The Penumbra Protocol is a next-generation blockchain platform that provides superior scalability, privacy, and decentralization. Using cutting-edge technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, atomic swaps, and sharding. The Penumbra Protocol offers users a secure and private way to trade digital assets without having to worry about the security and privacy of their funds.

What is Penumbra?

Penumbra is a privacy-focused network and a decentralized exchange (DEX) for the Cosmos ecosystem. Penumbra utilizes a novel private proof-of-stake delegation algorithm that enables private voting for on-chain governance, staking derivatives, and more. Although not based on the Cosmos SDK, Penumbra is currently being tailored for the Cosmos ecosystem, connecting to other Cosmos networks through the IBC protocol. Leveraging the ICS-20 transfer protocol on the IBC, Penumbra creates a shielded pool allowing private data replication between two interacting blockchains or the value exchange between two IBC-supported networks.

As a PoS network, Penumbra handles staking quite differently from other chains, as Penumbra doesn't provide stakers with staking rewards in the traditional sense. Penumbra tokenizes staking rewards as bonded or unbonded assets, allowing them to be represented by a single fungible delegation token, adjusting the price for the would-be staking rewards, corresponding to a share of that validator's delegation pool. As a result, delegators only receive "rewards" when unbonding their staked tokens. This delegation fungibility mechanism is in place because traditional staking reward issuance becomes convoluted. After all, in a fully private chain, there would be no public record of the duration and amount of each address' delegations.

According to development updates, Penumbra is, first and foremost, a DEX. To allow blockchains to recognize trade values and amounts without revealing compromising user information, Penumbra utilizes "sealed-bid batch swaps." As all swaps are executed in a single batch, Penumbra reveals a total sum of the batch to the receiving network rather than individual transactions only after transactions have been finalized, putting an end to the possibility of malicious attacks such as front-running.

How does Penumbra create a private blockchain and DEX? In short, using data modeling, advanced cryptography, and Zero-Knowledge tooling.

According to the Penumbra team, the DEX only supports concentrated liquidity positions akin to UniSwap v3. By allowing users to provide liquidity through the creation of anonymous concentrated liquidity positions, liquidity providers (LPs) focus their liquidity on a custom price range that the assets in the pair actually trade and enable users to privately approximate arbitrary trading functions without disclosing specific opinions about prices. The position functions as a constant-product market maker with greater "virtual" reserves within that price range. The pool collects liquidity from all positions and keeps track of which positions are still active as asset price changes. To approximate any trading function, LPs can create multiple positions.

So, why Penumbra? According to the network’s founder, Henry de Valence, there are several different use-cases for a privacy-first blockchain. First and foremost, Penumbra enables users to make private transactions. According to Henry de Valance: use-cases for Penumbra include:

• Prevent Front-running

• Private Trading

• Private Crowd Sourcing

• Private PoS delegation

Front-running is a type of attack in which a bad actor notices a purchase on the blockchain mempool, or transaction queue, and submits their own transaction with a higher gas price to "bribe" the miners into giving priority to the front-runner's transaction over the original transaction. The original purchaser is then left to pay a higher price for the token or digital asset. The attacker then sells the token at a higher price for a profit. The attacker effectively manipulates the market to "buy low and sell high." Transactions conducted on Penumbra are not visible to anyone except the trader due to Penumbra's sealed-bid batch auctions, which only reveal a net flow across a pair of assets rather than individual transactions, purportedly eliminating front-runner types of attacks.

As mentioned before, all historical trading data is private, giving traders full control over the accessibility of their data. This allows Penumbra users to not reveal their trading strategies or "alpha" to anyone. While users have their private keys to view and manage transactions, Penumbra has a tool to manage the disclosure of information and prevent bad actors from looking at transactions. Penumbra generates a separate view key, giving the user full control over their trading data and allowing users to comply with tax statements and other official documentation.

What makes Penumbra different?

Penumbra is actually the is actually the first IBC-enabled network, not built on the Cosmos SDK. Penumbra is unlike other blockchain networks that focus on general-purpose computation, Penumbra claims to be a more market-fit product for trading, focusing on the private interaction with a public blockchain while keeping transactions private across multiple IBC-enabled blockchains.

