Alephium - a discussion with cgi-bin

Cgi-bin is part of a group of engineers called 'No Trust, Verify'. We discuss why cgi-bin is building on Alephium, its unique features and the advantages over Ethereum, including the security features and the ease of running a full node. We also discuss the programming language used on Alephium called Ralph, its simplicity compared to Solidity, and the absence of reentrancy attacks and flash loans. Furthermore we touch on the Alephium ecosystem, the collaboration between Alephium and Nostr,  a hackathon that Alephium is planning and more.

link to alephium and link to sven

https://alephium.org
https://notrustverify.ch/

twitter

@cg1_bin @alephium @notrustverif 

cgi_bin on nostr

#npub1nftkhktqglvcsj5n4wetkpzxpy4e5x78wwj9y9p70ar9u5u8wh6qsxmzqs

Transcript

0:00:06 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
There is no CEO of Alephium. They are all called core contributors or core developers. It means that Alephium want to at some point have people developing, like we have on Bitcoin just people like to develop, open source developer or just developers and then come in Alephium and contribute, and this is for me. Another thing that is good on Alephium is that the security is embedded in the core and the fact there is no re-entrance attack or no flash loan is possible because they are using the UTexo model. 

0:01:15 - cgi-bin
Today I am pleased to have Sven Rouvinez. He is a security and network engineer based in Lausanne and works on several projects. He is part of a group of engineers called no Trust Verify. I met Sven at Meetups in Neuchâtel and at Paradigm Bitcoin in La Chaux de Fond in the canton of Neuchâtel. I am a fan of the Meetups in Neuchâtel. It feels a bit like being in Florence at the beginning of the renaissance, in other words, interesting people doing interesting things before it is on everybody's radar screen. 

Sven does not work for Alephium, but he will tell us why he is building on it and why he prefers Alephium to Ethereum and the future growth prospects of Alephium. For reference, you can check out a previous podcast I did on Alephium with Vladimir Mushnyager in Maud Bannwart There we describe it in a few words. It is a blockchain incorporating ideas from Bitcoin, like a UTxO model and a variation on the concept of proof of work, called proof of less work. But it also has some concepts more familiar to people in Ethereum, like a sharding system. Alephium has its own unique sharding mechanism which is different from the one in Ethereum. It has its own programming language called Ralph. That gives it the expressivity needed for smart contracts, a bit like Solidity in Ethereum. So good afternoon Sven. 

0:02:39 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Hi Didier, thanks for having me for this podcast. Very glad to be here. 

0:02:46 - cgi-bin
So tell me, why did you come to Alephium from Ethereum? 

0:02:50 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so basically on Ethereum, I just played on it, never built a real application or defi application, but I have played, experiment, some defi things and then I get some interest in Alephium because for me it's like what we can have on Bitcoin for the decentralization. I was able to run a mix node sorry, a full node directly on my computer and sync pretty fast. I was able to play or to develop on it at the beginning very easily and then I decided to wait a little bit because the stack to develop on it was not ready and very mature. And then when they do the fork it was pretty much ready and then from there I decided to develop smart contracts in it. Before I developed just things around Alephium, like statistic, some website, a mining pool and something like this, but didn't build on Alephium and Bitcoin. 

0:04:03 - cgi-bin
Okay, I didn't realize it was easy to run your own full node on a left hand. That's a big Even just on your on your computer. 

0:04:10 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
That's a big advantage, yeah, and even even on the phone, you can. You can run it even on the phone if you want. It works pretty well. 

0:04:18 - cgi-bin
Okay, so you want to tell us the advantages and the disadvantages of a left hand compared to to Ethereum, for example. I know that, for example, if you were to run a stablecoin on a left hand, it's you can't have your assets frozen. The smart contracts on Ethereum, running the stablecoin or representing the stablecoin, there's often a clause. I think that they that the issuer can freeze your funds, and that's not the case in a left hand. Or you want to run a little bit through it? 

0:04:50 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so basically an a left hand, they they called Token as first citizen class. It means that the token are Handled and managed the same way as the Alps, which is the native token, on on a left hand and from there there is some advantage that you don't have on an Ethereum. On Ethereum, the smart contract are the owner of the token, of the LLC 20 or 721 I think it is but on a left hand it's the user. So basically, it's the private key of the user that we can have access. So, as we can see on multiple Example, like with Tether, usdt, you can like freeze the asset. 

It can be good, it can be, it can be bad. I'm not here to judge, but if I'm using a token or if I am using something, I want to this to be mine. And Another thing is that on a left hand or on Ethereum, if a smart contract got hacked, you could see all the token drained from the smart contract. And on a left hand, since it's not the smart contract who have the property of the coin, it's not possible, it's, it's the user. 

0:06:15 - cgi-bin
So this, this is something for me it's pretty important To be the real owner and the sovereignty of the, of my, of my, of my coin yet, yeah, I think many of the Hacks in Ethereum based projects come from reentrancy attacks, because the token is in fact owned, as you say, by the smart contract, and so that's why you have a reentrancy attack, and that's not possible in Ethereum because, as you say, the the token is not there, if you like, it's not owned by the content. 

0:06:47 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so For me it's a big advantage for being a developer and builders on it, because you don't have you, you still have to care for the security, you still have to check that your code is good and everything, but Since you don't have the reentrancy attack, it remove a lot of attack that a hacker could have and and when you write the smart contract, you can put this aside and concentrate or focus on the, on the code you're writing, and this is for me. Another thing that is good on all of them is that the security is embedded in the, in the core of of Ralph and Alfred Vien, the custom VM they have for for all of them. 

0:07:35 - cgi-bin
Okay, yeah, we'll talk about Ralph a little bit more in a second, but when we were speaking before this podcast, you you basically told me a little bit why recently you had more and more interest in a lefty. Because you've seen a lot of things happen on Ethereum since a Shanghai upgrade that you didn't really like and that pushed you to look for an alternative to Ethereum. What disadvantages or what negative things have you seen on Ethereum since the Shanghai upgrade? 

0:08:01 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
so basically, as you said, I'm a part of group of people that called no trust verify and we are mostly driven by experimentation. But we are also driven by sovereignty and Simple things and for us, since the Ethereum moved from proof of work to proof of stake, it made me question something, because proof of stake is far more difficult to achieve consensus. It's far more complex. You still have a lot of things that Not long ago, I was looking at all the components on Ethereum and all the interact and it's like a big mess. In sense of it seems more difficult to understand than proof of work, and this is something I've always liked is the whole simple is proof of work and how you can achieve consensus with it. So this is something for me that I really care on on a lot of young that they are using proof of work, not directly, but, as you already explained in the order of what you did, it's the proof of less work, and if other people are interested, they can search on internet or listen to the other podcast you have. 

0:09:22 - cgi-bin
Yeah, yeah, just basically to be complete, I think the proof of less work mechanism only kicks in, gets triggered after you reach a certain level of hash rate on the Alephium blockchain, and we haven't reached that level of blockchain yet. 

So we're we are still on proof of work, but the idea of proof of less work is that, after a certain level of hashing power, you have to commit and burn tokens a left tokens in order to mine. So your the price you're paying is not just energy, it's. It's in fact energy plus plus destroying tokens, or Recently, I don't know, a few months ago, I think you find a left him developed a bridge between Ethereum and a left him. So how long has that been in place? And, like I see when I look on the Alephium Explorer, you have more and more people coming on to a left him, so the price has gone up a bit as well recently. Do you see a relationship between what and the number of people moving to the left him? Is it between the number of hacks or attacks on Ethereum and therefore more people are moving to a left him? Or what kind of relationship are you seeing between a left him and I think the bridge is here. 

0:10:44 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
We are guardian for the bridge to, because there is for guardian, that sign message around to authorize token flow to Ethereum or Alephium, and so it's. It should be like one or three months I don't have the exact date on when the bridge was launched and, yes, it brings a lot of attention because from there, you can have access to the whole at the Rami ecosystem. The fact that you can bridge your Ethereum or even play on decks to get your health help a lot, I think, and there is a lot of people that just like to discover a new project, and I think what Alephium has that maybe some other project don't is that they deliver. The team is still delivering. And one another thing that people like is that they don't use ETA. So it's not like okay, we have the roadmap for this year. 

In Q1 we are going to build this, in Q2 we are going to build this and everything. Alephium is more like when it's ready, it will be ready, and then people we're going to use. So I think it's something people appreciate and with the Ethereum bridge, it brings a lot of new people. Just, I think some people don't even know that Alephium has its own currency, its own chain. But yeah, at some point they are going to know this and move to Alephium and we still need some DApps to be developed on Alephium. So if you are a developer who would like to discover new things to develop on another model and on a security VM, alephium is for you, I think. 

