Ethereum&#x27;s layer-2 solution Linea is calling on Matter Labs to withdraw ZK trademark attempts, saying the filing &quot;goes against the principles of Ethereum&quot;

Consensys-backed Linea urges Matter Labs to withdraw ZK trademark filing

Once again, traditionally accompanied by the growth of Bitcoin and a bunch of side events, Blockchain Life 2023 took place in Dubai. The main stage provided a platform for more than 100 distinguished speakers,

Blockchain Life 2023: Shaping Trends for the Upcoming Bull Run

Read more about MetaMask Adds Privacy-Preserving Security Alerts That Aims to Prevent Billions from Being Stolen on Devdiscourse

MetaMask Adds Privacy-Preserving Security Alerts That Aims to Prevent Billions from Being Stolen

If the victim clicks on the link, he or she enters a third-party site with a request for authorization via an Ethereum cryptocurrency wallet (e.g., MetaMask). When the wallet is connected, a malicious smart contract (a so-called drainer, from the English ...

Cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask announced the introduction of phishing protection

Featured postsRecently, the total value locked on the Solana blockchain surpassed $2 billion, and with the SOL token hitting $100 at time of writing, there is

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This surge is not only a testament to the resilience of Ethereum but also reflects the growing interest and confidence in the potential of blockchain technology to transform traditional financial systems. The DeFi Ecosystem’s Hidden Gem DeFi, short for ...

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MetaMask has teamed up with security firm Blockaid to introduce a new feature aimed at bolstering user security.

MetaMask and Blockaid Collaborate to Launch Phishing Attack Alert Feature for Enhanced User Protection

As we continue to innovate, we remain committed to empowering users and providing them with the tools they need to navigate the world of web3 with confidence”, said Dan Finlay, Co-Founder of MetaMask and Chief Ethos Officer at Consensys. Blockaid already ...

MetaMask adds privacy-preserving security alerts, preventing billions from being stolen

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expects layer 2 scaling protocols to continue offering diverse technological solutions to the wider ecosystem.

Ethereum layer 2’s will continue to have diverse approaches to scaling — Vitalik Buterin

ConsenSys

consensys

Shaping the Future: Entangle's Partnership with Consensys for Web3 Evolution Entangle, a pioneering provider of Web3 infrastructure, has recently made headlines with the announcement of a strategic investment from Consensys. This substantial investment marks a significant milestone for Entangle. This pushes its total funding to an impressive $4 million. Consensys is a well-known blockchain incubator. Entangle announced earlier this year that it had closed a round of private funding. Leading venture capital companies, such as Big Brain Holdings, Launch Code Capital, Seier Capital, and Skynet Capital, have put a lot of money into this round. At the beginning of this year, Entangle said that the company had successfully completed a private fundraising financing round. Big Brain Holdings, Launch Code Capital, Seier Capital, and Skynet Capital are among the prominent venture capital companies that have contributed significant investments to this round of funding. The recent infusion of funds to Entangle from Consensys is set to accelerate Entangle's efforts toward building its interoperable omnichain messaging and liquidity infrastructure. This momentum is being built upon by the recent injection of capital. The Significance of Web3 Infrastructure: Shaping the Future of Decentralized Digital Ecosystems For the purpose of democratising access to online resources, encouraging decentralisation, and fundamentally altering the digital environment, Web3 infrastructure is of utmost importance. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, served as the foundation for Web3, which provides enhanced security, transparency, and autonomy. Due to the fact that it is decentralised, there is a much reduced likelihood of censorship and manipulation. Also, the confidentiality of the data is preserved. Smart contracts, decentralised applications (dApps), and peer-to-peer transactions are further features that are offered by the Web3 architecture. Industry areas such as supply chain management, gambling, and finance are seeing transformations as a result of this. Through the reduction of reliance on intermediaries, Web3 promotes inclusiveness and eliminates barriers that prevent worldwide participation in the digital economy. People are given more control, trust is built, and the foundation is laid for a more equitable and resilient internet ecosystem: these are the reasons why it is vital. It is essential to make investments in Web3 infrastructure in order to provide a society that is fair, safe, and secure in light of the fact that society is becoming more reliant on digital interactions. What Is Entangle The Web3 framework is very important for making online tools more accessible to everyone, encouraging decentralisation, and changing the digital world. Web3, on the other hand, is built on blockchain technology and offers better protection, honesty, and freedom. It is less likely to be censored or hacked because it is decentralised. The privacy of the info is also protected. Web3 design also supports peer-to-peer trades, smart contracts, and decentralised apps (dApps). Some of the areas this is changing are supply chain management, games, and banks. By reducing the need for middlemen, Web3 encourages inclusion and gets rid of barriers to global involvement in the digital economy. It's important because it gives people power, builds trust, and lays the groundwork for a more fair and strong internet environment. As people rely more and more on digital exchanges, we need to put money into Web3 infrastructure to make sure that society is fair, safe, and private. For example, in supply chain management, Web3 technology can track products from creation to delivery without the need for a central authority, ensuring transparency and authenticity. In the gaming industry, blockchain-based dApps allow players to truly own in-game assets and trade them securely without the risk of fraud or hacking. Boosting DApps and Developers Liquid Vaults, Photon Messaging, and Universal Data Feeds are the main things that Entangle makes. People think that these items will be very important in the next round of Web3 innovations. These solutions make it easier for developers to make apps that work with each other by letting different groups work together without any problems. With the creation of Composable Derivatives Tokens (CDTs) and Liquid Vaults in particular, it is now possible to greatly increase liquidity and make new DeFi tactics possible. The Entangle community is getting more and more excited about the April start of the Entangle mainnet. The Entangle testnet was a huge success, with over 1.5 million trades and 250,000 users. This shows that the project has a strong infrastructure and a lot of support. With the start date getting closer, both developers and fans are excited to see how Entangle's Web3 solutions will change things. For example, a user could leverage CDTs and Liquid Vaults to create a decentralized lending platform that allows for instant and seamless borrowing and lending of various digital assets. This would not only increase liquidity in the DeFi space but also open up new opportunities for users to earn passive income through interest payments. Expanding Reach and Impact Entangle has a large network of relationships and connections that show how much it wants to promote openness. It has been stated so far that it will work with more than 42 dApps and have over 75 relationships across 16 blockchains. Now that these relationships are in place, Entangle is ready to keep its promise to provide omnichain data that goes beyond standard limits. Entangle has an effect on many environments, businesses, and networks because it has such a wide reach. Don’t forget to like and share the story! This author is an independent contributor publishing via our brand-as-author program. Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure:

Revolutionizing Web3: How Entangle's Partnership with Consensys Unlocks New Frontiers

