ZuSocial @Istanbul - Nov 16th Daily Roundup
1/ Base: Path to Decentralization
Guest: Ryan @consecutionx from @BuildOnBase
Why Base
Base believes "Onchain will be the next Online". Currently onchain users and transactions continue to grow, but we are still far from everyone onchain. The key blocks for bringing more people on-chain include lack of cheap blockspace, convenient wallet technology, and identity solutions.
The major challenge of decentralization for Base
L2 tech is still maturing
Base is launching from centralized Coinbase
The regulatory environment is uncertain
Base’s approaches to tackle the challenges
Technical investment in decentralization: Contribute key technical initiatives to the OP stack
Participation in open neutrality framework
Funding public goods: 15% of the revenue from the sequencer will contribute to OP foundation for public goods
Base ecosystem and programs WIP
Base has 100+ dapps live today of onchain use cases (base.org/ecosystem). And Base is continuously working on different pillars incl. EIP 4844 coauthor, Canyon fork, Sepolia, and Paymaster.
Relevant link
Official site: https://base.org/
2/ Workshop on Scaffold-ETH 2
ZuSocial Hacker: Shiv Bhonde @ShivBhonde
What is Scaffold-ETH 2?
Scaffold-eth is an open-source, up-to-date toolkit for building dApps on Ethereum. It includes:
✅ Contract Hot Reload: Frontend auto-adapts to your smart contract as you edit it.
🔥 Burner Wallet & Local Faucet: Quickly test your application with a burner wallet and local faucet.
🔐 Integration with Wallet Providers: Connect to different wallet providers and interact with the Ethereum network.
Scaffold-ETH 2 Tech Stack
Scaffold-eth is not a product itself but more of a combination or stack of other great tools. The main components incl.:
Hardhat or Foundry for running local networks, deploying and testing smart contracts.
Wagmi for React Hooks to start working with Ethereum.
NextJS for building a frontend, using many useful pre-made hooks.
RainbowKit for adding wallet connection.
DaisyUI for pre-built Tailwind CSS components.
Relevant link
Official site: https://scaffoldeth.io/
3/ Digital Identities Workshop
ZuSocial Hacker: Marios
The problem of Federated identity mgmt (OAuth)
ID providers collect the metadata
ID providers can impersonate the user
Overview of UnlimitedID
With UnlimitedID, users can select attributes to disclose, and blind anonymous certificates. Key properties of UnlimitedID
Protect users from passive deanonymization by ID providers, and active impersonation attacks by ID providers
Support selective attributed disclosure, multi-show credentials, sybil resistance, and non-transferability
Modern key distribution with ClaimClains
ClaimChain is a Public Key Infrastructure unique in that it can operate in fully decentralized settings with no trusted parties. Key properties of ClaimChains include:
ClaimChains for each user/ device/ identity
Blocks appended as needed
Compromise apear as chaimchain forks
Owner selects who can read specific claims
With the design, ClaimChains features:
Propagation of key updates in cliques
Vouch for the latest state of a friend’s ClaimChain
Friend intro - Social validation - Web of trust while preserving privacy
Relevant link
ChaimChains video (2017): https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9094-modern_key_distribution_with_claimchain
4/ Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud
Guest: Jiang from @SocialLayer_im
Old-fashioned apps & Cloud apps vs Local-first apps
Old-fashioned apps
Advantage: Simple to use
Disadvantage: Users have to backup data manually, thus data loss may occur
Cloud apps (eg. Google doc, Trello, Figma)
No need to install, can be web-based
Seamless collaboration, able to access data from any device
But cloud is just someone else’s computer
If the service is unavaliable/ got shut down, users can't have access to the app anymore
Users are forced to upgrade the software
Local-first apps
Able to work offline and collaborate with multiple devices
Prioritize the use of local storage and netowrk
What does local-first mean and what can be used?
Local-first means that
Local data is the primary
Latency
The network is optional
Update fast locally
Security & privacy by default
Developer infra for building local-first apps
Cloudkit
CouchDB
RealmDB
DID
CRDT: a data structure that modeling data when building a collaborative multi-user apps
What local first architecture provides
Fast speed
Multi-device
Offline availability
Collaboration
Longevity
Privacy
User control
Relevant link
Research paper: https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf