# EPF Cohort 5 - Week 2 Date: 24/06/2024 ### Updates 1. Started diving deep into LMD Ghost and Casper to understand the basic building blocks of Gasper. Also briefly went through the incentives section of eth2book.info 2. Attended the [ACD call](https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/1066). I would say my biggest take way was to understand the dynamics of the team. There is no authoritarianism during the call. Everyone is just trying to align expectations and goals to move forwars in the same direction. * The specific topic of the day was EIP7702 and the recent pull request opened for optimization. EIP7702 has to do with account abstraction, I only briefly looked into it. 3. Looked into MEV and blob transactions briefly and understood the need for proposer builder seperation. 4. Gathered some knowledge on DAS and how KZG commitments are used for it. I only briefly looked into it. Although since I have a communications engineering background understanding the use of erasure codes was crystal clear to me, felt good. 5. Wrote a [reading guide](https://github.com/chirag-parmar/cohort-five/blob/chirag-weekly-updates/notes/ChiragMahaveerParmar.md#weak-subjectivity-june-18---20) on Weak Subjectivity, to help others understand it. 6. EIPs touched: EIP4844, EIP4444, EIP1559, EIP3704, EIP7702 7. Got most of my questions from [week 0](https://hackmd.io/@chirag-parmar/S13p6uVBR) related to node syncing answered after I researched on weak subjectivity 8. Couldn't achieve side quests from [last week](https://hackmd.io/@chirag-parmar/r1kTC_ar0). Hope to get them done this week (carrying over) ### Projects Interested In Looked at the proposed projects, and I am torn apart since the options are too enticing. * [pandaops p2p tooling](https://github.com/ethpandaops/tooling-wishlist/tree/master/open-ideas) (debugger and consensus metrics). This project seems interesting because I know it will give me in depth understanding of p2p networking in Ethereum * [the rated list DHT](https://notes.ethereum.org/hfbmSM_9RYas6t013xjq6Q). Research + Prototyping in a p2p setting is what entices me the most. * [Extending KZG commitments for Nimbus](https://github.com/eth-protocol-fellows/cohort-five/blob/main/projects/project-ideas.md#nimbus-extend-kzg-implementation-in-constantine-for-peerdas). Cryptographic implementations fall into my area of expertise (My masters thesis was based on implementing PQC algorithms, although, I wouldn't call myself an expert) ### Next Steps Having gained a general understanding of the Ethereum protocol and discovering my interests in projects, I want to dive deeper into related research. At the same time, my curiosity about "all things protocol" still isn't satisfied so I decided to invert the formula. Dividing my time 80/20, more on project specific research and lesser on general research. The 80: 1. Explore P2P networking, libp2p and devp2p. 2. deep dive into peerDAS and sharding. 3. (carried over from side quests) try out hive and Kurtosis. 4. try out consensus specs tests The 20: 1. Write an article on swap-or-not shuffling 2. Read the [paper](https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/18820) on SSF by one of the previous fellows. ### Other Notes I am probably gonna end up extending my initial research phase for this week as well. Sharpening my axe to take the tree out in one blow.