Posts

There has been a lot of debate around what makes someone an Ethereum core developer or what the term even means. I’m intimately involved in day-to-day operations involving Ethereum 1.0 protocol development as a developer liaison for the community and have been operating the Ethereum Core Developer call (a.k.a AllCoreDevs call) every other Friday since late 2016. The following is not definitive and only represents my opinion. Nothing in this blog represents the opinion of any of my employers or the Ethereum Foundation. ...

Intro Ethereum 2.0 is the upcoming overhaul to the Ethereum blockchain protocol that will bring with it proof-of-stake (to provide more security) and sharding (to provide more scaling). It is being released in at least 3 “phases”, labeled Phase 0 through Phase 2. It is anticipated that during Q3-Q4 of 2020 it will be launching Phase 0 of the upgrade that will deploy the “beacon chain”. The beacon chain, among other things, is meant to act as a coordinator between the different actors participating to secure the Eth 2.0 network. I wanted to join an Eth 2.0 Phase 0 testnet to help and get experience running a node. This article is going to detail the hardware and software set-up I went through to become an Eth 2.0 validator on the Topaz testnet. ...

This post will discuss how protocol level development decisions are made as well as how Ethereum network upgrades (a.k.a hard forks) are organized. There is a rich history in how Ethereum’s decision making processes have developed over time. This article will focus on Eth 1.0 governance and not touch on Ethereum 2.0 governance. This article does not represent the viewpoint of the Ethereum Foundation or any other entity that I am associated with. ...

Programmatic Proof-of-Work (ProgPoW) has been a topic of contention in the Ethereum community for a long time. This post explains the history of ProgPoW, the various arguments for and against it, and my personal opinion on the topic. I am speaking on behalf of myself, Hudson Jameson, and not on behalf of the Ethereum Foundation or any other entity. History ProgPoW is “a new Proof-of-Work algorithm to replace Ethash that utilizes almost all parts of commodity GPUs”. ProgPoW aims to decrease the economic incentive to build an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC); a highly specialized device designed for a specific purpose, in this case, mining Ethereum much more efficiently than traditional GPU mining. ProgPoW is not designed to completely prevent a ProgPoW ASIC from being created, but rather make it expensive to build and not worth it to produce. It was submitted as a core EIP on May 2, 2018, by a semi-anonymous group calling itself IfDefElse. ...

I spent the last two days going over every dev fund proposal and writing my thoughts. I have turned this into a post on the Zcash forums. I’m proud to be a part of the Zcash Foundation Advisory Board and I take this decision very seriously. I hope the community comes together on this. Zcash Forum Post Tweet Skip to the bottom for my pick Who am I? My name is Hudson Jameson and I am a cryptocurrency enthusiast who is involved in both the Ethereum and, to a lesser extent, Zcash community. I work for the Ethereum Foundation in a role for devops and community management. I hold a number of roles in the wider Ethereum ecosystem including EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) Editor, Reddit moderator, Ethereum Cat Herders group co-founder, and core developer liaison responsible for organizing the bi-weekly Ethereum core developer calls. I am on the Zcash Community Advisory Panel that will be polled (for sentiment collection) by the Zcash Foundation regarding NU4 proposals (dev fund proposals). I care about Zcash and it’s community. I consider Ethereum and Zcash besties <3 ...

Mental health update: I am doing a lot better. I have adjusted my medications and went through an experimental bi-polar/depression treatment in July called intravenous ketamine treatment. Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that has been used for since the 1960s as a pain reliever and sedative. Only recently has it been explored as a treatment for drug resistant depression, bipolar, chronic pain, and other things. My experience with the drug was very positive. After my first infusion I noticed an immediate difference. My depression was significantly lower. One interesting side effect was that my anxiety increased as my depression decreased. It is almost like the depressive part of my mental health was masking the severe anxiety side of it. This effect mostly went away as I continued treatment. I had six ketamine infusions over the course of about 3 weeks, steadily increasing my dosage with each infusion. Professional anesthesiologists administered the drug and monitored me so I felt safe. ...

I have mental illnesses. In order to combat the stigma I want to explain my personal struggle with it and encourage others to seek help. Trigger warning: discussion of depression, anxiety, and suicide. I suffer from anxiety, OCD, depression, and bipolar II disorder. It has taken my entire life to be properly diagnosed since many of these types of mental illnesses are connected. As a child I remember always being anxious about everything and experiencing huge signs of OCD, including moving the pots and pans in the cabinet to an exact placement and feeling like my mother would die if I didn’t adjust the doorway exactly four times every night before I went to sleep. As I grew older I figured out ways to work through my OCD symptoms, but even today I still get these feelings that things need to be moved or touched or ordered a certain way or else bad things will happen. ...

This past weekend I attended my first Gencon gaming convention. It is the largest tabletop-game convention in North America (70,000+ people). I normally have Ethereum and other blockchain related things consume my life, but a few days a week I meet with friends and play tabletop-RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons (5e), 7th Sea, Deadlands, and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. This blog entry primarily describes the things I’ve learned from the folks at the One Shot Podcast Network and how I plan to apply that to what I’m doing. It also describes a way that blockchain technology can help content creators who utilize traditional crowdfunding platforms. ...

I was inspired by Zooko Wilcox’s blog posts that detail why he is advising Basic Attention Token (BAT) and Tezos to write a post on my official advising roles in the blockchain community. I have agreed to serve as an advisor to the Status team and SmartContract.com team. This blog post is to explain their projects and state why I’m agreeing to advise them. Status.im What is it? Status is a mobile Ethereum OS that manifest itself as a mobile app for iOS and Android. It is a gateway to access Ethereum Dapps (decentralized applications) on a smartphone, an encrypted message service, and is attempting to build a network of community powered services as part of the “Status Network”. Status recently held a token distribution for the “Status Network Token (SNT)”. SNT tokens are used as a utility to power the Status client with services including governance of the Status client, participation in a Fiat-to-crypto ‘Teller Network’, A Decentralized Push Notification Market, and more. Click here for a blog that explains their vision. ...

Chinese translation (中文翻译) courtesy of EthFans French Translation (traduction française) courtesy of Ethereum France Korean Translation( 한국어 번역) courtesy of Yeji Park Russian Translation (Русский перевод) courtesy of Mark Poyda Spanish Translation (Traducción Española) courtesy of Wan Raitelli Turkish Translation (Türkçe çeviri) courtesy of Ethereum Turkiye This article is meant to help people understand some of the basic mechanics behind accounts, transactions, gas, and the role miners play in setting the block size in Ethereum. Corrections are welcome :) ...