Exploring and understanding the paper “Credible, Optimal Auctions Via Blockchains” by Tarun Chitra et al.Auctions everywhereGoogle Ad AuctionsEvery day we find ourselves on the internet for various reasons, be it searching for things, buying, selling and surfing/browsing the internet for work or otherwise. The economy of the internet runs on ads. Every time you visit a website, you are welcome with various ads by companies; website publishing companies sell these “ad slots” in the website to ...

Exploring and understanding the paper “Credible, Optimal Auctions Via Blockchains” by Tarun Chitra et al.Auctions everywhereGoogle Ad AuctionsEvery day we find ourselves on the internet for various reasons, be it searching for things, buying, selling and surfing/browsing the internet for work or otherwise. The economy of the internet runs on ads. Every time you visit a website, you are welcome with various ads by companies; website publishing companies sell these “ad slots” in the website to ...

A reminder of progress and problems unsolved. We’ve come a long way since the first time I wrote this list in Jan 2022. It has been inspiring to see the space proliferate and build extremely interesting infrastructure for the future of crypto, but we have a long way to go. I believe that having an open list of problems is a good reminder of progress for a field, nascent or old, research problems or practical applications. These also provide a benchmark to look towards and glance upon while ta...

A reminder of progress and problems unsolved. We’ve come a long way since the first time I wrote this list in Jan 2022. It has been inspiring to see the space proliferate and build extremely interesting infrastructure for the future of crypto, but we have a long way to go. I believe that having an open list of problems is a good reminder of progress for a field, nascent or old, research problems or practical applications. These also provide a benchmark to look towards and glance upon while ta...

Towards unlocking a new class of applications. Not the compute we need, but the compute we deserve. Decentralized apps face limitations in performing complex on-chain computations due to Ethereum's restricted processing capabilities. As a result, we've seen many DeFi protocols move components like order books and risk systems off-chain. This points to a need for customized computational environments tailored to specific tasks. We’ve seen a slow but gradual shift of many defi apps de...

Towards unlocking a new class of applications. Not the compute we need, but the compute we deserve. Decentralized apps face limitations in performing complex on-chain computations due to Ethereum's restricted processing capabilities. As a result, we've seen many DeFi protocols move components like order books and risk systems off-chain. This points to a need for customized computational environments tailored to specific tasks. We’ve seen a slow but gradual shift of many defi apps de...

Originally introduced in the paper, Flashboys 2.0, Maximal(or Miner) Extractable value is the value that is captured by miners or validators from users in a network. While exotic forms of MEV exist, the most common form of MEV comes from reordering user transactions to maximize fees or frontrunning users while making a trade. This blog is a primer/explainer for the paper, “Towards a Theory of Maximal Extractable Value I: Constant Function Market Makers”.The Anatomy of a transactionWhile the g...

Originally introduced in the paper, Flashboys 2.0, Maximal(or Miner) Extractable value is the value that is captured by miners or validators from users in a network. While exotic forms of MEV exist, the most common form of MEV comes from reordering user transactions to maximize fees or frontrunning users while making a trade. This blog is a primer/explainer for the paper, “Towards a Theory of Maximal Extractable Value I: Constant Function Market Makers”.The Anatomy of a transactionWhile the g...

NFT Distribution paradigms, Complete on-chain games and a potentially new meta. Art gobblers is probably one of the most exciting projects coming out this quarter of the year. Several different components have slowly led up to it, so just a “short” article looking at various aspects of this project and probably another NFT blue-chip is you are to believe the echo chambers that I am a part of.A brief view of Crypto DistributionOne of the core problems in crypto, whether it be the tokenomics of...

NFT Distribution paradigms, Complete on-chain games and a potentially new meta. Art gobblers is probably one of the most exciting projects coming out this quarter of the year. Several different components have slowly led up to it, so just a “short” article looking at various aspects of this project and probably another NFT blue-chip is you are to believe the echo chambers that I am a part of.A brief view of Crypto DistributionOne of the core problems in crypto, whether it be the tokenomics of...

Exploring the second part of the Theory of MEV. :D Blockchain systems rely on decentralized networks of participants to maintain a global shared state and execute transactions (in the case of ethereum, validators). A core challenge is dealing with varying incentives and strategic behavior by different network participants. In particular, validators who produce blocks have temporary power to reorder or include transactions, enabling profit at the expense of others. This phenomenon of excessive...

Exploring the second part of the Theory of MEV. :D Blockchain systems rely on decentralized networks of participants to maintain a global shared state and execute transactions (in the case of ethereum, validators). A core challenge is dealing with varying incentives and strategic behavior by different network participants. In particular, validators who produce blocks have temporary power to reorder or include transactions, enabling profit at the expense of others. This phenomenon of excessive...

