The Ethereum Foundation leads research into cryptographic protocols that are useful within the greater Ethereum community and more generally. Cryptography is a key tool that enables greater functionality, security, efficiency, and auditability in decentralized settings. We are currently conducting research into verifiable delay functions, multiparty computation, vector commitments, and zero-knowledge proofs etc. We have a culture of open source and no patents are put on any work that we produce.
This repository holds the codebase to our website, crypto.ethereum.org
The main stack used in the project includes:
- Next.js.
- TypeScript.
- ChakraUI as component library.
- KaTeX to render LaTeX math syntax.
The project is bootstrapped with create-next-app, with a custom scaffolding.
First, run the development server:
npm run dev
# or
yarn devOpen http://localhost:3000 with your browser to see the result.
You can start editing the page by modifying pages/index.tsx. The page auto-updates as you edit the file.
The following list describes the main elements of the project structure:
public: contains static assets like fonts and images.src: contains the source code.components: React components.- components with state are directly located inside
/components. layout: components used to contain and apply different layouts to different pages.UI: stateless (functional) components.
- components with state are directly located inside
pages: includes components that renders to pages and NextJS API Routes.posts: markdown blog posts.styles: css stylesheets.global.css: global stylesheet.
theme: contains the Chakra UI custom theme, organized infoundationsandcomponentsfor better scaling.utils: utilitary stuff.constants.ts: this is the global constants file, containg URLs and lists of elements we use across the site.types.ts: contains the custom defined TypeScript types and interfaces.
Support for GitHub Flavored Markdown, which is a superset of CommonMark and adds supports to other features like tables.
The site uses KaTeX to render LaTeX/math and inside /research publications abstracts. LaTeX-rendering libs are not 100% compatible with LaTex yet, so please check the support table if you are having issues with some expression.
The site supports both internal and external blog posts.
- Internal posts: to add a new one, just create a new markdown (
.md) file undersrc/posts(make sure first this directory exists, otherwise create it first, under/src). The name of the file should follow the kebab case convention, as it will be used to generate the url to the post. You also have to add some Front Matter metadata, like the posttitle,author(s)anddate, which are required.
Metadata example:
---
title: 'VDF Proving with SnarkPack'
description 'Some awesome description for social media snippets, under 160 characters'
author: 'Mary Maller'
date: '2022-03-16'
---
Post titles should be under 60 characters. Learn more on title tags.
Post descriptions should be under 160 characters. Learn more on meta descriptions.
- External posts: you can also link to an external post from the
/blogpage by appending an object with the required data (title,date,link) to theexternalLinkslist from thesrc/pages/blog/index.tsxfile. See the example below:
const externalLinks = [
{
title: 'Ethereum Merge: Run the majority client at your own peril!',
date: '2022-03-24',
link: 'https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2022/03/24/run-the-majority-client-at-your-own-peril.html'
}
];
Image files should be placed inside /public/images/ and the path to the image will be referenced as /images/${filename}. For example, we can insert the EF logo in a post by using
Take into account that images are automatically centered, no need to add extra HTML.
Follow this syntax.
- Locally: Make sure the site builds locally, otherwise the build will break and the new version of the site (e.g.: adding a new post) will not be generated. To be sure of this, run the
yarn buildcommand locally and check that you get no errors. - On GitHub: check that the
Deploy Previewpasses succesfully.
The source files (.md) for the bounties pages are located at /src/bounties-data-source. If you need to update the content from a certain bounty, just modify the corresponding file. LaTeX/math is also supported here.
For a better organization, images used in bounties pages are placed inside /public/images/bounties/ and the path to the image have to be referenced as /images/bounties/${filename} (check /src/bounties-data-source/rsa/assumptions.md as example).
The best way is to just follow the current Publication structure you can find in /src/pages/research.tsx and use any other existent entry as example. For publications that are not associated to a conference, just use the year prop, with a numeric value, like the example below:
<Publication
title='Fast amortized KZG proofs'
authors='Dankrad Feist, Dmitry Khovratovich'
year={2023}
link='https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/033'
>
<Text mb={4} fontSize='sm'>
<em>
In this note we explain how to compute n KZG proofs for a polynomial of degree d in
time superlinear of (n+d). Our technique is used in lookup arguments and vector
commitment schemes.
</em>
</Text>
</Publication>
For publications associated to a conference, use the conference property instead, with a text value. Don't use year in this case, just include it as part of the conference value, as you can see in the example below:
<Publication
title='Aggregatable subvector commitments for stateless cryptocurrencies'
authors='Alin Tomescu, Ittai Abraham, Vitalik Buterin, Justin Drake, Dankrad Feist, Dmitry
Khovratovich'
conference='SCN 2020.'
link='https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/527.pdf'
>
<Text fontSize='sm'>
<em>
An aggregatable subvector commitment (aSVC) scheme is a vector commitment (VC)
scheme that can aggregate multiple proofs into a single, small subvector proof. In
this paper, we formalize aSVCs and give a construction from constant-sized
polynomial commitments. Our construction is unique in that it has linear-sized
public parameters, it can compute all constant-sized proofs in quasilinear time, it
updates proofs in constant time and it can aggregate multiple proofs into a
constant-sized subvector proof. Furthermore, our concrete proof sizes are small due
to our use of pairing-friendly groups. We use our aSVC to obtain a payments-only
stateless cryptocurrency with very low communication and computation overheads.
Specifically, our constant-sized, aggregatable proofs reduce each block's proof
overhead to a single group element, which is optimal. Furthermore, our subvector
proofs speed up block verification and our smaller public parameters further reduce
block size.
</em>
</Text>
</Publication>
Follow the current Event structure you can find in /src/pages/events.tsx and use any other existent entry as example, like the example below:
<Event
conference='Cryptographic Frontier 2022, Trondheim'
workshop='Open Problems in Decentralized Computation at Eurocrypt 2022'
url='https://sites.google.com/view/cryptographic-frontier-2022/'
>
this workshop brings the most interesting and challenging open cryptographic questions
that Ethereum, Filecoin and other blockchain systems face, to the attention of academia.
We will cover a large spectrum of research topics, such as vector commitments, SNARKs,
shuffles, authenticated data structures and more. We will start the day with an update
on to the problems discussed at last year's workshop.
</Event>
Be sure to provide a value for conference, workshop and the correct url.
- Dates should follow the
yyyy-mm-ddformat (for both internal and external posts), likedate: '2022-03-16' - Blog posts are sorted automatically by date, regardless the order of insertion.
- Check the current sample posts on
src/posts.
To learn more about Next.js, take a look at the following resources:
- Next.js Documentation - learn about Next.js features and API.
- Learn Next.js - an interactive Next.js tutorial.
This is a very clear and step-by-step guide on it.
We recommend checking the official docs.