Penumbra is still under active development, launching weekly testnets with an active community of developers. If you would like to learn more about Penumbra, listen to the Frens Validator Crypto podcast, featuring Penumbra’s founding member, Henry de Valance, answering questions about Penumbra’s vision, goals, and current development process.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/penumbra-privacy-for-defi-with-henry-de-valence/id1541829695?i=1000564570651

If you’d like to know more about the Penumbra, have a look at their official website or connect through Twitter, Discord, and Github. More Information & Sources

• Penumbra Official Website

• Penumbra Github

• Penumbra Twitter

• Penumbra Discord

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. All content provided is strictly for informational purposes only. Cryptocurrency investing and staking involve significant risk, with the possibility of loss of all staked digital assets. As general practice when investing, always DYOR.

Crypto Chaos Radio📡

Blockchain-backed games allow for Play-to-Earn mechanics in which players can generate income from playing games. However, there are certain requirements a game must meet in order for it to achieve success and be sustainable long term.

Gameplay

When analyzing aspects of what makes a successful game, the gameplay is one of the most important aspects to consider. If a game does not have enjoyable gameplay, one could ask, is it even a game? Though occasional bad physics can make for hours of comedic content, lackluster gameplay mechanics will most certainly leave players feeling like they have been delivered a broken game.

Games like CryptoKittes just scratch the surface of what blockchain technology can do. Axie Infinity built upon and expanded on where CryptoKitties left off. CryptoKitties was basically an NFT breeding simulator, and Axie Infinity builds upon that with additional battling mechanics, as well as lands, expanding well beyond the original concept of breeding.

On the subject of gameplay, bigger games have moved to side chains or other Layer 2 solutions. Notably, Gods Unchained migrated from Ethereum to Immutable X, and Axie Infinity released its own native sidechain - Ronin. Scaling solutions allow faster transactions and lower gas fees, which drastically aids in the gameplay experience. These scaling solutions allow players to do what they do best, to play, without being subject to slow transactions and high fees.

A good case study for a blockchain game that focuses on the gameplay aspect of the game is Undead Blocks, a first-person shooter that has players fight against wave after wave of zombies. The game is not too dissimilar to Call of Duty’s Zombies mode. The game offers multiple ways for players to earn cryptocurrency, like weekly challenges that award tokens and in-game weapons as NFTs that can be traded on secondary markets like OpenSea. However, the game focuses its development efforts on gameplay. In their whitepaper, they state, “Undead Blocks will be prioritizing play AND earn, with secondary tokenomics and a value proposition that are crafted for sustainability and peace of mind for players and investors alike. Power to the gamers.“

The Undead Block team recently partnered with ImmutableX

Hype/Community

Every game needs a fair bit of hype. What really keeps a game alive is its community. For example, despite being a relatively unknown game released in 2012, Natural Selection 2, a multiplayer FPS that mixed in RTS elements, still has an active discord community and game lobbies filled with players. Social media consumes the daily lives of most people these days, so for a game to be successful, it must have a strong social media presence. To assess how good a game is in this category, you must determine not only how much activity it is in-game but also on its Twitter account and inside its Discord. High follower numbers and comment activity from a community and team members over time are good indicators of a game’s long-term prospects.

Tokenomics

Finally, we will look at the bread and butter of what makes a successful Play-to-Earn game, its in-game economy. Games using blockchain technology to back their in-game economies are considered tokenized.

Some details regarding tokenomics:

Some games can have one asset, an excess token in the form of an NFT, or the game may operate with dual/multiple token systems. Gods Unchained has its $GODS token and NFT cards working side by side in a harmonic way. In the case of Axie Infinity, there are NFT characters (Axies) and two other tokens (SLP & AXS), each with its own function.

Why does a game need a token? This question should be the first one you ask yourself when looking to play or even when building a game. There must always be a valid reason why a cryptocurrency token exists within a game. What is their value if skins, weapons, and other in-game items are tokenized as NFTs? Are they rare? When it comes to crypto, utility is key.

NFTs are a must in the blockchain gaming industry, but there are some caveats. In Axie Infinity, one must purchase not only one but three NFT Axies to begin playing, let alone profit from the game. Having access tokens isn’t new, but for the sake of longevity, there must be supply-demand solutions to bring the price to a reasonable level so that players want to be involved. At its peak, the price of Axies reached over $400 USD. If the price of an access token is too high, then the incentive for the average player to fork out an initial investment isn't there. Axie Infinity, for example, fixed the issue of access to NFTs being too expensive, which can prevent new players from joining a game by increasing the number of Axies through breeding.

In-game tokens must be treated like any other cryptocurrency token used for investing or trading. A good Play-2-Earn game will spend considerable time developing its tokenomics. GameFi projects may incorporate features from DeFi, such as inflationary/deflationary strategies, staking, and general talk about how funds from the treasury are allocated to bolster a token’s long-term viability.

A good project will provide development updates on their social media, notably on Medium or Mirror, so make sure to read through them to obtain a better understanding of how the game plans on rewarding you, the player, for playing their game.

Conclusion

When looking for a new game to dive into, it's important to keep in mind the following: it's all about the gameplay, community, and tokenomics. If a project can maintain those three pillars and offers captivating and groundbreaking gameplay, it’s sure to be a success in the long run.

Crypto Chaos Radio📡

GameFi, The Metaverse & Sandbox

What are GameFi and the Metaverse?

GameFi is the latest form of decentralized applications running on blockchain technology, borrowing aspects from DeFi and NFTs; it is the marriage of gaming and blockchain-powered financialization.

The Metaverse, as we speak, uses blockchain technology to run a virtual world, one to which we will connect using a series of devices that will make us think that we are really inside it, interacting with all its elements. It will be like actually teleporting to a whole new world through virtual reality glasses and other accessories that will allow us to interact within it.

The term “Metaverse” comes from a 1992 novel called “Snow Crash” and is a term that has been settled to describe visions of three-dimensional or virtual workspaces. This Metaverse, therefore, means a virtual world in which we can interact and which has been created to resemble an external reality.

What is The Sandbox?

The Sandbox is a Polygon-based multiplayer game where players can create just about anything their minds can conjure. The Sandbox is similar to games like Minecraft or Roblox, but decentralized. Having the game interact with a blockchain changes the nature of the gameplay itself. The decentralization that The Sandbox offers gives economic power to players. The Sandbox it’s a virtual world, a Metaverse!

The Sandbox is a sandbox game built on a layer 2 blockchain, and it is similar to Minecraft. Sandbox games in general, enable players to explore and create freely within a game, use the tools provided in the game to build their own things, and enjoy the game by reaching certain achievements. The game itself does not have the main storyline because it’s an open world.

The difference is that in a normal game, we can get or buy the corresponding equipment and items, but these game items do not belong to us personally, but to the game manufacturer.

In the world of The Sandbox, all of this will be different, as the characters, items, and equipment in the game can be "NFTed" through blockchain technology, and everything created by the player will become their personal "digital assets.” Naturally, since The Sandbox is a game backed by blockchain technology, it has a $SAND token, its own native token for the in-game economy.

Polygon integration

The Sandbox was originally on the Ethereum network, however they’ve recently announced that they would be switching to the Layer 2, Polygon. The reasoning behind the move is that the layer 2 is more energy efficient. Plygon has Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, whereas Ethereum, at least until The Merge, consists of a more energy-hungry Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism.

Getting Started

The Sandbox Official Links:

Official Website

Twitter

Discord

To get started, the first thing that you should do is to go to the official website. Once there, the next step is to register on the platform. To do this, you must click on "Sign In", and there you will see different options to register. You are given the option to sign up via email, some social media channels, and a cryptocurrency wallet. For the purposes of the walkthrough, we’ll select the cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask from the prompt. Simply select "Connect your wallet - MetaMask" and the connection process will begin, for which you must accept the connection in this browser wallet.

After finishing registration with MetaMask, the last step is to choose a username and indicate an email address to complete the profile. You will have to register and confirm your email address. The system will ask you to enter a password at the end of this process.

