Moonbeam Monthly Dispatch: August 2020
By: Derek Yoo
Tags: Solidity, Ethereum, Substrate, Evm Pallet, Polkadot

Just as was the case in June, we have been primarily focused on implementation in the month of July.

Web3 Foundation Grant Award

Earlier this week, we announced that the Web3 Foundation had approved our work on a Web3-compatible RPC library and awarded us a grant. This RPC implementation is what allows developers to run Ethereum-native tools like Truffle, Remix, and MetaMask on Moonbeam’s network, which is based on Substrate.

This work is a significant milestone both in the development and continued evolution of the Moonbeam network, and for the interoperability of blockchains as a whole.

Details of the grant can be found here: https://github.com/w3f/Open-Grants-Program/blob/master/applications/web3-compatible-api.md

Technical Progress

Technical implementation work continues in the Moonbeam and Parity Frontier repos. The first pass of work on the Web3 RPC REST endpoints is complete. We have also completed an automated test suite for the RPCs to ensure code quality.

In August, our key engineering efforts include the following:

Unified Accounts: This effort will unify the currently separate Substrate and EVM accounts that exist in Moonbeam. We aim to have a single Ethereum-compatible account that is used within the Moonbeam EVM and that is also used for Substrate-based functions on Moonbeam such as staking and on-chain governance.

This effort will unify the currently separate Substrate and EVM accounts that exist in Moonbeam. We aim to have a single Ethereum-compatible account that is used within the Moonbeam EVM and that is also used for Substrate-based functions on Moonbeam such as staking and on-chain governance. Parachain-based Moonbeam TestNet: We plan to bypass the usual Substrate sovereign chain TestNets that most other projects are running, instead focusing on parachain-based TestNet. Initially, this TestNet will have a small relay chain for the Moonbeam parachain to connect to. This effort has only recently become possible based on development of the Cumulus parachain library.

We plan to bypass the usual Substrate sovereign chain TestNets that most other projects are running, instead focusing on parachain-based TestNet. Initially, this TestNet will have a small relay chain for the Moonbeam parachain to connect to. This effort has only recently become possible based on development of the Cumulus parachain library. Adding support for the subscriptions Web3 API to complement the existing REST-based RPC endpoints. The subscriptions APIs are needed by many existing Ethereum applications and are part of the Moonbeam minimum viable feature set.

Are you interested in trying out the Ethereum compatibility features of Moonbeam? We would love to hear from you. Please reach out to us on Riot.

Expanded Social and Chat Presence

We expanded the number of ways we have to engage with our community. There is a new Telegram group for general discussion about Moonbeam that can be found here: https://t.me/Moonbeam_Official

This Telegram group complements our Riot (now Element) room which is focused primarily on technical topics.

We also have a new YouTube channel, where we have posted an initial set of tutorial videos.

Here’s our full set of social channels (many of which are new):

Recent Talks

In case you missed either of last month’s talks, we’ve posted the recordings to our new YouTube channel. Here’s what’s in store:

Web3 Builders: Introducing Moonbeam

In this webinar recording, I am joined by Alan Sapède and Telmo González Michelena to discuss the strategic and technical aspects of Moonbeam. If you’re interested in learning more about the system architecture and capabilities, this is a great video to watch.

Hackusama

As a judge for the Hackusama hackathon, I put together a brief presentation for participants. In it, I discuss the fallacy of a “perfect blockchain” and the lessons we can learn from Howard Moskowitz, a market research veteran in the CPG industry. I recently wrote a blog post discussing the topic as well, which you can read here.

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Originally published at https://www.purestake.com on August 7, 2020.