Devs Do Something

Latest Episodes:

@big_tech_sux on Vyper, Compilers, and the Future of Smart Contract Programming Languages Sep 15, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, we talk with a vyper contributor and compiler expert who pseudonymously goes by @big_tech_sux on Twitter.

Bts knows a lot about programming languages, and we go deep into vyper in this episode. We discuss things like vyper's evolution, standardized intermediate representations for web3 compilers, and titanoboa - a new contribution to the vyper development toolchain which is dramatically improving UX.

BTS on twitter: https://twitter.com/big_tech_sux
Vyper: https://vyper.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Titanoboa: https://github.com/vyperlang/titanoboa

Show Notes:
00:00 Intro
2:15 How BTS got into the space
4:13 Vyper's evolution
7:24 Standardized intermediate representations for EVM languages
15:47 How will the web3 language space evolve?
20:10 Vyper’s design decisions over time
37:01 Titanoboa & its features
50:31 Why the name Big Tech Sux?
52:02 BTS' long term vision for the space

Nicolás Venturo: Solidity, Engineering at Balancer Labs, & the Dangers of Gas Golfing Sep 08, 2022

Show notes

Today's guest is Nicolás Venturo, a blockchain engineer at Balancer Labs and former engineer at Open Zeppelin - where he contributed to one of the first audits of the solidity compiler.

Nicolás is very well versed on the ins & outs of solidity, smart contract development, and best practiced for security. Prior to getting involved in crypto, he was an embedded systems engineer, and has spent most of his career thinking through low level systems.

In this episode, we discuss Nicolás' thoughts on how solidity has evolved over the years, Balancer's engineering process, Nicolás' favorite design patterns, and the dangers of gas golfing.

Shownotes:
00:00 How Nicolas got into the space
4:20 Parallels between solidity development & building embedded systems
12:21 Nicolas’ thoughts on assembly languages like Yul & Huff
19:21 Standard Libraries?
27:55 Nicolas’ favorite design patterns, and why *readability* matters!
41:33 The dangers of gas golfing
46:00 Balancer’s custom error’s library: revert strings without hitting byte code size limits
54:27 How Balancer makes use of batching in their codebase
1:00:40 How the Balancer engineering team approaches development cycles
1:08:31 If Nicolás couldn’t work on Balancer for 6 months, what would he work on?
1:15:24 What does Nicolás think the long term destiny of crypto will be

Links
Nicolás on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrnventuro
Balancer: https://balancer.fi/
Balancer's custom errors library: https://github.com/balancer-labs/balancer-v2-monorepo/blob/weighted-deployment/contracts/lib/helpers/BalancerErrors.sol
Open Zeppelin defender: https://www.openzeppelin.com/defender
Nicolás at ETHLATAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y5IDfJQGVk
Nicolás in a recent talk on smart contract security: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zzr87YB6TQ

Chris Maree: Engineering at UMA Protocol, Cross Chain Tech, and Optimistic Oracle Design Sep 01, 2022

Show notes

Today’s guest is Chris Maree, a senior engineer at UMA protocol. Chris got into crypto several years ago and is a wealth of knowledge on solidity development, DeFi, & cryptoeconomics. In this episode, we go deep on engineering at UMA, and got to ask Chris a ton of questions about smart contract design patterns. We discuss the cryptoeconomics of UMA’s optimistic oracle, the low level design of UMA’s Across bridge, gas optimization, security, and Chris’ long term vision for the space.

If you’re an engineer interested in smart contract development & DeFi, we think you’re going to love this one.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
3:10 How Chris got involved in crypto

6:50 UMA’s optimistic oracle

11:39 Examples of long tail data usage in web3

13:45 Walking through technical examples of how the optimistic oracle works

23:00 The use of ‘ancillary data' to turn the optimistic oracle into a ‘Turing complete’ oracle

27:31 Behind the scenes on the Optimistic Oracle design

31:53 What is Across: bridging as a lending problem vs bridging as a swapping problem

34:00 The Across Hub & Spoke Model For Liquidity

38:00 Can you pass call data across chains with Across?

39:30 The use of ‘bundles’ in Across

49:20 Favorite UMA design patterns

52:03 UMA engineering design practices

58:04 Chris’ approach to security and engaging auditors

1:00:06 Trends Chris is excited about (Cross chain MEV, NFT derivatives)

1:02:50 Chris’ long term vision for the future of crypto

Links: https://docs.umaproject.org/
Chris on Github: https://github.com/chrismaree

Austin Griffith: Dev Tooling, Scaffold-ETH, and Leveling Up as a Web3 Dev Aug 25, 2022

Show notes

Today, we have Austin Griffith, dev tooling & dev education extraordinaire. He’s the creator of countless high value dev tools, including ETH.Build, Scaffold-ETH, and Speed Run Ethereum. In this episode, we discuss Austin’s process for building developer tooling, new developments that Austin is excited about at the application layer, and how to level up as a solidity developer.

00:23 How Austin got into Ethereum

2:23 Austin walks through the first dapps he ever built: games

4:28 Austin’s entry into dev tooling

8:15 ETH.Build

13:40 Scaffold-ETH

21:47 Speed Run Ethereum

27:45 Taking a PM approach to building dev tooling

30:36 Austin shouts out other great devrel resources

33:02 Becoming an elite web3 developer

40:40 The state of existing dev tooling

47:49 New developments in the application layer that Austin is excited about

49:30 Nifty Ink - using meta transactions to improve UX

56:03 Austin’s vision for web3 in 10 years: public keys will be as ubiquitous as an email address

Links:
Scaffold ETH: https://docs.scaffoldeth.io/scaffold-eth/
Speed Run Ethereum: https://speedrunethereum.com/
Austin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/austingriffith
Ethereum Resources: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/

Rahul Sethuram: Optimistic Bridges, Cross Chain Communication, & Engineering at Connext Aug 17, 2022

Show notes

On the Devs Do Something podcast, we bring you technical discussions with some of the best and brightest engineers in all of web3. Today, we have Rahul Sethuram - CTO & cofounder of Connext.

Connext is building the first fully trust-minimized Crosschain Communication protocol to make blockchains composable.

Rahul has been in the space for the better part of 5 years - he started his career at tesla and worked in various startups business before getting into crypto. In this episode, you’ll hear more about his journey through the proverbial idea maze as he iterated his way into building Connext, and you’ll also get an inside look into the technical side of building cross chain infrastructure.

In this episode, we hit on a ton of fascinating technical topics: you’ll hear us walk through optimistic bridge design, Connext’s engineering & design process (including how they navigated multiple re-writes), Rahul’s favorite non-EVM tech in the space, & we’ll even walk through the full lifecycle of a cross chain operation on Connext.

If you’re a web3 engineer or work alongside engineers, we think you’ll get a lot of value from this one.

00:00 Intro

3:13 How Rahul got into Web3

6:18 Connext origin story

9:00 The interoperability trilemma

10:29 Optimistic bridges

14:40 Walking through the lifecycle of a cross chain transaction using Connext

22:42 Cross chain callbacks and “asynchronous” solidity

27:14 Design patterns that Rahul is proud of (including a cool custom errors implementation)

29:46 Behind the scenes insight on how Connext iterated from their initial state channels implementation to their current model

34:49 How Connext handles development cycles

36:10 The Connext approach to managing security and protocol maintenance