It’s always fun to hear about new grants as they’re awarded, but what happens after the announcement? In this series, we’ll review a couple of projects that are underway, or already on the finish line. Read on for some recent recipient milestones and accomplishments!
GASOL (GAS Optimization Toolkit)
He COAST group work on formal techniques, modeling and implementations related to the verification and optimization of programs. members Alberto Elvira, Pablo Gordillo Y Albert Rubio they are applying that experience to Ethereum smart contracts with GASOL, a framework for optimizing gas consumption. Each Ethereum smart contract executes a sequence of EVM instructions called opcodes; GASOL’s “super-optimization” technique searches for a sequence that produces the same results as the original but consumes less gas.
The GASOL team received a grant in February 2021 to take advantage of their previous research and experiments with Ethereum smart contract optimization. They already had a prototype for computing EVM sequences optimized for a subset of opcodes, specifically stack operations. The goal of the grant is to expand the research prototype into a super optimization toolkit for smart contract developers, and ultimately make the optimizer integrable with the Solidity compiler.
Version 0.1.3 of the GASOL super-optimization tool and instructions for using it are available at Github. In its current version, GASOL can calculate optimized sequences and produce the corresponding executable bytecode. Other features and achievements include:
- Optimization for memory and store operations, as well as stack operations
- Tests to compare the efficiency gains of GASOL vs. yul optimizeras well as GASOL in combination with the Yul optimizer.
- Generation of a log file to verify that the bytecode uploaded to Etherscan has been generated by GASOL
- Extended the SMT model to define the order of memory accesses and functions to retain the same memory state as the original
- Some optimizer components have been generalized to allow byte size optimization criteria
For anyone who wants to dig into the technical details, the team has published reports on Level 1 Y Stage 2 of the project. Follow GASOL on Github to keep up with future releases!
L2BEAT
Layer 2 scaling solutions they have proliferated over the past year, promising benefits like faster transactions, dramatically lower costs, and increased privacy. Each L2 approach makes different tradeoffs that affect security, decentralization, performance, and usability. For a user, this means freedom to decide what’s most important to him and choose a solution that meets her needs, but keeping up with an ever-growing list of options can be overwhelming.
L2BEAT helps users make an informed decision by offering side-by-side comparisons of features, usage statistics, and potential risks of active L2 projects. The team behind the website researches each protocol listed, examining various data sources and project documentation to compile key information in one clear and accessible source.
When L2BEAT first received funding in the spring of 2021, the dashboard listed scaling technology and locked value statistics for each of the 10 protocols. The site, along with the L2 ecosystem, has grown considerably since then. Today, a visitor can toggle between granular financial data and concisely explained technical risk factors for 20 protocols, along with a page dedicated to analyzing each protocol’s features and trade-offs.
In December, L2BEAT received a second grant to help grow their team, automate processes, and expand their efforts. Planned improvements include:
- Build a robust enough back-end server and database to handle the complexity of current and planned functions
- Add more live metrics, including transaction volume, uptime, and block production
- Add update logs to help keep users informed about changes to the protocols they are using
Verify L2BEAT.com For a treasure trove of information on L2 with much more to come follow @L2beatcom on Twitter, or join the community Discord. The team also welcomes contributions!
Are you working on something that you think could change Ethereum for the better? go to our grants page to learn more about what we look for in the projects we finance.