Towards a Proof-Based Future - Written with 0xkrane.IntroductionBlockchains are globally distributed ledgers that come to a consensus over a global state. Some blockchains come equipped with a Turing-complete execution environment that enables programmability on top of this global state. Programs that target blockchains’ execution environments are called smart contracts, and the underlying blockchains are called smart contract platforms. Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche are some of the most wi...

Towards a Proof-Based Future - Written with 0xkrane.IntroductionBlockchains are globally distributed ledgers that come to a consensus over a global state. Some blockchains come equipped with a Turing-complete execution environment that enables programmability on top of this global state. Programs that target blockchains’ execution environments are called smart contracts, and the underlying blockchains are called smart contract platforms. Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche are some of the most wi...

Non-fungible tokens have been used in various use cases since their inception. The ERC-721 standard initially finding its use in art and then mass Pfp collections. A trend started in Jan 2021 with hashmasks and found quick popularity with various subsequent collections. Many agree that NFT narratives dominated the cycle in the latter half of 2021. We saw art blocks, punks, apes and other derivatives so on and so forth. Where does one buy NFTs? The available marketplaces include Super rare, Zo...

Non-fungible tokens have been used in various use cases since their inception. The ERC-721 standard initially finding its use in art and then mass Pfp collections. A trend started in Jan 2021 with hashmasks and found quick popularity with various subsequent collections. Many agree that NFT narratives dominated the cycle in the latter half of 2021. We saw art blocks, punks, apes and other derivatives so on and so forth. Where does one buy NFTs? The available marketplaces include Super rare, Zo...

or How to make things a little slower. Recently been reading about randomness in ethereum and blockchains generally. Randomness on blockchains doesn’t exist in ideal form and is hard to find. The use of randomness has various applications like raffles, lotteries, or perhaps an auction model where the initial minimum bid is randomly chosen from a list. On a protocol level, the protocol can also use this randomness to achieve privacy or select a random block producer in the case of proof of sta...

or How to make things a little slower. Recently been reading about randomness in ethereum and blockchains generally. Randomness on blockchains doesn’t exist in ideal form and is hard to find. The use of randomness has various applications like raffles, lotteries, or perhaps an auction model where the initial minimum bid is randomly chosen from a list. On a protocol level, the protocol can also use this randomness to achieve privacy or select a random block producer in the case of proof of sta...

A new era in DAO Treasury Management. Since its initial summer in 2020, DeFi has run into various walls along the adoption path. Some of these have been user experience being too complicated; user interface not being intuitive enough, protocols not recovering from hacks, protocols needing scale which they probably can’t achieve actually to perform, ponzinomics which prop value but show unreal yield thus delaying" actual” adoption, the need for “trust” for protocols to become more capital effi...

A new era in DAO Treasury Management. Since its initial summer in 2020, DeFi has run into various walls along the adoption path. Some of these have been user experience being too complicated; user interface not being intuitive enough, protocols not recovering from hacks, protocols needing scale which they probably can’t achieve actually to perform, ponzinomics which prop value but show unreal yield thus delaying" actual” adoption, the need for “trust” for protocols to become more capital effi...

Upgrading our Fee Markets to the final form. In this blog, I explore “Dynamic Pricing For Non-fungible Resource: Designing Multidimensional Blockchain Fee Markets.” https://twitter.com/buffalu__/status/1630589018688884737?s=20 A natural thing to wonder while viewing this tweet is wondering about the waste of resources and compute. A subsequent question is, what makes it possible? Is it because the resources are being priced too cheap? We’ll come to this problem again in a bit. Blockchains are...

Upgrading our Fee Markets to the final form. In this blog, I explore “Dynamic Pricing For Non-fungible Resource: Designing Multidimensional Blockchain Fee Markets.” https://twitter.com/buffalu__/status/1630589018688884737?s=20 A natural thing to wonder while viewing this tweet is wondering about the waste of resources and compute. A subsequent question is, what makes it possible? Is it because the resources are being priced too cheap? We’ll come to this problem again in a bit. Blockchains are...

The unprecedented rise of Large language models (LLMs) has seen a quick adoption of its technology in various spheres. While language models and transformers have been used before for Google Search, translation, and sentiment recognition, ChatGPT can be credited for bringing the transformer architecture and LLMs to the forefront of public attention and usage, seeing as many as 100 million users within a few days. Due to their self-attention architecture, ease of training, and high paralleliza...

The unprecedented rise of Large language models (LLMs) has seen a quick adoption of its technology in various spheres. While language models and transformers have been used before for Google Search, translation, and sentiment recognition, ChatGPT can be credited for bringing the transformer architecture and LLMs to the forefront of public attention and usage, seeing as many as 100 million users within a few days. Due to their self-attention architecture, ease of training, and high paralleliza...