If you’re working with smart contracts — or even just exploring them — you probably already know that smart contract security is important. Smart contracts are immutable once deployed, and often involve significant amounts of money. Writing safe and reliable code before deployment should be top of mind. And as the adoption of blockchain accelerates, ensuring the security of smart contracts becomes even more important. One of the best additions to your smart contract audit is fuzzing, a dynamic testing technique that exposes vulnerabilities by generating and injecting random inputs into your smart contracts during testing. In this article, we’ll explore how to use fuzzing to effectively audit a smart contract. Specifically, we’ll look at ConsenSys — a new fuzzing as a service (FaaS) offering. We’ll delve into the technical aspects and show some code examples. Diligence Fuzzing What is Fuzzing? Fuzzing is a dynamic testing technique where random (or semi-random) inputs called “fuzz” are generated and injected into code. Fuzzing can help reveal bugs and vulnerabilities that weren’t caught by traditional testing methods. Manual (unit) testing requires you to figure out what functionality to test, what inputs to use, and what the expected output should be. It’s time-consuming, difficult, and in the end, it’s still easy to miss scenarios. On the other hand, fuzzing (or fuzz testing) is an automated testing process that sends random data into an application to test its security. A fuzzer can help you understand how a program responds to unpredictable inputs. Fuzzing has been around for a while. and are some examples in the traditional development world. There are also several web3/blockchain fuzzing tools available, such as and . However, Diligence Fuzzing is fuzzing as a service and makes everything a little simpler to implement. Which in the end means better audits and more secure contracts. So let’s look into it in more detail. Defensics Burp Suite Echidna Foundry ConsenSys Diligence Fuzzing Diligence Fuzzing (by ConsenSys, which is also behind ecosystem standards such as and ) is a fuzzer built for web3 smart contracts. It: MetaMask Infura Works from a formal spec that describes the expected behavior of your smart contract Generates transaction sequences that might be able to violate your assertions Uses advanced analysis to find inputs that cover a maximum amount of your smart contract code Validates the business logic of the app and checks for functional correctness Provides you with any findings And all as a service with minimal work from you! To use Diligence Fuzzing follow these three steps: First, define your smart contract specs using Scribble. Next, submit the code to Diligence to run your fuzzing. Finally, with the audit report, fix and improve your code! Fuzzing in Action So let’s test it out and see it in action. We will use the Fuzzing CLI and Scribble to fuzz-test a sample smart contract. Step 1: Sign up First, to the Diligence Fuzzing. sign up for access Step 2: Install dependencies Next, install the Fuzzing CLI and Scribble. ConsenSys recommends that you have the latest versions of Node and Python. Be sure you are using at least Python 3.6 and Node 16. Then: pip3 install diligence-fuzzing
npm i -g eth-scribble ganache truffle Note: This requires a Linux, mac, or Linux subsystem with Windows. Windows Powershell has some complexities the team is working on. You can always use a (which creates a VScode-like-interface with a clean bootstrapped build) and install the above prerequisites via command line. github codespace Step 3: Get an API key Now you need to generate an API key to use the CLI. Visit the and click on Create new API Key. API Keys page Step 4: Set up fuzzing configuration Now we need a smart contract to fuzz! As part of their own tutorial, ConsenSys provides a sample smart contract to use. Let’s just use that one. git clone https://github.com/ConsenSys/scribble-exercise-1.git Open the file from the project and add in your API key for the “key” property at around line 25. .fuzz.yml # .fuzz_token.yml

fuzz:
    # Tell the CLI where to find the compiled contracts and compilation artifacts
    build_directory: build/contracts
    
    # The following address is going to be the main target for the fuzzing campaign
    deployed_contract_address: "0xe78A0F7E598Cc8b0Bb87894B0F60dD2a88d6a8Ab"
    
    # We'll do fuzzing with 2 cores 🚀
    number_of_cores: 2
    
    # Run the campaign for just 3 minutes.
    time_limit: 3m 

    # Put the campaign in the Sribble Exercise 1 project
    project: "Scribble Exercise 1"
    
    # When the campaign is created it'll get a name <prefix>_<random_characters>
    campaign_name_prefix: "ERC20 campaign"
    
    # Point to your ganache node which holds the seed 🌱
    rpc_url: "http://localhost:8545"
    
    key: "INSERT YOUR API KEY HERE"

    # This is the contract that the campaign will show coverage for/ map issues to etc
    # It's a list of all the relevant contracts (don't worry about dependencies, we'll get those automatically 🙌)
    targets:
        - "contracts/vulnerableERC20.sol" Note: Be sure to stop your fuzzing campaigns or set a time limit, or it might run for an unexpectedly long time. You’ll note from the above file that we set the time limit for our campaigns to three minutes. Step 5: Define fuzzing properties Notice also that we have our smart contract: . contracts/vulnerableERC20.sol Next, we need to define the properties we want the fuzzer to check in the smart contract. We’ll use for this step. Scribble is a specification language that translates high-level specs into Solidity code. It allows you to annotate your contracts with properties and then transforms those annotations into concrete assertions that can be used by testing tools (such as Diligence Fuzzing). Pretty cool! Scribble We will add the highlighted code segments to our contract: pragma solidity ^0.6.0;

/// #invariant "balances are in sync"
unchecked_sum(_balances) == _totalSupply;
contract VulnerableToken { This annotation will ensure that our total supply and balances are in sync. Step 6: Run Now we fuzz! Simply run this command: make fuzz Step 7: Evaluate results After the fuzzer is done (it might take a minute or two to start up) we can get our results. We can either use the link the fuzzer gives us, or we can go to our dashboard. Looking at we can see what is being fuzzed and any . And guess what? We found a bug! Click on the line location button to see the offensive code. properties, violations For details, click . We can see the fuzzer called “transfer”: Show transaction details Upon closer examination, we can now see what caused our bug. The transfer_to and origin arguments are the same. There must be a security vulnerability when someone sends tokens to themselves. Let’s look in the source code to see what’s wrong. function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) external returns (bool) {


 address from = msg.sender;


   require(_value <= _balances[from]);


   uint256 newBalanceFrom = _balances[from] - _value;
   uint256 newBalanceTo = _balances[_to] + _value;


   _balances[from] = newBalanceFrom;
   _balances[_to] = newBalanceTo;


   emit Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _value);


   return true;


 } Yep! We can see that when the sender and recipient are the same, lines 30 and 31 will get a little weird—one is changing the value of the ‘from’ account, and one is changing the value of the ‘to’ account. The code assumes they are different accounts. But since they are the same account, by the time we get to line 31, the value we have is not the value we expect. It’s already been changed by the previous line. We can fix this by adding the highlighted lines of code below: function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) external returns (bool) {
 address from = msg.sender;
   require(_value <= _balances[from]);


   _balances[from] -= _value;
   _balances[_to] += _value;


   uint256 newBalanceFrom = _balances[from] - _value;
   uint256 newBalanceTo = _balances[_to] + _value;


   _balances[from] = newBalanceFrom;
   _balances[_to] = newBalanceTo;


   emit Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _value);


   return true;
 } Here are several other technical details to be aware of: The seed.js script does some setup work for you here. It deploys the contract to a test node. It can also do things like mint tokens, open pools, etc. It gives the fuzzer the right state to start. The yml file has many config parameters that you can explore. Notably the contract address to fuzz, the API key, the time_limit for the fuzzing, and some others. The CLI ships with an auto-config generator. Run fuzz generate-config to get some helpful Q&A for generating the config. Smart Contract Audits — Use Fuzzing! Fuzzing and is a powerful tool for testing auditing Ethereum blockchain smart contracts. Whether you are working in decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, or just starting in smart contract development, it can take you to the next level of identifying and fixing vulnerabilities in your smart contracts. Along with manual reviews, unit tests, manual testing, penetration testing, code reviews, and more, fuzzing should be a key part of your smart contract security audit process for a more secure and robust codebase. Diligence Fuzzing-as-a-service Have a really great day!

