ZuSocial @Istanbul - Nov 16th Daily Roundup

1/ Base: Path to Decentralization

Guest: Ryan @consecutionx from @BuildOnBase

Why Base

Base believes "Onchain will be the next Online". Currently onchain users and transactions continue to grow, but we are still far from everyone onchain. The key blocks for bringing more people on-chain include lack of cheap blockspace, convenient wallet technology, and identity solutions.

The major challenge of decentralization for Base

• L2 tech is still maturing

• Base is launching from centralized Coinbase

• The regulatory environment is uncertain

Base’s approaches to tackle the challenges

• Technical investment in decentralization: Contribute key technical initiatives to the OP stack

• Participation in open neutrality framework

• Funding public goods: 15% of the revenue from the sequencer will contribute to OP foundation for public goods

Base ecosystem and programs WIP

• Base has 100+ dapps live today of onchain use cases (base.org/ecosystem). And Base is continuously working on different pillars incl. EIP 4844 coauthor, Canyon fork, Sepolia, and Paymaster.

Relevant link

• Doc: https://docs.base.org/

• Official site: https://base.org/

2/ Workshop on Scaffold-ETH 2

ZuSocial Hacker: Shiv Bhonde @ShivBhonde

What is Scaffold-ETH 2?

Scaffold-eth is an open-source, up-to-date toolkit for building dApps on Ethereum. It includes:

• ✅ Contract Hot Reload: Frontend auto-adapts to your smart contract as you edit it.

• 🔥 Burner Wallet & Local Faucet: Quickly test your application with a burner wallet and local faucet.

• 🔐 Integration with Wallet Providers: Connect to different wallet providers and interact with the Ethereum network.

Scaffold-ETH 2 Tech Stack

Scaffold-eth is not a product itself but more of a combination or stack of other great tools. The main components incl.:

• Hardhat or Foundry for running local networks, deploying and testing smart contracts.

• Wagmi for React Hooks to start working with Ethereum.

• NextJS for building a frontend, using many useful pre-made hooks.

• RainbowKit for adding wallet connection.

• DaisyUI for pre-built Tailwind CSS components.

Relevant link

• Doc: https://docs.scaffoldeth.io/

• Official site: https://scaffoldeth.io/

3/ Digital Identities Workshop

ZuSocial Hacker: Marios

The problem of Federated identity mgmt (OAuth)

• ID providers collect the metadata

• ID providers can impersonate the user

Overview of UnlimitedID

With UnlimitedID, users can select attributes to disclose, and blind anonymous certificates. Key properties of UnlimitedID

• Protect users from passive deanonymization by ID providers, and active impersonation attacks by ID providers

• Support selective attributed disclosure, multi-show credentials, sybil resistance, and non-transferability

Modern key distribution with ClaimClains

ClaimChain is a Public Key Infrastructure unique in that it can operate in fully decentralized settings with no trusted parties. Key properties of ClaimChains include:

• ClaimChains for each user/ device/ identity

• Blocks appended as needed

• Compromise apear as chaimchain forks

• Owner selects who can read specific claims

With the design, ClaimChains features:

• Propagation of key updates in cliques

• Vouch for the latest state of a friend’s ClaimChain

• Friend intro - Social validation - Web of trust while preserving privacy

Relevant link

• ChaimChains video (2017): https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9094-modern_key_distribution_with_claimchain

4/ Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud

Guest: Jiang from @SocialLayer_im

Old-fashioned apps & Cloud apps vs Local-first apps

Old-fashioned apps

• Advantage: Simple to use

• Disadvantage: Users have to backup data manually, thus data loss may occur

Cloud apps (eg. Google doc, Trello, Figma)

• No need to install, can be web-based

• Seamless collaboration, able to access data from any device

• But cloud is just someone else’s computer

• If the service is unavaliable/ got shut down, users can't have access to the app anymore

• Users are forced to upgrade the software

Local-first apps

• Able to work offline and collaborate with multiple devices

• Prioritize the use of local storage and netowrk

What does local-first mean and what can be used?

Local-first means that

• Local data is the primary

• Latency

• The network is optional

• Update fast locally

• Security & privacy by default

Developer infra for building local-first apps

• Cloudkit

• CouchDB

• RealmDB

• DID

• CRDT: a data structure that modeling data when building a collaborative multi-user apps

What local first architecture provides

• Fast speed

• Multi-device

• Offline availability

• Collaboration

• Longevity

• Privacy

• User control

Relevant link

• Research paper: https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf