Summary

Currently, my main interests revolve around Verkle Tree, statelessness and state expiry. Here are some of the project direction:

1. Verkle Tree + State Expiry Implementation POC
2. Helping consensus clients (e.g. Prysm) to implement VKT components
3. Helping execution clients (e.g. Reth) to implement VKT components

Aside from gathering and reading the necessary materials, I've also talked to Ignacio (mentor) to get some insights on the current progress of Verkle Tree, as well as how I can potentially make a contribution through EPF.

Lastly, I've also been studying cryptography mathematics, so that by the time I reach the implementation stage, I'm able to get onto the codebase as quickly as possible.

Readings

I've collected all of the resources regarding Verkle Tree, statelessness and state expiry in this repository.

Conversation with Mentor

I had a conversation with Ignacio regarding some of the questions that I had. Here are some of the summarized points:

• Overlay tree method is currently the best transition method.
• State Expiry is most likely going to be implemented after Verkle Tree has been fully migrated.
• Although some of the team members have shown support for State Expiry, trying to implement State Expiry is going to delay the launch of Verkle Tree even further.
• Not many people are working on State Expiry, so there are a lot of areas to be discovered.
• Out of all consensus clients, only Lighthouse has implemented the VKT components.
• Out of all execution clients, only Nethermind and Geth have been working on the VKT components.
• There's someone from Stellar blockchain who has worked with State Expiry and Verkle Tree.

I also asked for some personal advices to maximize the learnings during this cohort of EPF:

• Work on something that you're passionate about is more important than forcing to do something that's "closest" to real core development.
• Years of experience may be obsolete as compared to passion and consistency.
• Cryptography may be deemed as a black box, it just depends on your use cases.

First conversation went really well! Hope to have more interesting discussion with Ignacio in the future.

Daily Updates

To ensure consistency, I post daily updates (on weekdays) on what I did for EPF. Check out my daily updates this week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday

Next week's Action Items

• Connect with someone from Prysm to know the latest progress on Verkle Tree.
• Connect with someone from Reth to know the latest progress on Verkle Tree.
• Connect with the person who implemented State Expiry on Stellar.
• Familiarize with what needs to be done for VKT on consensus clients.
• Continue to research and brainstorm state expiry schemes.
• Continue to study cryptography math.