Smart Contract Audits with ConsenSys Diligence Fuzzing - Fuzzing as a Service

It’s well-known that Ethereum needs support in order to scale. A variety of L2s ( ) have launched or are in development to improve Ethereum’s scalability. Among the most popular L2s are zero-knowledge-based rollups (also known as zk-rollups). layer twos Zk-rollups offer a solution that has both high scalability and minimal costs. In this article, we’ll define what zk-rollups are and review the latest in the market, the new ConsenSys zkEVM. This new zk-rollup — — makes building with zero-knowledge proofs easier than ever. a fully EVM-equivalent L2 by ConsenSys ConsenSys achieves this by allowing developers to port smart contracts easily, stay with the same toolset they already use, and bring users along with them smoothly — all while staying highly performant and cost-effective. If you don’t know a lot about zk-rollups, you’ll find how they work fascinating. They’re at the cutting edge of computer science. And if you do already know about zk-rollups, and you’re a Solidity developer, you’ll be interested in how the new ConsenSys zkEVM makes your dapp development a whole lot easier. It’s zk-rollup time! So let’s jump in. The Power of Zero-Knowledge Proofs Zk-rollups depend on zero-knowledge proofs. But what is a zero-knowledge proof? A zero-knowledge proof allows you to prove a statement is true — without sharing what the actual statement is, or how the truth was discovered. At its most basic, a prover passes secret information to an algorithm to compute the zero-knowledge proof. Then a verifier uses this proof with another algorithm to check that the prover actually knows the secret information. All this happens without revealing the actual information. There are a lot of details behind that above statement. if you want to understand the cryptographic magic behind how it all works. But for our purpose, what’s important are the use cases of zero-knowledge proofs. A few examples: Check out this article Anonymous payments — Traditional digital payments are not private, and even most crypto payments are on public blockchains. Zero-knowledge proofs offer a way to make truly private transactions. You can prove you paid for something … without revealing any details of the transaction. Identity protection — With zero-knowledge proofs, you can prove details of your personal identity while still keeping them private. For example, you can prove citizenship … without revealing your passport. And the most important use case for our purposes: Verifiable computation. What Is Verifiable Computation? Verifiable computation means you can have some other entity process computations for you and trust that the results are true … without knowing any of the details of the transaction. That means a layer 2 blockchain, such as the ConsenSys zkEVM, can become the outsourced computation layer for Ethereum. It can process a batch of transactions (much faster than Ethereum), create proof for the validity of the transactions, and submit just the results and the proof to Ethereum. Ethereum, since it has the proof, doesn’t need the details — nor does it need a way to prove that the results are true. So, instead of processing every transaction, Ethereum offloads the work to a separate chain. All Ethereum has to do is apply the results to its state. This vastly improves the speed and scalability of Ethereum. Exploring the New ConsenSys zkEVM and Why It’s Important Several zk-rollup L2s for Ethereum have already been released or are in progress. But the ConsenSys zkEVM could be the king. Let’s look at why: Type 2 ZK-EVM For one thing, it’s a — an evolution of zk-rollups. It’s faster and easier to use than Type 1 zk solutions. It offers better scalability and performance while still being fully EVM-equivalent. Type 2 ZK-EVM Traditionally with zk-proofs, it’s computationally expensive and slow for the prover to create proofs, which limits the capabilities and usefulness of the rollup. However, the ConsenSys zkEVM uses a — which means faster finality and seamless withdraws, all while retaining the security of Ethereum settlements. And it delivers ultra-low gas fees. recursion-friendly, lattice-based zkSNARK prover Solves the Problems of Traditional L2s Second, the ConsenSys zkEVM solves many of the practical problems of other L2s: Zero switching costs — It’s super easy to port smart contracts to the zkEVM. The zkEVM is EVM-equivalent down to the bytecode. So no rewriting code or smart contracts. You already know what you need to know to get started, and your current smart contracts already work. Easy to move your dApp users to the L2 — The zkEVM is supported by , the leading web3 wallet. So most of your users are probably already able to access the zkEVM. MetaMask Easy for devs — The zkEVM supports the most popular tools out of the box. You can build, test, debug, and deploy your smart contracts with , , , etc. All the tools you use now, you can keep using. And there is already a bridge to move tokens onto and off the network. Hardhat Infura Truffle It uses ETH for gas — There’s no native token to the zkEVM, so you don’t need to worry about new tokens, third-party transpilers, or custom middleware. It’s all open source! How to Get Started Using the ConsenSys zkEVM The zkEVM private testnet was released in December 2022 and is moving to public testnet on March 28th, 2023. It’s already processed transactions(and growing). 774,000 There are : uniswap, the graph, hop, and others. You can and . lots of dApps already read the documentation for the zkEVM deploy your own smart contract Conclusion It’s definitely time for zk-rollups to shine. They are evolving quickly and leading the way in helping Ethereum to scale. It’s a great time to jump in and learn how they work — and is a great place to start! building with the ConsenSys zkEVM Have a really great day!

The Power of Zero-Knowledge Proofs - Exploring the New ConsenSys zkEVM 

ConsenSys isn’t the first to consider blockchain in space, but it seems poised to be the one to make it take off by acquiring . Planetary Resources This has been a golden age for space startups, or as some call it “astropreneurship.” Dozens of nanosatellite startups have entered the fray, and SpaceX has outpaced NASA in terms of its rocket development to ferry those entrepreneurial probes into orbit. Next year, SpaceIL, an entrant from the Lunar X-Prize competition, plans to put the first private spacecraft in human history on the Moon. Several other former entrants to the competition that inspired SpaceIL — including Moon Express and Astrobotic — also present space as a realistic commercial option for new businesses. , a Chinese project working through the Qtum network, made its debut earlier this year planning to use blockchain to manage a network of small satellites that previously operated only on their own. Through use of their token (SPC), satellites can rent space for communications. In conjunction with their own satellite-specific operating system, they see a way to encourage satellite app development and new uses for such probes via those apps. It would parallel the explosion of apps when smartphones allowed new uses for mobile. Space Chain ConsenSys seems to be betting big they can do the same thing and more. Already having over $50 million in venture funding with investors like Space Angels, OS Ventures, and Tencent, one could reasonably assume the price tag here was far north of $500 million if not close to $1 billion. Planetary Resources is a an interesting launchpad for that, since their end game is to encourage the robotic mining of asteroids. Harvesting the material in so-called “near-Earth asteroids” (or NEAs, which are outside the main Asteroid Belt) would get expensive. Evidently, ConsenSys sees a major business opportunity in making blockchain a part of the infrastructure used to facilitate that business and space ventures a little closer to home, expected to grow immensely in the next few years. fundamental Turning Blockchain into the Core of Space Commercial Infrastructure If space-based commercial activity does indeed expand — and it is projected to go from $360 billion to — it would mean a lot for the blockchain and crypto world if one of the industry’s pioneering companies were to compel customers to use blockchain infrastructure. $558 billion by 2026 As Planetary Resources General Counsel Brian Israel put it, “Ethereum smart contract functionality is a natural solution for private-ordering and commerce in space…in which a diverse range of actors from a growing number of countries must coordinate and transact.” Rather than fighting to transition companies off of legacy infrastructure, the entryway into space commerce would have to flow through a blockchain conduit. For the growing list of companies planning to do business out there, this would lay the foundations for blockchain as legacy infrastructure for off-planet industry. the Of course, any company with their eyes set on space would realistically start small, meaning Planetary Resources would have to build more local satellites or units before precision-mining ops on NEAs. They have done just that with their own band of satellites capable of monitoring agriculture, like several other companies in the industry. There is no need to assume smart contracts through ConsenSys and Planetary Resources would have to wait for an order of asteroid ore. Even between near-Earth observation missions and venturing out past Mars, there are plenty of ideas for making a buck. Just as Moon Express is venturing to do, ConsenSys’ new acquisition could feasibly launch a lunar business, ferrying soil samples and even Helium-3 back to Earth. ConsenSys Raises the Stakes by Diversifying its Portfolio What separates an acquisition like this from any other ConsenSys could have facilitated is the company’s clear foray into the wider technology and startup scene. This is a major acquisition, buying out one of the few indisputably influential space startups that have broken out in the last decade. That makes ConsenSys much more than a blockchain venture now. They are now officially in the space business. They aren’t just planning to run the payments infrastructure, but eventually manage the entire extraterrestrial mining, extraction, and delivery process for Planetary Resources. In the meantime, they get to see how to apply blockchain to space-based data, such as imaging from the hundreds of nanosatellites that have reached orbit in the last few years. That likely raises the stakes for other ambitious blockchain companies to expand their reach into different industries, making blockchain a staple of payments and data management in a number of verticals. This might just prompt other major decentralized ledger projects to look for big-time conduits to use blockchain technology, with space just being one of the new frontiers. Like what you read? Check out our GitHub projects and join the community: _Orbs platform reference implementation in Go. Contribute to orbs-network/orbs-network-go development by creating an…_github.com orbs-network/orbs-network-go _Orbs platform protocol and service specifications. Contribute to orbs-network/orbs-spec development by creating an…_github.com orbs-network/orbs-spec _Monorepo for Orbs platform reference implementation — orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript_github.com orbs-network/orbs-network-typescript _Go implementation of Lean Helix consensus algorithm — orbs-network/lean-helix-go_github.com orbs-network/lean-helix-go Join the Orbs community: GitHub: https://github.com/orbs-network : Telegram https://t.me/orbs_network : Twitter https://twitter.com/orbs_network : Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ORBS_Network/ : Read the Orbs white papers https://www.orbs.com/white-papers Sign up for the Orbs newsletter

How ConsenSys’s Latest Acquisition Puts  Blockchain at the Center of the Commercial Space Race

With Co-Founder, Joseph Lubin! We had the privilege of interviewing Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, founder of Consensys, as part of the Consensys Tel Aviv community and Investor events. You run quite an amazing organization and have a forward-thinking approach on how to manage it in a decentralized fashion and at scale. It’s often referred to as The Consensys Mesh, can you tell us all about that? We consider ourselves an unusual kind of company. We formed about three and a half years ago, about a year into the Ethereum project. We started as a venture production studio, and the idea was to build MVPs, wrap companies around them, put them up for external investment and grow. We got interest early on from companies, and governments, and central banks, and we needed to educate people in our ecosystem. We ended up doing different rounds of capital markets activities, so we basically have evolved into a very oddly shaped organization. We do a lot of things together that you don’t find as a single organization. We also started the thesis that the nature of business is evolving, so, it doesn’t make sense to try to build a big hierarchical, top-down command and control monolith like Microsoft, just because information is transmitted so easily and rapidly, expertise is shared, entrepreneurs are prevalent and they’re formed inside of these companies. Look at Google, they’re just so many entrepreneurs that they even do their own thing, and they remain part of alumni. So we felt that the nature of business is changing and that we should embrace that, and create a context where entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs are attracted to Consensys, and there’s no better place in the world for them to do what they want to do. So we have evolved as this mesh of different product projects, service circles, and regional offices. And we’re attempting to be as decentralized as it makes sense, and that’s very decentralized using our technologies. The fact is that we’re currently in 13 countries while doing our best to be as flat and fluid as possible as an organization. Rigid hierarchy parities are great for different things, and they’re efficient for many things but not so good for decision-making. So you normally have the rich data and the situated awareness at the bottom of a hierarchy, and decision-making as far away as possible from the people who are making the decisions. We do our best to make the decision-makers the people who are in the different projects and give them budgets, so they’re really extremely autonomous. Yet we’re building an ecosystem of Consensys products and services we’re building on the Ethereum ecosystem, and we do a lot of infrastructure work, developer tools etc. We’re building out the decentralization ecosystem, essentially web 3.0. When you do that you need a lot of communication, collaboration inter-operation between different projects that we work with hard on, even while we’re trying to create this mesh of autonomous projects and companies. We didn’t really set out to build an oddly-shaped company, it definitely emerged organically, and I think there are millions of people on this planet at this point that understand the value propositions of the blockchain technology. A lot of them are attracted to organizations, like Consensys, attracted to working in the blockchain space, at a company where everything is basically an experiment, they’re willing to iterate, and evolve pretty rapidly. I’m wondering in this type of decentralized organization, how do you personally stay in the know and prioritize, because you have so many projects going on and so many different divisions, how do you personally stay on top of things? The company’s growth has been exponential, the incoming interest is exponential, the opportunities are growing exponentially. It’s not just me experiencing that, it’s virtually everybody in the company. So we all have to re-prioritize what we can pay attention. We are all building, system processes, larger teams, in order for us to handle decision-making and information gathering better. We do meet one another, we have about 850 people around the world, and we meet one another very regularly at different events. There are lots of opportunities for us to spend good quality time together, work on stuff together, bond, and establish a shared understanding language so that when we use our communication tools, like email and Slack, we hopefully understand each other a little bit better. My dad always says that in a company’s culture, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Is this your approach as well, at Consensys, since you’re talking about this experimental environment where people are exploring new ideas? At Consensys there are lots of opportunities to ask for forgiveness. There are a lot of outspoken, passionate people and we practice Stigmergy. This is the phenomenon where if collective intelligence identifies some sort of goal collectively it is included into the species DNA in a sense, just like ants move sand around, and push little pieces of sugar around for the collective good. At the organization, we see pieces of work, and we push them forward in different ways, and people are encouraged just to act if they see something that should be done, and they do it. However, if the thing they want to do could impact other people or other potential goals, they should try to bring those potentially affected into some sort of discussion, get help or just let somebody know that something’s going on. The company is called Consensys, and so we do try to form a consensus amongst anybody who would be impacted by some event or some decision, and some of those decisions impact the entire organization. As I said before, there are lots of opportunities to ask for forgiveness. We’re trying to see ourselves as an organism, and we’re trying to build immune systems into that organism, so we have a group that is helping us with communication protocols, such as non-violent communication techniques, emotional intelligence, and different kinds of programs to improve us all as operators within the Consensys context. You also have something called the Traditional Management Nullification Tools, could you please describe what this means? TMNT is a really cool project. The organizational philosopher and theoretician, Ken Wilber, defines different ways that humans can organize themselves for collective action. He labeled them with colors from Red to Teal. So a Wolfpack has the red designation, and army and machine, and family and organism are the next level of evolution in how we get better and better as a collective intelligence. At Consensys, we’re trying to pattern ourselves as an organism, so all the people constitute the elements of organs. We have product teams, service circles, and regional offices that are the various different organs. We’ve got feedback loops going on inside them, and we’re trying to figure out how we measure, and how we apply mission and goal setting. It is essentially intended to be healthy at the cellular level, where all the people are, healthy at the organ level, and ideally emergently healthy at the organism. You can think of Consensys as one of these organisms, we have spun out a bunch of companies, they’re still part of the Consensys mesh, some of those companies are becoming hubs in their own right. We have what we call a hub-and-spoke system, where our different product teams are spokes to the Consensys hub. We have a team, called Labs that is working with all the different product teams to wrap them in APIs, and then assigning service level agreements for those APIs, so that you know what a team offers, and you know under which terms you can get those services. We also see our marketing team, our HR team, and our finance team, and maybe our legal team, as potentially proto-spokes, they may evolve it to a business in their own right, as we write software to enable them to do their job in this new decentralized context. We have this technology called Open Law that we’re just starting to apply inside our organization. It enables you to write employment contracts, NDAs, and service level agreements with these hybrid blockchain-based legally enforceable documents. These mechanisms enable agreements to be formed and signed, you can sequence different actions, you can send money into a contract, escrow money in the contract, pay money out of the agreement, and send data into a service level agreement, get paid out based on the data and based on the performance of that particular team. Using these mechanisms, understanding that different companies that we’ve started and spun out are creating hubs on their own you can start to see this mesh. Consensys runs over 40 projects, even more, at any given moment. Are there pillars or certain topics that you can categorize and say that these are the things that you believe are most impactful at this stage for blockchain technology? It’s still an immature space, and we have lots of projects that are maturing rapidly, there are thousands of projects out in the world that are maturing rapidly, so they are more building blocks. There’s self-sovereign identity, that’s going to be extremely important. It’s going to be the way we access services on protocol-based open platforms on the decentralized World‑wide‑web: Web 3.0. Reputation systems, bounty systems, governance tools, accounting systems are all important components. They’re really useful in their own right, but they’re going to form components of more complex solutions, and other elements include standards for fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens, and atomic swap mechanisms, decentralized exchanges, and getting rid of counterparty risk. Applying those same ideas to the insurance industry or to lending, where instead of standing up an insurance company that offers products, we, and others, are trying to build open networks that are protocol-based, so that anybody can put a parametrized insurance product on this protocol, anybody can put a parametrized lending product on this protocol. And trying to build as many of these standards on Ethereum and push them down in the stack to create this shared infrastructure that we can all collaborate on and enable people to essentially get a lot of that for free and build useful products for different consumers and businesses. Essentially, we’re moving from a world where we had monarchs or sovereigns setting the rules, making the judgments, subjective governance, to a world where we increasingly have rule-based governance. However, that rule-based governance, in countries where that applies, is usually subjectively determined, defined and applied and executed. If we can take that rule-based way of organizing our society and we can move it from subjective manual application of trust to an automated guaranteed application of trust of these rule-based systems, then we will have a better foundation on which to layer all the technology that we have built over thousands of years, and hopefully a more equitable, more decentralized government, and a better society. Let’s talk about Token Generation Events. In 2017, utility token was the buzzword, and now in 2018 we’re all sitting and talking about security tokens. I’m wondering what your take is? Because in every project you guys also have a token, you have Token Foundry, you’re building new economic models, so how do you see the evolution of all this? The Token Foundry team has helped some of our projects, and third-party external projects to token launch themselves. We’ve issued investor tokens, one great example is a project called Brade. It’s a movie that got into Tribeca, and it shows in the Tribeca Film Festival, so it’s a very exciting project, and we essentially crowdfunded a movie. The people got tokens for that, and we raised 1.7 million dollars, it’s a security, and it enables people to get 15 percent back on top of their principal, they’re getting 30% of profits in perpetuity, so it’s a cool system and an experiment. We have many different projects that are consumer utility tokens and would not be considered securities, even in this context, at this point in time, there’s a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that has been raised by regulators around the world. The SEC has made certain pronouncements about consumer tokens or utility tokens, early statements were to the effect that all these tokens are probably securities. Regulators around the world have a dilemma, the problem is that there are a lot of great projects there, a lot of fraudulent projects, a lot of projects that are selling what could and should be good, well-constructed consumer utility tokens, but they’re selling them to investors in enormous quantities, in quantities far greater than they could actually use, so they’re really selling them as an investment. So the SEC’s opinion, from what we’ve discerned, is that those things constitute securities. So we have a framework that enables us to sell consumer utility tokens, not in enormous quantities, not with discounts for large investors, not to investors you essentially have to be a technically accredited token buyer, you have to answer questions, you have to demonstrate you will use these tokens on these platforms, and so that that’s a good clean way to sell a token that represents some sort of access or consumption of a resource. There have been the nefarious actors for thousands of years who take advantage of information asymmetries in order to defraud consumers, and that’s still going on in our space. I think that we will have the tools to make it a better situation. Unfortunately, the global context of this technology and the low barrier to entry for running a token launch has exacerbated that information asymmetry. But we can make use of those characteristics to self-regulate and to build systems that protect consumers better. In the old context, you can register shares and sell them using a bucket shop to naive grandmothers via the telephone. That’s a hard scheme to ferret out in this world. In order to have a successful token launch, you have to publish a white paper, you have to get a telegram or get a website up, and we can find those things pretty easily no matter where they are in the world. We are creating a project called the True Set, that’s an EDGAR-like database for token launches. Ideally, if you’re going to be a legitimate token launch, you’re going to have to register significant data in this database, so we will all be able to point to it in the database. If possible, we can have people scrutinize that database and determine that the disclosures are accurate, and so we’ll have this wisdom of the crowd dedicated to identifying these projects and analyzing them. We have a project called Frontier that incentivizes professional analysts to share their work. If you look at platforms, like Reddit, where people just tear apart white papers, there is a lot of energy out there that can be directed to cleaning up this space. We certainly need bodies like the SEC to scare many projects straight, and to create a context of concern so that many different projects think twice and do their legal homework before releasing their token. In Israel, we’re considered the Startup Nation in the traditional startup scene, and we’ve recently been acknowledged as the Crypto or the Blockchain Nation. You’re about to open an office in Tel Aviv, I’m wondering what is your vision or your strategy and what are you on the look when you open a new branch somewhere in the world? Over the last three and a half years, we’ve gone places that wanted us, we spoke to people who wanted to learn about what we’re doing. We were happy to speak to anybody who wanted to listen to this stuff, now we’re pretty overwhelmed with demand, and we’ve now done various different projects around the world in different nations, with different central banks and governments. But two places in the world feel a little bit similar to me — one is Israel, because of the startup culture, because of the world-class cybersecurity, cryptography, and mathematics expertise. The other place is Silicon Valley, where you have technologists who are building the systems that they believe effectively structure the world. Those two places, especially Silicon Valley, was slow to embrace Blockchain because of course, they know how to run the world based on Facebook and Google and other technologies. They are a pinnacle of the web 2.0 world. But some early adopters moved into the Bitcoin space, and they iterated in that space for a while, and I think they have now realized some pretty narrow technology. It’s really just one application from an infinite number of applications that you can build on the blockchain. So, in both those regions we felt that the people there have extreme talent but also were very sophisticated, and we should up our game, both at the Ethereum platform level and at the Consensys level, so that we could go into those places and answer all the questions and have respectable things to say in those particular situations. So a year ago, we formed an office in San Francisco, it’s grown to about 50 people now. We’re about to take a much bigger office and to really be a catalyst. Ethereum is starting to catch fire there. It’s being aided by GDPR, it’s being aided by Cambridge Analytica, and lots of engineers are just wondering what they’re doing with their lives. That business model of exploiting people’s personal information may not last that long, and it should evolve. Israel is really exciting to us because the talent here is tremendous. We want to build an R&D lab here like many companies do, but we really want to build a full-stack hub. Some of the earliest technologies in the Bitcoin space, in the early colored coins, and Mastercoin projects were performed here. Ethereum is gaining quite a bit of traction here, as people realize that it is a pretty powerful technology, a decentralized application platform. Full stack to us means we build an office that focuses on education, through Consensys Academy, we hire lots of engineers, they can do consulting work, we bring projects into the Mesh and incubate them, we invest in projects in the ecosystem. All elements of human society are invited to come in join us in the decentralized future. Originally published at cryptopotato.com on June 8, 2018.