Once those steps have been completed, you will have access to the online portal. Here, you will be able to do a myriad of things, such as control your profile settings, customize your avatar, access the NFT marketplace, access the map, buy land, and stake $SAND.

At the time of this writing, The Sandbox is not playable outside Alpha testing events. However, you can still create your account and play around with both the game design software, Game Maker, and The Sandbox’s ASSET creation tool, VoxEdit.

Minimum system Windows system requirements for Game Maker & VoxEdit:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

• OS: Windows 7

• Processor: Dual Core 2GHz

• Memory: 4 GB RAM

• Graphics: 512 MB VRAM

• DirectX: Verison 11

• Storage: 2GB Storage Space

As of the Alpha 2 season, you do not need to have $SAND in your cryptocurrency wallet to begin playing the game. Moving forward, once The Sandbox is fully released, you will be able to download the client from the portal just like Game Maker and VoxEdit.

Once you download the client to your device, you can begin moving around and exploring the world. You will be able to walk around the initial spawn hub, where there are NFT galleries that directly link you to their OpenSea listings. While you will be able to purchase items from the marketplace, they’ll be in-game stores in which you can also make some transactions.

Tokenomics of the Metaverse

What is $SAND?

At some point in your time playing The Sandbox, you’re going to need some $SAND. $SAND is an ERC-20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain. It is this token that drives the underlying economy of the game. Though there are a few use cases for $SAND, gamers would most likely be using it quite simply as in-game currency. As stated in an earlier task, we mentioned there is no need to buy an access token to play The Sandbox. Once in the game, like many other games, players at some point will need to buy equipment and purchase a customizable Avatar.

Utility & Tokenomics

As mentioned before, $SAND is the main token driving the economy of The Sandbox ecosystem and is the main medium of exchange within the game. With $SAND, players will be able to purchase ASSETs, Avatar customizations, GEMS, and CATALYSTs. Don’t worry we’ll touch upon these other tokes in the following task.

With a total supply of 3,000,000,000 $SAND, holders of $SAND tokens will also be able to participate in governance, allowing them to vote for things like Foundation grants and grants for creators utilizing a typical DAO structure. Besides governance, owners of LAND can stake $SAND in the land to earn rewards. Amongst them are GEMs and CATALYSTs, secondary ERC-20 tokens are needed for asset crafting and to define tier and scarcity. Creators within The Sandbox will need to pay a small fee in $SAND to list their creations in the marketplace.

Players with more financial savvy will be pleased to know that $SAND can be staked directly in The Sandbox dashboard. Additionally, at the time of writing, there is one liquidity pool available for $SAND, on the Polygon mainnet, pairing $mSAND with $MATIC. The LP token for this liquidity pair can also be staked in the Sandbox dashboard. Before the Polygon pool, the game did have a Uniswap V2 pool paired with $ETH, though it is currently discontinued. Staking is a key element for the long-term viability of the game, by “locking up” tokens, stakers can help increase the value of a token by limiting the supply, all while earning rewards.

It’s worth mentioning that to currently stake $SAND, perspective stakers will need to bridge their sand to $mSAND, a process that can be done from The Sandbox online portal. Once that’s done, stakers will be able to pair their $MATIC and $mSAND for staking.

Paying close attention to figure 2, perspective players can see exactly how $SAND tokens circulate. Revenue from LAND sales, NFTs, transaction fees, and other fees get split into the company’s reserve and treasury, which will go back to market as needed. The other half goes into the Foundation and Staking pools. The foundation allows the game to offer grants to incentivize artists and designers to produce high-quality content for the game. Tokens from the foundation and staking go into staking rewards, rewards from Play-2-Earn opportunities within The Sandbox platform.

Where to Acquire $SAND

With tokenomics out of the way, it's time to actually acquire some $SAND. Currently, as of April 2022, $SAND can be acquired in the following ways:

• Buying $SAND on available exchanges:

  • Binance

  • Huobi

  • WazirX

  • UPbit

  • Crypto.com

  • Poloniex

• Swapping ETH for $SAND on Uniswap

• Buying $SAND through SIMPLEX

• Airdrops from The Sandbox Ambassador programme

• Community Airdrops

• Rewards program

LAND and Tokens

We’ve talked about $SAND and how it is the driving force of The Sandbox economy. There are, however, a couple of other tokens and mechanisms that merit further discussion inside The Sandbox, namely LANDs, GEMS, and CATALYSTs. Below we will explore how LANDs help players interact with the game and the economy, providing a fuller and richer Sandbox experience.

What is Land?

One of the basic tokens within The Sandbox is the LAND token, an ERC-721 token that serves to delimit the ownership of an area of land within the game. When players obtain a LAND token, they are acquiring an in-game land lot, which is digitally represented on the Ethereum blockchain. LAND lots are a very scarce commodity in The Sandbox. The total number of LAND lots in The Sandbox is 166,464, which never increases or decreases, making it a precious commodity. 123,840 of them can be sold, 25,920 of them are distributed to partners, creators, and players as rewards, and 16,704 of them are used as venues for events and games.

A LAND token comprises a total of 96×96 meters in-game. They are combinable since a player can join several adjacent 1x1 LAND plots to make an ESTATE. Though LANDSs are combinable, ESTATES also can be bought pre-assembled. Typical sizes range from small (3x3) to X-Large (24x24).

There are many types of LAND in The Sandbox metaverse, some are even divided into different ecosystems, such as forest land seen below.

LAND Utility & Monetization

Possession of LAND tokens in The Sandbox allows players to access games within the metaverse and create unique spaces that other players can use. For example, if you familiarise yourself with Game Maker and you own a LAND, you can create anything inside it. If other users want to access your creation, they can do so for a small access fee. The last option clearly shows the potential of monetizing LANDs, because it will allow their owners to create spaces that can be rented to other users, or to simply sell their tokens when prices rise.

If you’re a LAND owner, you can monetize your ownership by renting out your LAND to creators so they can create games using Game Maker or Assets using VoxEdit. Inversely, if you are a creator, whether it be games or ASSETs, you can rent somebody’s LAND to build on. Any ASSET you build will be 100% yours. Though the games built on any LAND are the property of the creators, LAND owners can charge $SAND to let users visit their land and play said games.

Not all LAND tokens are equal, some LAND plots will be worth more than others. Much like in real estate in real life, price depends on location. There are Premium plots of LAND. These lots have the benefit of surrounding major social hubs, which means more traffic and more opportunities for monetization.

Owning LAND also has the added benefit of governance. LAND owners will be able to vote on important topics such as fund allocation and the overall development of the platform. A $SAND/LAND staking pair will also soon be available, giving LAND owners yet another means of monetization.

How to Buy/Sell LAND

The land buying process is simple. To do so, first, you will need to make sure that you have the necessary amount of funds in $SAND to make the transaction. Second, head to The Sandbox’s online portal. Like real-life real estate, the amount of funds you will need is based on location. Of course, this is not the only way to do this. If you feel more comfortable, you can buy LANDs from OpenSea as that is where you will find LAND from resellers. There is even an option in The Sandbox Metaverse Map that allows you to filter which LANDs are listed on OpenSea. As long as you purchase from the same wallet you use The Sandbox with, the LAND will be registered to your account.

If you decide you want to sell your LAND for profit, you can easily list it on The Sandbox Marketplace, however, when selling through the marketplace, there will be a small fee that goes directly to the Foundation fund for creators, helping the overall ecosystem and the long term viability of the platform. You can always sell on OpenSea, but there are gas fees and third-party fees to consider.

Gems and Catalysts

$SAND is not the only ERC-20 token within The Sandbox, in fact, there are two more. GEMs are actually rewards for staking either $SAND on LAND. Stakers can then go and sell these GEMs to other players in the marketplace.

There are five different types of GEMs, each with its own attribute such as power, defense, magic, etc. The types and number of attributes define an ASSET's stats. Just like in any game, the higher the stats of an item, the more valuable and useful it will be in the game.

CATALYSTs are the other ERC-20 token. Methods for getting these tokens are still under development. These tokens will increase the available spots on an ASSET so more GEMs can be used, thereby defining an ASSET’s tier from Common to Legendary tiers - depending on the number of GEMs added. This mechanism also determines the ASSETs' scarcity and the number of attributes allotted. Both GEMs and CATALYST are burned upon usage.

These two tokens are useful for creators so that they can monetize and get more value out of their VoxEdit creations.

Building & Creation

The Sandbox metaverse is often compared to Minecraft because of its user-generated content and blocky pixel-like aesthetic. The game allows creatives to capitalise on creations in a way they couldn’t before. It’s no secret that many players of sandbox-type gamers love these games for their unrestrained possibilities. Players have been known to spend days, months, and even years building in Minecraft. There is more than one way for these creative-type gamers to monetize their creations with The Sandbox. In this task, we will hone in on how VoxEdit (creation editor), GameMarker (game creation), and Marketplace (trading marketplace) are essential components of The Sandbox ecosystem.

VoxEdit & ASSET creation

Pixowl, the development team responsible for The Sandbox, created VoxEdit, a separate 3D voxel modelling suite for NFT creation. Each item is tokenized into an NFT using ERC-1155, a new standard for representing items on the Ethereum blockchain. This removes any barriers to making and minting non-fungible ASSETs on the blockchain and allows multiple copies of an asset, leaving creators with more control over their creations.

The above image indicates that ASSETs are simple items and animals. However, creations typically fall into one of the following categories:

• Entities - These populate The Sandbox metaverse as non-playable characters to enhance the experience. These can range from animals such as the horse in Figure 1 to soldiers and healers.

• Equipment and Wearables - Equipment such as shields, swords, and armor are considered equipment, and wearables are the cosmetic items players can decorate their avatars with.

• Art - It’s back to square one when it comes to NFTs in The Sandbox. Players can actually create art inside The Sandbox metaverse to decorate and enrich the platform.

Since everything built with VoxEdit is an NFT that can be listed in the marketplace for a profit, all ASSETs sold on the marketplace are paid for in $SAND tokens.

Game Maker

Another fascinating feature for creators and builders is that The Sandbox developed a tool that allows for game design. A good comparison would be a game that lets users customise levels in games and allows other players to play those user-generated levels, such as in Super Mario Maker or Infamous 2. Make sure to download the client from the online portal. Once you have a model, you can build scenarios and game rules through Game Maker without the need for any programming. Thorough the tool is free to download, free to use, and creation of content is free, creators will need to either buy or rent LAND to publish the game onto.

As of this writing, The Sandbox has not introduced the ability to play games, but once introduced, the choice to charge admission to games is left up to the game designers themselves. Game designers can either choose to make their games free to play or charge an admission of $SAND to play.

Funds

The Sandbox development team understands that to fully enrich this new world, it is going to take collaboration from both the team and its users. That is why they have a couple of funds built into their tokenomics.

The Game Maker fund rewards people who have proven their game design and digital world skills. The Creator fund is not too dissimilar from the Game Maker fund in that it incentivizes creators to create quality voxel art ASSETs that can be published on the Ethereum blockchain. For anyone interested, in both cases, have a portfolio ready and write up a good proposal.

Conclusion

The Sandbox is but one of the games aiming to make a Metaverse. While the idea of a Metaverse is rudimentary, many games, blockchain projects and even traditional companies like Facebook/META are trying to make what “Snow Crash” foresaw many years ago into reality - literally. The Sandbox Metaverse is still in its early stages but with both VoxEdit and Game Maker tools, it shows exactly why the platform is named the way it is. These tools not only allow players to contribute and create fantastic games, skins, characters, and weapons but also allows them to monetize their hard work. This platform is great for those Minecraft veterans who are looking to experience what blockchain has to offer and are ready to venture out into the metaverse.

Crypto Chaos Radio📡

We can’t talk about The Sandbox without including the OG himself

Continuing my quest to becoming a job-ready smart contract developer, I’ve been going over some of the stuff I had already tried to learn the first time I half-heartedly took up solidity. Some of it might be rudimentary or even redundant, but I’m just writing my thoughts here.

Here are some things that I’ve been covering:

Object-oriented programing (OOP): programming model based around data, or objects, rather than functions and logic.

Given that Solidity is an object oriented programing language, it’s important to use data modeling, an exercise to collect all objects in the contract and identify how they relate to each other in order to manipulate the objects accordingly.

Basics: Contract structure

Solidity contracts are similar to classes on other OOP languages, and each contract can contain decelerations of state variables, functions, structs, etc.

State Variables: variables whose values are permanently stored in contract storage.

Functions: declaration of an executable unit of code.

Structs

A data type that can group several variables together. In this example, we can tie variables like name, age and height to personalStats.

contract personalStats {
    struct Person {
        string name;
        uint256 age;
        uint256 height;
    }
}	

In terms of visibility, structs can be declared outside a contract so it can be shared by multiple contracts. Structs can also be declared inside contracts making them visible only in those contracts.

Arrays

Arrays are data structures that store a fixed-size collection of objects of the same data type. It is often more useful to think of an array as a collection of variables of the same type.

//fixed array:
type arrayName [arraySize];

//dynamic array:
type[] arrayName;

Visibility of functions and state variables

Internal functions and variables can only be used internally while external functions are meant to be called by other contracts.

Public functions and variables can be used both internally and externally. Solidity automatically makes a getter function, ie a function used to retreive a variable value.

Private functions and variables can only be used internally and can not even used by derived contracts.

calldata, memory & storage

All reference type needs additional annotation, data location to direct where it will be stored

calldata and memory = variable will only exist temporarily/ exist within function

memory - used to store data for the execution of a contract. Memory is wiped once code is executed, less gas and holds functions argument.

calldata: non-modifiable, temporary data location; function arguments are stored here; available for external functions

storage - variable exists outside the function, data placed in storage is accessible to each execution of smart contract, consumes more gas and holds array, state and local variables of struct

//Example storage contract
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.1;

contract partyInvites {
    int[] public invitees;
    
    //Numbers function inserts values in invitees array
    function Numbers() public {
        invitees.push(1);
        invitees.push(2);
        
        //storage holds array
        int[] storage myArray = invitees;
        
        myArray[0] = 0;
        }
    }

*Data location can only be specified for an array struct or mapping types

Mapping

A mapping is a data structure where a key is “mapped” to a single value. Mappings are used to store data in the form of key value pairs.

good way to think of it is as a dictionary and is created like other variables

//mapping syntax
mapping(key => value) <acess specifier> <name>;

Grammar for state variable

So far this has just been a summation of a few key points from freeCodeCamp’s 32 -hour blockchain programming course. For next week, I plan to go through the course while also looking at CryptoZombies to supplement the coursework.

Crypto Chaos Radio 📡

RIP Trevor Strnad🤟

Dev Campaign: a crafting questline

I do have some programming experience with R and messed around with some JavaScript and Solidity, but not enough to build something from scratch. As mentioned earlier, I mean to be proficient at smart contract development. Hopefully, what I learn in the financial analysis aspect will help me develop smart contracts. To kickstart this, I will be diving deep into an awesome 32-hour course @PatrickAlphaC, and @freeCodeCamp put out recently.

Though I have some time in the blockchain/crypto industry, one can never go wrong with strengthening one’s base, so I will be taking full advantage of the course, even reviewing all basics and jotting down some key points from this week of studying.

Key ideas:

• Multisig: multi-signature transaction. A multisig transaction requires a defined number of people (public keys) to sign a transaction with their private keys before it’s considered valid. This increases the security of user funds by mitigating single point of failures like a stolen or lost private key.

• Smart contracts are tamper-proof programs on blockchains with the logic: “if/when x event happens, then execute y action.” Smart contracts are Immutable, Decentralized, and Transparent.

  • Smart contracts create trust minimized agreements; i.e., unbreakable pinky swear

• Oracles: an oracle is anything that links off-chain data to a blockchain. Blockchains are closed systems, requiring oracles to input data from outside the system. The most used example is getting cryptocurrency's price into a contract.

  • @chainlink is a popular oracle decentralized oracle network connecting smart contracts to real-world data feeds like asset prices, price feeds, weather data, and so on.

  • The key is that it is decentralized; having a centralized oracle feeding data to a decentralized blockchain would be counterintuitive.

• Nonce - "Number only used once." A number added to a hashed block in a blockchain that, when rehashed, meets the difficulty level restrictions. This is the number that blockchain miners are solving to receive the block reward.

• Signing a transaction: A “one-way “ process. Someone with private key signs a transaction by their private key being hashed with their transaction data. Anyone can then verify this new transaction hash with your public key.

• Consensus: the mechanism used to agree on the state of a blockchain

  • Two types of consensus mechanisms:

    • Sybil Resistance - a way to defend against one entity by making fake nodes to gain control over the system for more rewards and makes it harder to execute something like a 51% attack

      • Proof of Work (PoW) - a node has to go through a computationally expensive process, mining to figure out the blockchain’s nonce problem

    • Chain Selection - Bitcoin & Ethereum use Nakamoto Consensus - a combination of PoW and longest chain rule

    • Block time - how long it takes for blocks to be published. Proportional to how hard mining algorithms are

    • Proof of Stake - nodes put up collateral, proving their stake in the system. In PoS, miners are called validators, nodes are chosen at random, rest of the nodes validate that the initial node is solved honestly

  • Layer 1: Base layer blockchain implementation: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche

  • Layer 2: Any application build on top of layer 1: Chainlink, Arbitrum, Optimism

    • Rollups: Arbitrum Optimism - roll-up is like a shared chain, derives security from base layer 1, and BULK sends transactions onto the layer one

The first chapter of the course is packed with TONS of useful information, and I would HIGHLY recommend it to people who are just starting out in blockchain for programming and nonprogramming purposes.

To those looking to understand blockchain better, I implore you to check out the first chapter of this behemoth of a course.

https://github.com/smartcontractkit/full-blockchain-solidity-course-js#lesson-0-the-edge-of-the-rabbit-hole

Crypto Chaos Radio 📡

For those who haven’t played Dark Souls, allow me to introduce one of my favorite videogame characters: Knight Artorias, the Abysswalker. I’ll briefly summarize Artorias and how he is relevant to my social media presence and goals.

With the growing threat of the Abyss swallowing the kingdom whole, Lord Gwyn, king of Lordran, sends Artorias and his canine companion, Sif, on a quest to rid the world of the Abyss. Though the most skilled warrior in all the land, at the very heart of the Abyss, Artorias meets Manus, Father of the Abyss. Manus proves to be indomitable for Artorias. Before succumbing to the Abyss and his doom, Artorias casts a spell over Sif to protect it from the wretched Abyss. Sif is left for the player’s character, The Chosen Undead, to rescue, and the player is set to finish what the Abysswalker started, defeat Manus, and cast away the Abyss.

To me, the story of Artorias is one of the most interesting backstories of an NPC.

But why am I telling you this?

The crypto space can sometimes feel like an abyss. It feels like there’s too much to learn; everything moves fast, Bitcoin’s up, Bitcoin’s down, Bull market, Bear market… It can be a tad overwhelming to get in. This is especially true if your educational/previous career is not finance or tech-based.

This leads me to another bit of the philosophy of Dark Souls. “Git Gud” is something that may be infuriating to hear for frustrated gamers out here, but it is, in fact, a very reassuring line. To beat the game, all one has to do is “Git Gud.“ It doesn’t matter what level you are or even what leveled armor and weapons you have. If you don’t “Git Gud,“ you’re doomed to die endless deaths.

My goal is to implement this “Git Gud“ mentality, find possibly worthwhile DeFi/GameFi projects, and do a deep dive into what they are, who they are, and what they do. This provides me with a “hands-on” type of learning experience. Hopefully, I can provide some valuable information for you, my reader.

I am not, however, a financial expert. I am neither a software engineer nor an expert in blockchain technology. I want my readers to know this as I write more articles; I am not an expert. Please take what I say with a grain of salt.

I hope that through these analyses and updates, I may shed light on an otherwise abysmal dark forest of an ecosystem to whoever is willing to read and trek along with me on this journey.

Remember, git gud, and don’t you dare go hollow…