# Dev Update Week 0: Hybrid Blockchain Framework
Developer: Developeruche
Week Ending: June 13, 2025

### Summary
This week, my focus was on building and finalizing the core components of the Hybrid Blockchain Framework, a toolkit for developing and deploying RISC-V based smart contracts on Ethereum. Significant progress was made on both Phase 1 (CLI Tooling) and Phase 2 (Hybrid Node). The primary goal was to establish a complete, end-to-end development workflow, from contract creation to deployment on a local development node.

### Accomplishments This Week
**Phase 1: `cargo-hybrid` CLI Tool**
The initial phase, focused on developer tooling, is now largely complete. The cargo-hybrid command-line tool, which extends Rust's native cargo functionality for smart contract development, has been successfully implemented.

Key features delivered:

- Contract Scaffolding: The cargo hybrid new command allows for the quick creation of new smart contract projects from predefined templates, including storage, bare, and a full erc20 implementation.

- Compilation and Verification: cargo hybrid build and cargo hybrid check are fully functional, compiling Rust code into RISC-V bytecode ready for the VM.

- Deployment Workflow: The cargo hybrid deploy command was created to deploy compiled bytecode to a running blockchain node, with options for specifying RPC endpoints, private keys, and constructor arguments.

- Integrated Dev Node: A cargo hybrid node command was added as a convenient wrapper to start the hybrid-node for local development.

**Phase 2: hybrid-node Implementation**
Work on the hybrid blockchain node, the core of Phase 2, has begun. The node is built upon RETH and designed to support both the standard EVM and a custom RISC-V (r55) VM.

Key achievements:

- Dual VM Architecture: The foundational structure for integrating the r55 VM alongside the EVM is in place, creating a unified execution environment.

- Node Functionality: The hybrid-node binary can be started in development mode (--dev) and can serve as the local blockchain for the cargo-hybrid deployment tool.

- Installation & Setup: A one-line installation script was created to streamline the setup process for new users, handling dependencies and installation of both the cargo-hybrid and hybrid-node binaries. Initial testing and documentation have been performed on macOS.

### Next Steps & Goals for Next Week
With the developer workflow established, the focus will now shift entirely to enhancing the hybrid node and demonstrating its unique capabilities.

1. Enhance Hybrid Execution: My primary goal is to further develop the hybrid_evm crate to enable seamless and efficient switching between the EVM and RISC-V execution environments within a single transaction context.

2. Develop Hybrid Examples: I will create more complex example projects that showcase the power of the hybrid model, such as a contract that utilizes a RISC-V library for a computationally intensive task while managing assets on the EVM.

3. Expand Testing: I will expand testing to cover more edge cases in the interaction between the two VMs. Although currently limited to macOS, I will research options for cross-platform testing to ensure broader compatibility.

4. Refine RPC API: I plan to review and extend the JSON-RPC API to ensure full compatibility with standard Ethereum tools and to expose any custom methods required for interacting with the RISC-V side of the framework.

## Challenges & Learnings
Platform Constraints: All development and testing have been conducted on macOS. A key learning is the need to establish a testing pipeline for other operating systems, like Linux, to ensure the riscv-gnu-toolchain dependency and installation scripts are robust.

RETH Integration: Integrating the custom r55 VM into the RETH architecture provided a deep dive into RETH's modularity. It was a valuable learning experience in how to customize and extend modern Ethereum clients.