The secrets behind the success of Ethereum & Consensys

ConsenSys Founder Joe Lubin on the Future of Blockchain

ConsenSys Academy is focused on educating the next wave of Ethereum developers. I’m considering applying, although there’s a $1k price tag on the course. But I mean… there isn’t a price tag on being able to develop on the biggest open-source project in distributed systems — Ethereum 🔥 You have till June 4th to apply: https://consensys.net/academy/2018developer/ Below is my cover letter submission. Thought I’d repost it here as it reveals a bit about me and why I’m in the space. I’m a software engineer who’s passionate about building cool shit. I’ve gone from mobile game development, to building web applications, and now working with . I’m fairly young, so I wasn’t around during the early days of the internet. I wasn’t a developer yet when Apple opened the iPhone to developers with the App Store. And I don’t know where I was in 2009, but I wasn’t buying Bitcoin. Although I wasn’t around for any of those opportunities, I think being a Solidity developer is my big break. blockchain technology By day, I’m a software engineer at the coolest French startup in New York — (we’re hiring btw, just ask!). The product is a voice platform for business, built on a fairly complex Ruby on Rails stack. By night (okay — when I’m not out clubbing, playing pool, or exploring the city) I like to code decentralized applications and read about the progress other projects are making; two of the most interesting ones being and . I’d like to think that being early to the game (a decentralized Internet) will only be beneficial to my career. Aircall Spankchain 0x Protocol Whenever I’m asked to describe myself, I like to choose three words. Ambitious. Hacker. Chill. I’m a driven person who sets high goals only to shatter them and set even higher ones. I hack life by living a healthy and balanced lifestyle. But at the end of the day, I’m a laid back person who enjoys wine on rooftops as much I enjoy staying in and binging Mad Men (for the third time). So how would I benefit from this developer program? I’d grind those 8 weeks, come out a more knowledgable blockchain engineer, and use it as a trajectory to set higher goals and build cooler shit. Well there you go. I guess it could’ve been more formal but hey — I’m not your average dev 😎 If you’re in NYC — let’s grab a beer! Always up for some blockchain conversations (but not about your investments 🙏). I’m on . twitter

My cover letter submission for the ConsenSys developer program (2018)

Last week, the SEC filed a suit against Consensys, the developer of the popular MetaMask wallet. The SEC claims that Consensys, which “markets itself as a leader and innovator in the crypto asset industry”, was offering products that performed age-old functions. These products include brokering securities transactions for retail investors and engaging in the offer and sale of securities. According to the SEC, Consensys should have registered as a broker, as well as registered the offer and sale of certain securities. The SEC is focused on going after MetaMask Swaps and MetaMask Staking services. This is not the first time the SEC has accused staking services of violating securities laws. Back in 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase and Kraken. Meanwhile, the well-known case against Binance involved multiple allegations and ultimately put Binance’s founder CZ in jail. Kraken’s case is illustrative. The management of the crypto exchange decided that it was futile to oppose the regulator. As a result, Kraken stopped offering its staking-as-a-service program for U.S. users. The service is still available for customers in other countries. Kraken’s settlement with the SEC also involved payment of $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. Apparently, Consensys believes that it is in a better position compared to Binance or Kraken. The company has previously sued the SEC in a preventive effort to stop a potential suit against Consensys. As we know now, this attempt has failed, and the regulator proceeded with its own lawsuit against the company. Consensys' lawsuit centered on the classification of ETH, arguing that it should be recognized as a commodity rather than a security. The company emphasized that Ethereum is a global computing platform, not an investment scheme. Consensys expressed concerns about the potential designation of ETH as a security, given MetaMask's pivotal role in the ETH ecosystem. Taking a look at last year’s cases of Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, it is obvious that the SEC does not plan to destroy the whole industry or any single coin. Such a plan is impossible both technically and politically as the crypto industry has gained strong momentum and coins have found their place in portfolios of multiple investors of any level, from retail guys to institutional pros. The regulator uses lawsuits to get more control over the industry and slow down its development. However, things are not always going in the SEC's favor. In the case of SEC vs Ripple, the regulator has mostly lost the case. The court found out that Ripple violated securities laws when selling XRP to institutional investors but dismissed other charges brought by the regulator. In this light, Consensys should have a decent chance for a long and complicated court battle against the SEC. Potentially, the company may try to wait for the changes in the SEC leadership, hoping that new people will be more crypto friendly. Talking about ETH, its holders have nothing to worry about. As usual, the case might generate some FUD on Ethereum, which is typical for the industry. Last week, the SEC filed a suit against Consensys, the developer of the popular MetaMask wallet. The SEC claims that Consensys, which “markets itself as a leader and innovator in the crypto asset industry”, was offering products that performed age-old functions. claims claims These products include brokering securities transactions for retail investors and engaging in the offer and sale of securities. According to the SEC, Consensys should have registered as a broker, as well as registered the offer and sale of certain securities. The SEC is focused on going after MetaMask Swaps and MetaMask Staking services. This is not the first time the SEC has accused staking services of violating securities laws. Back in 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase and Kraken. Meanwhile, the well-known case against Binance involved multiple allegations and ultimately put Binance’s founder CZ in jail. Kraken’s case is illustrative. The management of the crypto exchange decided that it was futile to oppose the regulator. As a result, Kraken stopped offering its staking-as-a-service program for U.S. users. The service is still available for customers in other countries. Kraken’s settlement with the SEC also involved payment of $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. case Apparently, Consensys believes that it is in a better position compared to Binance or Kraken. The company has previously sued the SEC in a preventive effort to stop a potential suit against Consensys. As we know now, this attempt has failed, and the regulator proceeded with its own lawsuit against the company. sued sued Consensys' lawsuit centered on the classification of ETH, arguing that it should be recognized as a commodity rather than a security. The company emphasized that Ethereum is a global computing platform, not an investment scheme. Consensys expressed concerns about the potential designation of ETH as a security, given MetaMask's pivotal role in the ETH ecosystem. Taking a look at last year’s cases of Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, it is obvious that the SEC does not plan to destroy the whole industry or any single coin. Such a plan is impossible both technically and politically as the crypto industry has gained strong momentum and coins have found their place in portfolios of multiple investors of any level, from retail guys to institutional pros. The regulator uses lawsuits to get more control over the industry and slow down its development. However, things are not always going in the SEC's favor. In the case of SEC vs Ripple , the regulator has mostly lost the case. The court found out that Ripple violated securities laws when selling XRP to institutional investors but dismissed other charges brought by the regulator. SEC vs Ripple In this light, Consensys should have a decent chance for a long and complicated court battle against the SEC. Potentially, the company may try to wait for the changes in the SEC leadership, hoping that new people will be more crypto friendly. Talking about ETH, its holders have nothing to worry about. As usual, the case might generate some FUD on Ethereum, which is typical for the industry.

SEC vs MetaMask: Is Staking Is Under Fire Again?

