isabella232 / athenaeum

The Ethereum Research companion: research summary, impacts, specifications, status, resources, implementations

The Ethereum Athenæum

What will you find ?

A JSON file and hopefully in the future some visualization that keep track of Ethereum research and help everyone make sense of the exploding number of directions being followed simultaneously.

The JSON file currently contains:

• A key being a research direction like Sharding, Plasma, RANDAO, Casper FFG, Casper CBC, ...
• A summary, one-liner to describe the feature
• A description, with more in-depth explanation. Note that many are in draft or state of flux, make sure to check the date.
• A improves field. Taxonomy currently is throughput, transaction cost, latency, decentralization.
• A worsen field. Same taxonomy.
• A layer field. To track research that will necessitate a hard fork (layer 1), and research that can be build on top of the core (as a smart contract).
• A tags field. As we dive into the low-level detail, tags will be useful to group semantically. Taxonomy currently is sharding, architecture, cryptography, random number generator, proof of stake, networking, protocol, library
• A comments field
• A resources field which links to explanatory blog posts, videos, specifications and if specs is in flux, discussions.
• A status field to track the state of the research: research, draft, proof-of-concept, implemented
• A last_update field. Research is moving fast and scope can expand, shrink or completely disappear from week to week. Be sure to check the date.
• An implementation field. Track the implementations.
• A dependencies field.
• A required_by field.

Target audience

The main audience of this JSON are client developers. Consequently, very low-level building blocks will be part of the JSON (for example the BLS12-381 signature). This will facilitate splitting work in a client team and track progress.

Implementation "details". Regarding implementation of low-level blocks (for example cryptography), there will be a heavy focus on libraries that can be used with Nimbus

What's in a name?

In ancient Athens, the athenæum was a place where rhetorician, orators and philosophers gathered. By extension, an athenaeum became a gathering of scholars.

Emperor Hadrian built the Athenæum in ancient Rome, a school of high reputation for literary and scientific study.

Nowadays, the name is used for libraries, cultural centers, museums, high school (Belgium) or university (Netherlands).