talks

Note: Slides can be autogenerated from this .md markdown file using tools like marp, remarkjs, etc.

Ethereum 101

@paulcowgill

Who am I?

@paulcowgill

Freelance full-stack Eth dev.

Building Tasit project.

I help with organizing the Chicago Ethereum Meetup.

This workshop

The markdown file with all of this info we’ll be talking about is available at:

bit.ly/8th-light-ethereum-101

Alternatively, you can get here directly via GitHub:

github.com/pcowgill/talks

This workshop/talk will cover the different components of the crypto (web3) tech stack and the current state of the art using the Ethereum blockchain.

Any questions?

Feel free to interrupt me at any time. Freeform / real-time questions work best for me.

Or if you’re feeling shy, we can crowdsource questions online. Go to sli.do and enter the event code #8th-light-ethereum. I’ll stop to check for the most upvoted questions at some point during the workshop.

Here is the direct link to the sli.do with our questions, etc. from during the talk: https://app.sli.do/event/qbv9lvdr/live/questions

What to expect

  1. Explore: Explore some data on the blockchain visually.
  2. Why: Hear a few arguments for why this tech/movement matters.
  3. Dapps: Try out a couple of particularly useful dapps (decentralized apps) together.
  4. Gas: Receive an introduction to the concept of gas.
  5. Reading and writing: Learn about good practices for reading and writing data, indexing data, etc.

Explore

Set up a wallet

In order for this exploration to be tangibly meaningful, let’s set up wallets first.

While there are lots of choices for wallets, it will be the simplest if you all use MetaMask for today.

I’ll send you all testnet ETH shortly using the testnet version of the Gnosis Safe (a different Ethereum wallet that has cool features like account recovery).

There are lots of other great alternatives that we won’t have time to try out today including: Argent, Coinbase Wallet, Status, and Trust.

Get test Ether

{ Walk around scanning QR codes to send ETH on the Rinkeby testnet }

Or get test ether this way

bit.ly/8th-light-linkdrop

Explore the blockchain

Other UIs

Here are some alternatives to Etherscan:

Notifications

Etherscan

Tenderly

Dagger

Big data questions

Visual tools by Alethio:

ethstats.io

explorer.aleth.io

reports.aleth.io/queries

Note: Programmatic tools covered later in the “reading data” section of this talk

DeFi user analysis

Source

If image doesn’t load

Why

Why does crypto / blockchain tech matter?

Why Ethereum?

Why cover this through the lens of Ethereum?

Developer network effect

Facebook likes with information => micropayments with money

Blockchains are for solving coordination problems

Defaults matter

Blockchains are for transfering anything of value

Why is this important for society?

  1. AI -> tyranny, blockchain -> democracy: article by Yuval Noah Harari
  2. The Truth Machine: book about where all of this is going
  3. Social justice: people from Occupy Wall Street making activist blockchain projects
  4. Social good: local meetup in Chicago
  5. Podcast episode: why decentralization matters by a16z
  6. Toy markets: YC blog post
  7. Twitter thread: a historical perspective on governance by Naval Ravikant

Why is this important as an entrepreneur / developer?

Zero platform risk -> the great unbundling of front end and back end (and of individual front end features). Users get “right to exit” meaning that they can elect to use alternative clients without losing all of their data and the network effect of the platform, and the tech tycoons of the future can’t prevent them from doing so.

Composability

Dapps

Wallets

The wallets you set up earlier are a prerequisite for using these dapps.

(Note: Hopefully that won’t be the case in the future.)

DAOs

Note: You should be logged into the MetaMask browser extension and load this page on a PC in order for it to show up properly.

{ Set up an Aragon DAO for the group }

Here’s the Aragon DAO we created during the workshop: https://rinkeby.aragon.org/#/somethingssilly/0xc115960ace21e4d87b951ef11fdfdb38e170d19c/

Note that there are two s’s at the beginning of silly - a typo

TCRs

Humanity DAO (caveat that this is kind of a DAO and an identity solution too)

DeFi

Exchanges

Uniswap

Lending

Dharma

Credit

Bloom

DeFi part deux

Insurance

Nexus Mutual

Prediction markets Guesser and Sight by Gnosis

{ Try Uniswap }

Games

{ Optional: Purchase a digital collectible and exchange it with others. }

VR

Decentraland

Art

Clovers

SuperRare

Known Origin

Music

Audius

Social

Cent

Peepeth

Identity

3Box

BrightID

Marketplaces
Internet Infrastructure

ENS

Gas

Gas

{ Talk a bit about how gas is used on Ethereum }

Reading and writing

What are we reading from and writing to again?

Here’s an example project set up on studio.ethereum.org

The Truffle framework for developing smart contracts

Or Buidler (task runner), ethers, Waffle (test runner), and TypeChain (typings for smart contracts)

Writing

ethers

Signers and providers are different features

Provider might be Infura, Alchemy, Etherscan, your own local node

Has a CLI

Writing in a test env first

Deps
import { ethers } from "@nomiclabs/buidler";
import chai from "chai";
import { deployContract, getWallets, solidity } from "ethereum-waffle";

import CounterAbi from "../build/Counter.json";
import { Counter } from "../types/Counter";

chai.use(solidity);
const { expect } = chai;
Setup
describe("Counter", () => {
  const provider = ethers.provider;
  const [wallet] = getWallets(provider);

  // use contract type
  let counter: Counter;

  beforeEach(async () => {
    // cast as type
    counter = await deployContract(wallet, CounterAbi) as Counter;

    // function name is available as part of types
    const initialCount = await counter.getCount();

    expect(initialCount).to.eq(0);
    expect(counter.address).to.properAddress;
  });
Tests

  it("should count up", async () => {
    await counter.countUp();
    let count = await counter.getCount();
    expect(count).to.eq(1);

    await counter.countUp();
    count = await counter.getCount();
    expect(count).to.eq(2);
  });

  it("should count down", async () => {
    await counter.countDown();
    const count = await counter.getCount();
    expect(count).to.eq(0);
  });
});

{ Mention potential CLI usage with ENS }

Writing on mainnet from a front end

Configuring app

import { Web3ReactProvider } from "@web3-react/core";
import { ethers } from "ethers";

function getLibrary(provider) {
  const library = new ethers.providers.Web3Provider(provider);
  library.pollingInterval = 10000;
  return library;
}

ReactDOM.render(
  <Web3ReactProvider getLibrary={getLibrary}>
    <App />
  </Web3ReactProvider>,
  document.getElementById("root")
);

Wiring up connection

import { InjectedConnector } from "@web3-react/injected-connector";

export const injected = new InjectedConnector({
  supportedChainIds: [1]
});

Connect on click

import { injected } from "../connectors";
import { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import { useWeb3React } from "@web3-react/core";

export default function WalletComponent() {
  const { activate, active } = useWeb3React();

  const [tried, setTried] = useState(false);
  const tryActivation = async connector => {
    try {
      await activate(connector, undefined, true);
    } catch (e) {
      setTried(true);
    }
  };
  return (
    <OptionGrid>
      <Option
        onClick={() => {
          tryActivation(injected);
        }}
        active={injected === connector}
        color="#E8831D"
        header="MetaMask"
        icon={require("../../assets/images/metamask.png")}
      />
    </OptionGrid>
  );
}
Reading programmatically

Tools for ELK / elastic stack

There are some tools out there for this as well

Thanks! Any questions?

@paulcowgill on Twitter