Anatomy of a Crypto Community — Taiko Tuesday #4
Everything that happened in the Taiko world last week — and more.
Housekeeping
I wanted to share some news before we start: Yours truly has been appointed as Taiko Ambassador!
The Ambassador program is still in its infancy, and so am I as an Ambassador. But if there’s one thing I want you to know, reader, is that I’m going to do my best to represent Taiko in the most professional and respectful manner I can.
As for my duties, I’ll continue writing Taiko Tuesday but I also hope to contribute more to technical documentation, write research articles, and interact with the broader crypto community on Twitter.
If you have any ideas or just want to say hello, shoot me a DM on Twitter or Discord!
And, as always, thank you to all the readers, subscribers, and supporters of Taiko Tuesday. Now let’s see what happened in the Taiko world last week.
Testnet status
The Taiko alpha-1 testnet (Snæfellsjökull) was deprecated on February 15th. RIP.
However, a new testnet will be launched in around a month. The alpha-2 testnet will have ZKPs integrated, meaning that anyone will be able to run a prover node.
Exciting stuff coming!
Development updates
Taiko has released another automated changelog, this time for Taiko client updates. You can find the automated changelog for the Taiko-mono repository here.
ZK-EVM
Fully implemented Blake2f, now optimizing.
MPT layout and refactoring.
Made progress in in-circuit KZG circuit implementation.
Made Halo2 API changes.
Benchmarking.
Client and testnet
Improved the check for whether the current block still needs a new proof.
Updated
ZkevmRpcdProducerto make it connect to a real prover service.Implemented release-please.
Bridge
Added light theme toggle chain button.
Protocol
Added a script to calculate
slotSmoothingFactor.Added more protocol/tokenomics tests.
Changed statevariables to return a struct.
Checked message.to on the source chain as well.
Deployed a test ERC-20 token to test the bridge.
Improved precision for slot-availability multipliers.
No longer deleting commit records.
Re-implemented bridge receive check.
Restricted receive()'s msg.sender to vaults.
Revert Bridge receive() checks.
Updated Yul PlonkVerifier.
Allowed resolver to return zero address for EtherVault.
Relayer
Catch relayer & status page up to new testnet.
Prepared bridge relayer API for the front end.
Website
Added theme switch on website home page.
Implemented an automatic publish the latest blog posts to the website.
Initiated bridge and signal service documentation.
Added various minor improvements to the website and docs.
Community updates
Korchinskiiy, a user that has been very helpful over the last few months, has joined the Discord moderator team. Congrats, Korchinskiiy!
If you want to join the mod team, come to the Taiko Discord server, be helpful, and you’ll be noticed!
Ecosystem updates
The next few months are going to be huge for Taiko in terms of public appearances.
As you know, Taiko is one of the sponsors of ETHDenver and will be present at the event. Be sure to follow Taiko’s Twitter and Discord to get the latest info on when and where to find the team.
Taiko is also sponsoring ETHGlobal’s Scaling Ethereum hackathon. If you’re a hacker and want to contribute to Taiko’s (and by extension Ethereum’s) goals, make sure to apply!
Interesting tweets
Since there are at least two teams that have launched the first ZK-EVM, Taiko took a different path (someone please call 911 and report this murder):
Some good old drama between ZK-EVM teams:
Scroll Co-Founder Ye Zhang talks about Scroll’s approach to building their ZK-EVM. Honestly, a lot of the stuff Ye talks about is in line with Taiko’s beliefs.
Meme of the week
This could be you, reader, if you just join (and win) one of the Taiko Friday quiz games in our Discord server.
Feature. A conversation with Ben from Taiko
As promised last week, Taiko Tuesday will start publishing conversations with different Taiko team members.
For this week, I talked to Ben (odesium), Taiko’s Developer Community Manager. Ben is a true Swiss Army knife in that he does everything and is everywhere — just join the Taiko Discord server and see yourself!
We mainly talked about crypto communities — what they are, how they work, and why they exist. Ben also shared his thoughts on how the Taiko community has evolved over time and the exciting future ahead.
Let’s dive in!
1. Communities in tech are nothing new. Apple has it. Toyota has it. Heck, perhaps even Nokia still has it. Yet crypto communities have a whole different vibe to them. What makes them so unique?
The vibe of a crypto community is created by the enthusiasm and commitment of individuals committed to the success of and shared belief in the power of decentralized technology to challenge traditional systems and usher in a more just future. The open-source nature of crypto technology benefits crypto communities by allowing anyone to contribute, learn, and share their knowledge. They’re designed to be collaborative, with participants responding quickly to assist each other with any potential problems.
These communities are also made up of individuals from all different backgrounds and regions of the world, resulting in a diverse and lively environment around the clock. Due to the dynamic nature of crypto, there’s always something new to learn and get engaged in, whether you’re merely trying to meet new friends who share similar interests, playing games, making memes, or actively participating in the development of the code. There’s room for everyone.
2. The word “community” gets thrown around a lot in crypto. Some communities disappear as quickly as they arise, and others stay intact for years. What’s the difference between a weak and a strong community? Why do crypto projects even need to have communities in the first place?
The difference between a weak and a strong community lies in its longevity, purpose, and engagement. A common goal is essential for a community to bind its members together and create a sense of purpose, whether supporting a technology or a brand. In order for a community to remain strong, its members must be given opportunities to contribute, engage in discussions, and have fun. This reinforces their belonging and commitment and allows the community to continue growing and developing. Having a great project also helps!