The hype around blockchain technologies may have quieted, but the builders are still building. The toughest technical problems that kept blockchain from mass adoption over the past few years—slow and expensive transactions—are being solved by layer 2s. zkEVMs, and Linea in particular, are a key part of this solution. Let’s look at layer 2s on Ethereum—their architecture, why they are needed, what zkEVMs are and how they work, and the details of the new mainnet release. Linea The Architecture of Layer 2s Ethereum—the blockchain that first enabled smart contracts and underpins a majority of web3 dapps—has traditionally been slow and expensive. It’s a known problem. Creating a decentralized infrastructure that is fast, secure, and cheap is an incredibly difficult technical challenge. (This is also known as the - a network can’t be decentralized and both secure and scalable). blockchain trilemma Let’s look briefly at why. At a high level, Ethereum has three components: The blockchain which keeps track of addresses and their token holdings The consensus mechanism where nodes keep track of the movement of tokens among those addresses The execution environment where the smart contracts are run (the Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM) The Ethereum network prioritizes security over everything else. To ensure the validity of the information in the blockchain, it uses the consensus mechanism to ensure . This consensus is an extremely complicated problem that Ethereum (and blockchain) solve. that no one actor by themselves can alter the state of the network But in order to solve it, the consensus mechanism was made slow—on purpose. As a result, Ethereum as a whole was slow. Unfortunately, when you’re trying to build something that needs a modern UX—a decentralized game that stores users’ actions on-chain, or a DeFi solution that manages everything from micropayments to millions of dollars, or a provable way to monetize digital art—it can’t be built on a foundation of slow and expensive transactions. This is where layer 2s like Linea come in. They are a new generation of blockchains built on top of Ethereum. At a high level, they execute transactions quickly and cheaply using their own novel architectures, then commit those transactions (often as a rolled-up batch of transactions) to the Ethereum blockchain. Executing transactions on the L2 minimizes gas fees and makes the transaction fast and cheap. Committing those transactions, in the end, to Ethereum keeps them decentralized and secure. It’s the best of both worlds! What are zkEVMs and why are they the future of blockchain scalability? , created by , is a particular type of layer 2 called a zkEVM. Linea ConsenSys A zkEVM is a layer 2 solution that uses a cryptography technology known as zero-knowledge rollups (ZK rollups). These ZK rollups use zero-knowledge proofs to move those heavy transactions and computations off Ethereum, while keeping them secure and easily verifiable. zkEVMs are especially exciting as L2s because they are EVM-compatible. This means developers can use the existing Ethereum ecosystem—smart contracts, tools, and libraries—they already use with little to no modifications. Linea goes a step further as a “developer first” L2, meaning as a primary design developers can bring the tools and processes they already use and know. It’s an L2 that can be used almost identically to the ways developers already use Ethereum. Linea: Mainnet Release Linea was released to mainnet alpha on July 11th, 2023. Linea, and zkEVMs in general, moving to mainnet is perhaps the most critical step needed for mainstream adoption of Ethereum dapps. With Linea and other L2s, those games and de-fi dapps finally work as they were originally envisioned. They will be fast and cheap enough for the general public. It’s a milestone to celebrate. I encourage you to experiment and try out Linea for yourself. For details on deploying a smart contract to Linea, check out my previous article, Deploy an ERC-721 Smart Contract on Linea. Before you start, however, let’s cover some of the technical details of the Linea release you should be aware of: This is a mainnet release, so there will be initial limitations. alpha MetaMask and ConsenSys NFT will be onboarded to mainnet during the first week. Over , including Aave, Infura, LayerZero, Truffle, and Uniswap have already integrated with testnet and will move onto mainnet over the coming months. 100 other partners Several architectural upgrades are included in this release, including Postman SDK and cross-chain messaging, batch conflation to reduce fixed (verification) costs, and more. See . the complete list here And since this is a mainnet alpha, there are a few key points to remember as you explore: The initial release is guarded. ConsenSys is taking measures to ensure the security of the network and user funds, so some functionality might be disabled at first. For one, the network is still somewhat centralized (for now). During the first week, RPC calls to the network are only available to partners. After that, the network will open to developers. There will be initial limits on withdrawals over the first 90 days. There is an initial delay with commits from L2 to Ethereum of 8 hours to protect against malicious actors. There is not yet full coverage of the EVM opcodes and precompiles. Linea does not have its own token; it uses ETH as its native token. Conclusion The L2s are here … and Ethereum is finally living up to the hype. Transactions are blazing fast and transaction costs are negligible. And zk rollup solutions such as Linea are leading the way. The next generation of dapps should be fast, cheap, and have superior user experiences. L2s are paving the way to Ethereum scalability and mainstream adoption. Also published . here

