profiles rather than wallets,

  • Profiles can be minted without a handle, transferred between handles, or attached to multiple handles in open namespaces.

• 🔑 Profile Manager: The Profile Manager feature enhances security by allowing Lens profiles to delegate social actions to a different wallet, including hardware wallets. This feature also enables the storage of DAO or community profiles on smart contracts while using them from other addresses

  • 

• 🛡️ Trust & Safety Features:

  • onchain blocking - maybe you’ve been blocked on IG before, but have you been blocked onchain?? Ouch

  • Improved profile security. LIP-4 introduced the Profile Guardian, which improved profile safety and minimized phishing profile takeovers. Profile Guardian requires a 7-day cooldown period to transfer a profile. Using the Profile Manager feature together with Profile Guardian, users can store their Lens profiles on a hardware wallet. This allows safe operation from an application-level wallet.

• Lens Protocol V2 Open Source Codebase in Github

• Read More

Legal

EUs Data Act Final Draft Still Contains Controversial Smart Contract Kill Switch

The EU's Data Act includes a controversial 'kill switch' for smart contracts, which may impact the deployment and functionality of smart contracts within the EU. The final draft of the European Union Data Act rules does not address the concerns of the blockchain industry, potentially rendering most smart contracts unlawful.

• 🔒 Provisions for terminating automated data-sharing agreements still refer broadly to "smart contracts" instead of the preferred term "digital contracts."

• ✍️ The law still needs to be formally agreed upon by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to pass into law.

• Read more

Exploits

Over 200 Ethscriptions Nabbed in Smart Contract Exploit

The exploit allowed individuals to withdraw Ethscriptions they didn't own from the marketplace. The creator of Ethscriptions, Tom Lehman, took responsibility for the failure and acknowledged the setback to the protocol's ecosystem.

• 💔 About 123 individual addresses lost a total of about 202 Ethscriptions in the exploit.

• 💰 The exact value lost in connection with the exploit is unclear, but some Ethscriptions have sold for as much as 5 Ethereum (approximately $9,600) in the past month.

• How the Exploit Happened - Read here - kinda like a double-spend attack but by someone else

• An Ethscription is an innovation that helps create on-chain digital artifacts. It uses a unique reference identifier for data encoded within an Ethereum transaction. In contrast to NFTs that use ERC-721, Ethscriptions are stored at the transaction level. In an Ethscription, digital artifacts are created within transaction calldata.

  • Storage at the transaction level could potentially make Ethscriptions cheaper than NFTs.

  • Ethscriptions do not hold any smart contract logic, making them less composable than traditional NFTs.

  • However, Ethscription storage mechanics might be their biggest Achilles heel. The Ethereum “Purge” update has a proposal, EIP-4444, to trim down transaction calldata, potentially affecting the longevity of the Ethscription storage model.

• Read More

One Liners 🖊️

• Unstoppable Domains Partners with Ethereum Name Service, Adds .eth Domains >

• Celo Plans To Be An Ethereum Layer 2, Is Arbitrum In Trouble? >

• A developer has found a fund freezing feature in Brazil’s CBDC Pilot >

• 1st Ever: New York District Attorney Presses Charges Against Hacker For Exploiting Solana DEX >

• Olympix, a startup that aims to bring scalable security to Web3, has announced the recent close of a $4.3 million seed funding round that was led by Boldstart Ventures. >

• Safe wallet adds 'ERC-4337' to boost account abstraction features >

Let’s Learn 📙

• STARK proofs: STARK proofs are a type of zero-knowledge proof that is very efficient to generate and verify. However, they can be large, which can make them expensive to store and transmit.

• SNARK proofs: SNARK proofs are another type of zero-knowledge proof that is smaller and cheaper to verify than STARK proofs. However, they are not as efficient to generate.

Ideas 💡

• Build an NFT Marketplace app for Google Play

  • The app could also integrate with social media platforms, enabling artists to directly promote their NFTs to followers.

• DeFi Tools on the Sui Blockchain

  • Leveraging the features of DeepBook, developers could build applications or services that streamline the process of exchanging tokens on the Sui blockchain.

• Build a DeFi app or decentralized game to launch on Base

  • The opportunity to secure funding from Base's ecosystem fund could also provide a financial boost

• Build an Open Action on Lens Protocol