L4 The Future of Ethereum and Smart Contracts
The Future of Ethereum and Smart Contracts
- Ethereum Serenity
- New ERC Token Contracts
- Platform Governance
- Ethereum Classic
- Noteworthy DAPPs
Ethereum Serenity
An Upcoming Milestone that intends to switch the Proof of Work System with a Proof of Stake System.
^ Current Hottest Proposed Ethereum Improvement Plan [EIP]
New ERC Token Contracts
Ethereum Tokens [ERC]
ERC stands for Ethereum Request for Comment
New Top Standardized Token Contract Proposals2:
[EIP 165] ERC-165 _> a method to check what version of token standard used by a contract
[EIP 721] ERC-721 _> Non-Fungible Token Standard (deeds) – meaning all tokens are unique
[EIP 777] ERC-777 _> improvements to ERC20, send on behalf of another account, and adds notifications when a person receives tokens from a contract
Platform Governance
Changes, Forks, Improvements to Ethereum are Largely controlled by the Core Dev Team.2
Anyone can submit an [EIP] by adding their fork to the repository and following the template guidelines, and if approved by the editors may be reviewed at the next Dev Meeting.
Ethereum Classic
A very notable topic for analysis, as to what happens when a blockchain makes a hark fork.
This started when a hundred million dollars of Ether was stolen due to a vulnerability in a Smart Contract, that enabled an attacker to drain the funds of victims using a loop—
The majority of the Ethereum community then came together and formed enough of a consensus to make a hard fork and in effect return the stolen funds, a “Quarantine” all of the stolen coin from the network.3
As there were those were against a fork, the end result was two chains:
- The old chain, which is now known as Ethereum Classic
- The new chain, which we know as Ethereum
Noteworthy DAPPs
++ Decentralized Applications [DAPPs]
CryptoKitties:
Breed-able Virtual Cats on the Blockchain
MetaMask:
Chrome Extension that pulls application state data from a trusted Ethereum node