I’ve had the opportunity to do some proof of concept development of the Ethereum state-rent proposal that Alexey Akhunov has been leading on the Pantheon code base. The proposal evolved as the work continued so the actual implementation is now a lot simpler than described in that PDF. Note that the aim is to explore what it takes to implement the proposal, not to create production ready code. The current work is all available on on my state-rent branch.

This week, the work I’ve been doing for the past 6 months, and that PegaSys has been working on for the past 18 months or so was released into the world. Specifically we’ve released Pantheon 0.8.1, our new MainNet compatible, Apache 2 licensed, Java-based Ethereum client. And it’s open source. I’m pretty excited about it on a few fronts. Firstly I think it’s a pretty important thing for the Ethereum community.

There’s an exceptionally valuable set of ethereum reference tests that are run by most or all of the different Ethereum clients to ensure they actually implement the specifications in a compatible way. They’re one of the most valuable resources for anyone developing an Ethereum client. The Aleth project maintains the official test client called testeth but it’s a little cryptic to work out how to actually run things with it and then use that to debug failures happening in the client you’re actually developing.

There are a number of browser plugins which inject additional JavaScript APIs into the DOM so websites can take advantage of the plugin functionality. One example of that is MetaMask which “brings Ethereum to your browser”. This allows any website the user visits to detect that the plugin is installed by checking for the presence of those APIs which may aid them in targeting attacks such as the recent spate of phishing attacks against MetaMask users.

Interesting review of the regulatory landscape around crypto-currencies. There are a lot of echo’s of issues with the over-the-counter nature of most FX trading, albeit with even less enforced regulation and uncertainty. Bitcoin Redux explains what’s going wrong in the world of cryptocurrencies. The bitcoin exchanges are developing into a shadow banking system, which do not give their customers actual bitcoin but rather display a “balance” and allow them to transact with others.

A fun thing about programming is that most days, you make progress. Maybe you fix some issues, maybe you add a feature, maybe you build towards something bigger. Your code moves ever forward. Until it doesn’t. On occasion, you will hit a Bug. Not a mundane bug, some trifle you can fix in an hour, or even a day. This is a true Bug. One that defies reason. One that evokes a “that’s not possible,” a “how could this even happen?

Essentially, the Docker approach boils down to downloading an unsigned binary, running it, and hoping it doesn’t contain any backdoor into your companies network. Feels like downloading Windows shareware in the 90s to me. When will the first docker image appear which contains the Ask toolbar? The first internet worm spreading via flawed docker images? Source: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers There’s certainly some truth to that.

This is the second article on things I found particularly interesting in the Ethereum yellow paper. The first is “What’s on the Blockchain?” and the same disclaimers apply: I’m no expert and you should go verify any claims I’m making before depending on them. Comments and corrections are most welcome either via email or @ajsutton on twitter. One of the little details in the way Ethereum works is the idea of a “nonce” attached to each account and transaction.

To understand the details of how Ethereum works I’ve been working my way through the yellow paper. And since there’s no better way to really understand things than to explain them, I thought I’d write up my own explanation for some of the things that stood out to me. Fair warning: I’m no expert, there’s guaranteed to be sloppy usage of terminology and a high likelihood of mistakes. If you’re just looking for an easier to read version of the yellow paper, try the beige paper, it’s had some actually knowledgable people look it over.

After 7 years at LMAX, I’ll be winding up with them at the end of the month. It’s been a pretty remarkable journey and certainly not an easy decision to move on but ultimately another opportunity came up that I just couldn’t refuse. I had intended to write up some reflections on the past 7 years at LMAX but I just can’t find the words. Suffice to say, it’s been an amazing journey full of wonderful people, big technical challenges and lots of innovative solutions.

Hapi 17 was released a while back with quite a few nice improvement – mostly centered around using promises instead of callbacks and thus fitting in with async/await well. However, it’s a very significant change right across it’s APIs so it took quite a while for the various plugins that Moolah uses to be updated. Eventually though they were all ready and then the actual upgrade of Moolah code was pretty straight forward.

I dropped out of the habit of writing about Moolah but it’s been ticking along doing what I need it to for a fair while with a few additions here and there. Recently I spent a chunk of time adding the ability to ‘earmark’ money for a particular use. My main motivation is that we’re planning a family trip to Germany at the end of the year and I want to be able to set aside money through the year as we save for it.