zkEVMs and the Future of Blockchain Scalability — Linea Comes to Mainnet

There are many new L2s emerging in the Web3 ecosystem with the goal of improving Ethereum’s scalability. These L2s use a variety of solutions to create layers on top of Ethereum that are faster, cheaper, and yet still benefit from the base Ethereum blockchain layer to secure transactions. Among this new set of layer two solutions, zk-rollups (or zero-knowledge rollups) have risen to the top. , launched by ConsenSys, specifically is one of the most anticipated zk-rollup projects. Linea In this article, we’ll explore what makes Linea so exciting. Then, we’ll walk through a tutorial on how to build a dapp on the Linea testnet. Finally, we’ll create our own cryptocurrency on Linea using , , and : all mature ecosystem tools that are used by blockchain developers to build dapps. Solidity MetaMask Truffle Let’s get started. Linea: a Direct Line From Ethereum’s Past to Its Present Zk-rollups are a layer 2 solution that greatly reduces the amount of data that needs to be stored and processed on a blockchain. Zk-rollups work by conducting computations off-chain (where it’s cheaper and faster) and creating to validate these transactions, which are then recorded on-chain on the main Ethereum network. zero-knowledge proofs Some of the current projects using zk-proofs include Starknet (zk-starks), Loopring (zk-snarks), Immutable X, and zkSync. But, among the zk-rollups, the is arguably the most exciting development in the world of blockchain. zkEVM combines zk-rollups with EVMs (Ethereum Virtual Machines). zkEVM zkEVMs boast incredibly high throughput and super low transaction costs thanks to their rollup scaling solution. At the same time, they are which makes it possible for Ethereum developers to use zk-rollups with the knowledge and tools they already have. EVM-compatible Although zkEVMs are a nascent technology, a few companies like ConsenSys have managed to make breakthroughs in the space. ConsenSys recently launched , a public testnet for its heavily anticipated zkEVM chain. Linea Linea is a developer-first zk-rollup, focused on not only delivering the promise of zkEVM, but doing it in a way that supports a seamless developer environment with to existing tools. native integrations Create Your Own Cryptocurrency on the Linea Zk-Rollup Let’s jump in and see how it all works by deploying a token contract on Linea. Along the way, we’ll see how cheap it is to deploy our contract and how we can take advantage of Linea’s EVM-equivalency with the knowledge and tools Ethereum developers are already familiar with. Step 1: Install MetaMask The first thing we’re going to do is set up a MetaMask wallet and add the Linea test network to it. MetaMask is the world’s most popular, secure, and easy-to-use self-custodial wallet. You can download the MetaMask extension for your browser . here After you install the extension, MetaMask will set up the wallet for you. In the process, you will be given a secret phrase. Keep that safe, and under no circumstances should you make it public. Once you’ve set up MetaMask, click on the Network tab in the top-right corner of your screen. You will see an option to show/hide test networks. MetaMask comes automatically configured with the Linea network. Once you turn the test networks on, you should be able to see the Linea Goerli test network in the dropdown. Step 2: Get Some goerliETH In order to deploy our smart contract and interact with it, we will require some free test ETH. The first step of this process is to acquire some goerliETH on the main Goerli test network. You can obtain this for free from the list of faucets available . here Once you fund your wallet, switch back to the Goerli test network on MetaMask. You should now see a non-zero balance. Step 3: Bridge goerliETH to Linea Now that we have funds on Goerli, let’s bridge them over to Linea using the Hop protocol. Visit the Hop exchange and connect your MetaMask wallet (using the Connect Wallet button on the upper right). here Once your wallet is connected, select the From network as Goerli and the To network as Linea. For this tutorial, around 0.2 ETH should be sufficient. Once you click Send, the bridging should take a few minutes. Once it is done, switch to the Linea network on MetaMask. You should see a non-zero balance. Step 4: Install NPM and Node Like all Ethereum dapps, we will build our project using node and npm. In case you don't have these installed on your local machine, you can do so . here To ensure everything is working correctly, run the following command: $ node -v If all goes well, you should see a version number for node. Step 5: Sign up for an Infura Account In order to deploy our contract to the Linea network, we will require an Infura account. Infura gives us access to RPC endpoints that allow for fast, reliable, and easy access to the blockchain of our choice. Sign up for a free account . Once you’ve created your account, navigate to the and select Create New Key. here dashboard For the network, choose Web3 API and name it Linea. Once you click on Create, Infura will generate an API key for you, and give you RPC endpoints to Ethereum, Linea, other L2s, and non-EVM L1s (and their corresponding testnets) automatically. For this tutorial, we are only interested in the Linea RPC endpoint. This URL is of the form <> Step 6: Create a Node Project and Install the Necessary Packages Let's set up an empty project repository by running the following commands: $ mkdir sunshine-coin && cd sunshine-coin $ npm init -y We will be using Truffle, a world-class development environment and testing framework for EVM smart contracts, to build and deploy our cryptocurrency smart contract. Install Truffle by running: $ npm install —save-dev truffle We can now create a barebones Truffle project by running the following command: $ npx truffle init To check if everything works properly, run: $ npx truffle test We now have Truffle successfully configured. Now, let’s install the OpenZeppelin contracts package. This package will give us access to the ERC-20 base implementation (the standard for fungible tokens) as well as a few helpful additional functionalities. $ npm install @openzeppelin/contracts To allow Truffle to use our MetaMask wallet, sign transactions, and pay for gas on our behalf, we will need another package called hdwalletprovider. Install it by using the following command: $ npm install –save-dev @truffle/hdwallet-provider Finally, in order to keep our sensitive wallet information safe, we will use the dotenv package. $ npm install dotenv Step 7: Create the “Sunshine” Coin Contract Open the project repository in your favorite code editor (e.g., VS Code). In the contracts folder, create a new file called SunshineCoin.sol. We’re going to write an ERC-20 contract that inherits default features offered by and mints 10,000 coins to the deployer (or owner) of the contract. We’ll call it “sunshine coin” just for fun! OpenZeppelin We’re also going to implement functionality that allows a wallet to mint 100 coins for free on a one-time basis. Add the following code to  SunshineCoin.sol. // SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT pragma solidity ^0.8.9; import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC20/ERC20.sol"; import "@openzeppelin/contracts/access/Ownable.sol"; contract SunshineCoin is Ownable, ERC20 { // Mapping to check if a wallet has claimed its free coins mapping(address => bool) public hasClaimed; constructor() ERC20("Sunshine COin", "SC") { _mint(msg.sender, 1000000 * 10 ** ERC20.decimals()); } // Let owner mint tokens freely function mintTokens(uint _amount) public onlyOwner { _mint(msg.sender, _amount * 10 ** ERC20.decimals()); } // Let a wallet claim 100 tokens for free function claimTokens() public { require(hasClaimed[msg.sender] == false); _mint(msg.sender, 100 * 10 ** ERC20.decimals()); hasClaimed[msg.sender] = true; } } Make sure the contract is compiling correctly by running: npx truffle compile Step 8: Update Truffle Config and Create a .env File Create a new file in the project’s root directory called .env, and add the following contents: MNEMONIC = "<Your-MetaMask-Secret-Recovery-Phrase>" Next, let’s add information about our wallet, the Infura RPC endpoint, and the Linea network to our Truffle config file. Replace the contents of truffle.config.js with the following: require('dotenv').config(); const HDWalletProvider = require('@truffle/hdwallet-provider'); const { MNEMONIC } = process.env; module.exports = { networks: { development: { host: "127.0.0.1", port: 8545, network_id: "*" }, linea: { provider: () => new HDWalletProvider(MNEMONIC, `https://rpc.goerli.linea.build/`), network_id: '59140', } } }; Step 9: Deploy the Contract Let us now write a script to deploy our contract to the Linea zkEVM blockchain. In the migrations folder, create a new file called  1_deploy_contract.js, and add the following code: // Get instance of the Sunshine Coin contract const lineaContract = artifacts.require("SunshineCoin"); module.exports = function (deployer) { // Deploy the contract deployer.deploy(lineaContract); }; We’re all set! Deploy the contract by running the following command: truffle migrate --network linea If all goes well, you should see an output (containing the contract address) that looks something like this: Compiling your contracts... =========================== > Everything is up to date, there is nothing to compile. Starting migrations... ====================== > Network name:    'linea' > Network id:      59140 > Block gas limit: 30000000 (0x1c9c380) 1_deploy_contract.js ==================== Deploying 'SunshineCoin' ---------------------- > transaction hash:    0x865db376d1c8de21f4a882b9c0678e419708481eda4234a8f98c4f4975ee6373 > Blocks: 2            Seconds: 18 > contract address:    0x64ccE52898F5d61380D2Ec8C02F2EF16F28436de > block number:        414030 > block timestamp:     1680726601 > account:             0xc361Fc33b99F88612257ac8cC2d852A5CEe0E217 > balance:             0.185605297028804606 > gas used:            1704607 (0x1a029f) > gas price:           2.500000007 gwei > value sent:          0 ETH > total cost:          0.004261517511932249 ETH > Saving artifacts ------------------------------------- > Total cost:     0.004261517511932249 ETH Summary ======= > Total deployments:   1 > Final cost:          0.004261517511932249 ETH Notice how incredibly cheap the deployment was! Transaction fees are minimal. Also, notice that the steps we followed were almost identical to what we would’ve done if we were deploying on the Ethereum mainnet. Step 9: Add Your Token to MetaMask As a last step, let’s add our token to MetaMask so we are able to send, receive, and view the balance. Open MetaMask, and in the assets section at the bottom, click on import Tokens. Here you will be asked to add the contract address and symbol of your token. Once you do that, you should be able to see the correct balance of your token in the Assets tab. Keeping Building With Linea Congratulations! You’ve successfully deployed a smart contract to the Linea testnet. Because Linea is EVM-equivalent, we were able to leverage the best-in-class tools already available for blockchain development. We didn’t need to learn a whole new stack to take advantage of a zk-rollup solution or to develop for Linea. More importantly, Linea gave us over the main chain. much-improved speed and low gas fees It’s Ethereum scaling and cryptography at its best—and it’s a massive step towards making blockchains and dapps more accessible and usable by the masses. To learn more about Linea and to start building apps, refer to the documentation . There are lots of use cases you can explore, including NFTs, DeFi, decentralized exchanges, and more. Have fun! here Also published here Photo by Lanju Fotografie on Unsplash

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