To grow and thrive, crypto projects require communities. A strong community can mean the difference between a successful and a failed project by providing the critical mass necessary to create promotional network effects using social media, and they offer valuable feedback to the development team.
Furthermore, a strong community can provide support to both new and experienced users, answering questions and assisting them in understanding the technology. In short, a strong community can be the foundation for a crypto project's success. That is why we value our community and actively encourage participation by giving them opportunities to help shape Taiko, including taking part in our logo design, testnets, and encouraging other ways, such as described in the contributing guide.
3. When I think about it, one of the craziest things in crypto communities is that you can live in the same Discord as thousands of other people but be completely unaware of them because they speak a different language and spend their time in a language-specific channel. Others aren’t even on Discord or Twitter at all. This is somewhat similar to having communities within communities. What are your thoughts on how to approach and manage such multilayered communities?
Managing multilayered communities can be challenging, but it’s essential for fostering trust and creating a sense of belonging. We’ve created 16 separate channels for each language to ensure that all members of the various language groups feel welcome. This allows each group to communicate freely and share their thoughts in their own language.
Additionally, it’s important to provide resources, and we’re thankful that we have a passionate and engaged community who help translate our important content and announcements into their native languages. Creating an inclusive and welcoming culture for all members of the community, regardless of language or background, will make everyone feel welcome and encourage them to interact positively with one another.
4. One of those meta communities is the developer community. Why is having a strong developer community so important for Taiko and how do you build one?
A strong developer community is essential for Taiko because it provides a platform for developers to share ideas, receive support, identify potential issues, and deploy their apps on top of Taiko. Creating engaging and useful documentation and resources is important to make it easy for developers to get started with Taiko. This is the reason we have a strong focus on making our documentation understandable at all levels. The easier developers can interact, the more active the developer community, the more robust the Taiko infrastructure will be, and the more it will be used. Being open source, developers from all levels can examine the documentation, and code and contribute to the project.
To build a strong developer community, it’s important to reach out to potential developers, provide support, and create an online platform for collaboration and discussion, such as GitHub and Discord. It’s also important to reach out to the larger community, through conference events, hackathons, or sponsorships, to increase awareness of Taiko, and to make connections with other similar projects and bring awareness to developers. This will help to promote cross-collaboration, drive more people to the community and generate more interest. You’ll see more of these activities over the coming weeks and months as we present, take part in panels, and sponsor events, future hackathons, and other mainstream conferences.
5. You’ve been with Taiko from the very beginning. How has the Taiko community changed over time and how do you see it evolving in the future?
Over the past few quarters, there have been significant changes in the Taiko community. In the beginning, the community was relatively small (under 1000 members in our Discord) and made up of ZK-EVM enthusiasts, and the primary goal was to familiarise everyone with Taiko (including myself) and what a type-1 ZK-EVM was, as Vitalik's article describing different types of ZK-EVMs wasn’t yet written. Since the project codes were still being written at the time and nothing was available, the focus was to keep the community active as we all learned together.
In less than six months, the community has grown exponentially to 39K members on Discord and 33K on Twitter, with a diverse range of languages and backgrounds, from new users who discovered Taiko on social media and were intrigued, to developers who are contributing to the code and, of course, the meme lords. It's been amazing to see how many people have come together to collaborate and support one another in order to improve our project and community.
As we move forward, the community will continue to grow and evolve as we introduce new features into our testnets, attend more events, and become more visible. We’ll also continue to create more documentation appropriate for various levels of user or developer that will be more educational and engaging to create a positive experience.
Let's not forget that it’s the people who make the community what it is, particularly those who are active in daily discussions, helping others, or coming up with initiatives to help spread the word or engage the community. You can already see how the community is evolving as we promote helpful and active community members to moderators and identify those who facilitate positive communication to be ambassadors. As the community grows, there will definitely be more opportunities!
6. Balaji Srinivasan has this idea that online communities, powered by blockchain technology, can become full-blown states. Can you imagine such a future? Do you think there will come a day when Taiko will be issuing passports to its digital citizens?
The idea that online communities could develop into autonomous nation-states using blockchain technology where communities could become destinations for digital citizens seeking a place to work, play, and live is undoubtedly an intriguing one. Although it’s difficult to predict the future, let's think about the possibility.
Smart contracts, for instance, may automate many of the procedures required for maintaining a digital state while enabling citizens to securely store assets and access services using blockchain-based digital identities. Whilst I don’t expect Taiko to issue digital passports, since Taiko is an open-source and permissionless platform, it allows digital citizens to participate freely. The Taiko infrastructure would serve as a platform for transactions and governance, allowing developers and projects to build their applications for identities, digital passports, and citizenship.
Although the idea of digital governments is theoretically viable, there are a lot of legal and regulatory considerations to take into account before such a future becomes a reality. However, it’s not difficult to envision a future in which technology advances to the point where full-fledged digital states are built on permissionless, open-source technology.
Ben, thank you for your time. Taiko is lucky to have you!
Taiko Haiku
Community
Community is
People, and people are one
With all that there is.
Useful links
Thanks for reading the fourth installment of Taiko Tuesday! Special thanks to d1onys1us and odesium for their feedback and general support for the project.
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Note: This newsletter is for educational purposes only and in no way constitutes financial, investment, or any other type of advice. Always do your own research before making financial decisions.