RiB Newsletter #8 - Looking Forward to 2020

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Welcome to the #8 edition of Rust in Blockchain, the hypest newsletter about the hypest tech. Previous: #7.

This month — even with the holidays and world events — saw strong momentum in the big Rust blockchain projects: Solana is moving toward two new testnets, one of which is expected to evolve into their mainnet; Zcash has been blogging technical details about their Rust implementation, Zebra; Nervos has initiated a grants program to solicit advancements to its platform from the community; COMIT and NEAR are maintaining a rapid development velocity; and Parity as always has so much going on its hard to summarize.

There are multiple hackathons coming up, which several of our projects are involved in (see “Events” below). There are new job openings (“Careers”), and multiple grants programs. Lots of opportunities to get involved with Rust blockchain development lately.

We’re continuing to see interesting developments involving WebAssembly, having learned about Spacemesh’s new VM recently. With all the attention given by blockchain projects to WASM, we’re thinking of adding more WASM-specific coverage in the future. Please let us know your thoughts, and send us links to interesting Rust+WASM projects / content that might be of interest to fellow blockchain developers.

The Rust in Blockchain Telegram group group has seen more activity recently, and this month’s newsletter received the most contributions of any yet. As a result, this issue begins coverage of CodeChain and Holochain. We are super grateful for all the tips, news, project links, job postings, event notices and general conversation. Big thanks to all involved.

Finally, there have been some updates recently to the awesome-blockchain-rust project that collects notable Rust blockchain links. Contributions welcome.

Wow, 2019 was a great year for blockchain Rust, and we’re only becoming more excited for 2020.

Hack on, blockchain Rustaceans. Hack on.

 

Thanks

This edition of RiB was produced with contributions from Park Juhyung, Adria Massanet, Paulii Good, Lane Rettig, Brian Anderson, and Aimee Zhu. Thank you for your help!

RiB needs help keeping up with Rust blockchain projects. To contribute to the next issue, submit a PR to the #9 draft, or Tweet @rust_blockchain.

 

Project Spotlight

Each month we like to shine a light on a notable Rust blockchain project. This month that project is…

Za!

Za! is a simple zk-SNARK circuit compiler, a Rust port of the circom compiler. Circom is a high level language for writing zero knowledge proofs, making this tool a convenient way to learn about and experiment with the subject. One can get started by reading the circom tutorial.

 

Most Active in January

Solana: 364 merged PRs, 47 closed issues.

Parity: 259 merged PRs (1, 2), 54 closed issues (1, 2).

COMIT: 186 merged PRs (1, 2), 64 closed issues (1, 2).

Nervos: 148 merged PRs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), 9 closed issues (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

 

Project Updates

CodeChain

17 merged PRs, 6 closed issues.

COMIT

186 merged PRs (1, 2), 64 closed issues (1, 2).

Grin

25 merged PRs, 29 closed issues.

Holochain

30 merged PRs, 0 closed issues.

Interledger

18 merged PRs, 7 closed issues.

NEAR

61 merged PRs, 64 closed issues.

Nervos

148 merged PRs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), 9 closed issues (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Parity

259 merged PRs (1, 2), 54 closed issues (1, 2).

Solana

364 merged PRs, 47 closed issues.

Zcash

37 merged PRs (1, 2), 13 closed issues (1, 2).

 

Learning

What Is Web 3.0 & Why It Matters

‘One Network, Many Chains’ – The Case for Blockchain Interoperability

Video: Data Security and the Rise of Crypto

 

Interesting Things

Post: An OS prototype where binaries are WASM, run in ring 0

Tweet: How far behind rust-libp2p is compared to go-libp2p and js-libp2p

Project: lib3h. Holochain’s p2p library

Project: Za!. A zk-SNARK circuit compiler that supports a variant of the circom language.

Project: tesseracts. A blockchain explorer for geth PoAs.

 

Events

Feb 12-16 | San Francisco, US

DeveloperWeek 2020 & Hackathon

Feb 19-21 | Stanford University, US

The Stanford Blockchain Conference 2020

Feb 29 | San Francisco, US

World Blockchain Hackathon

Mar 4-11 | London, UK

London Blockchain Week

Mar 7-8 | MIT Campus, US

MIT Bitcoin Expo 2020

Mar 31 - Apr 1 | Paris, France

Paris Blockchain Week Summit

Apr 13-16 | Oxford, UK

IEEE DAPPS 2020

 

Careers

ARK | Remote

Senior Developer/Blockchain Core Developer

Consensys | Europe; United States; Remote

Systems Engineer (Rust)

Cosmian | Paris, France; Remote

Developer (Rust/Cryptography)

imToken | Singapore; Hangzhou, China

Blockchain Development Engineer

Nervos | San Francisco; Hangzhou, China; Remote

Senior Blockchain Engineer

Protocol Labs | Remote

Research Scientist, Cryptography

Sigma Prime | Sydney, Australia; Remote

Experienced Rust Developer

Spacemesh | NYC, US

Blockchain Developer

 

Want to be included in the next issue? Feel free to submit a PR to the #9 draft, or Tweet @rust_blockchain.

Join the discussion on RiB telegram group ❤️