0:12:37 - cgi-bin
Okay, yeah, I have to say the thing that sort of attracted me initially to Alephium was that and some of the people involved, and they give me the impression that they want to do things well and seriously and not quickly to make money, basically, but rather do things slowly and well, and that, I think, attracts serious developers who are more interested in building something than people who are interested in making a quick buck. Do you want to maybe discuss the ecosystem, like, are there a lot of? How many core developers are there who work for Alephium and how do they work with independent developers like you? Do you want to describe a little bit that ecosystem? 

0:13:16 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so yeah, this is something I like in Alephium too is that there is no like foundation. There is no someone who's like the CEO of Alephium. They are all called like core contributors or core developers. It means that Alephium want to at some point have people developing like we have on Bitcoin just people like to develop, open source developer or just developers and then come in Alephium and contribute. This is why they are called like core contributors or core developers. 

0:13:53 - cgi-bin
And how many developers would you say there are around Alephium? 

0:13:58 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
I think I might be wrong, but I would say they are like five or six. But I might be wrong. 

0:14:10 - cgi-bin
I'm not sure about this though, but there you mean just core developers, or you mean other independent people? 

0:14:19 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Core developers and the developers like the community developers or like more, or just developers that building on DApps. For now there are three DApps, so there is an NFC platform made by Splinter, there is IIN it's a DEX, and there is WALF, the application, the DApps we were developing and yeah, so basically there is three people and we see some new people coming. Someone is building a website that's going to get all the DApps on the ecosystem with, where you should be able to rate the application you like, add some comments and everything. Some other people are building, I think, some lending protocol. Basically, we are seeing a lot of new people coming getting interest for Alephium. 

0:15:14 - cgi-bin
And what have you developed for Alephium? 

0:15:17 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
So yeah, basically we developed a lottery game or lucky based game. Basically, you just buy a ticket and you wait for the draw to happen and then, if you're lucky, you will want the pool. 

0:15:33 - cgi-bin
Okay, and there's a DEX. I think as well that people are building. 

0:15:38 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, and the DEX is already here. It's working well. I'm using it since the day one. The experience is very good. They have their own system. There is some normal liquidity pool that you have in DeFi, but they have some other things that even if you're not the best DeFi user, you can still enjoy some passive interest, or I don't know how to say, but APY or APR. 

0:16:13 - cgi-bin
Okay, you want to tell us a little bit about Ralph and how it compares to Solidity. 

0:16:19 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so I think we cannot really compare Ralph and Solidity. Mostly, ethereum is based on account model, so it's like a data, it's like what you have in your bank account. It's just an entry and then increase decrease your balance when you interact Ralph using UTXO model, alephium using UTXO model, like on Bitcoin or other other blockchain using it too, and so this is why it's difficult to compare them. But if we have to do a comparison, it's like you have something that you don't have on Ethereum and Ethereum have something that you don't have on Alephium, for example, on Alephium, if you're a developer, when you deploy your contract, you have to pay one half to get your contract on chain, and at first it's difficult to understand why I have to pay if I want to deploy on that. And then you're going to check how much is it to run a validator or a full node of Ethereum and it's like a big machine that you have to pay and everything. 

And on Alephium it's only it can run on the Raspberry Pi. So by this I just want to explain that when you pay your smart contract to deploy it, you want to limit how long you're going to store and everything. You can still claim it for after, but it will destroy your smart contract. So by enabling this, the smart contract on Alephium can be at some point removed because there is no use or because it could have been made in another way. So I think to have to pay for something and it's very interesting concept to have. So it's not directly RALF, but it's some features of Alephium, and RALF is inspired by REST, and it's only my point of view, but it's easy, pretty easy to read, pretty easy to write to, for example, an Because did you have much experience in Rust before writing in Rust? 

No, I just play with Rust because it's like a new language. But I don't have a lot of experience and this is something I was a little bit afraid when I started to build on Alephium. But in fact it's pretty convenient to use. It's pretty clear when you write it, the functions embedded in it are pretty good to use and the SDK is good for developers. And for just a quick example on Auto, I think it's Auto Market Maker that you have on DeX, on Aleph it's around 150 lines and on Ethereum it's like 300 lines, and so you know as a developer that more lines mean more bugs. So you want to be able to write less lines with less bugs, because at some point you're going to do a mistake and it can be for DeX, for example. It can be the worst things that you don't want. 

So it's just some little things that made the RULF, I think, interesting to look To check, to play a little bit with it. There is a lot of example too from the Alephium team and the fact that I already said it, but there is no re-entrance attack or no flash loan possible on Ethereum, because the flash loan is because they're using the UTXO model in behind and the UTXO model can be also a little bit difficult to approach or to understand. But one thing that is very good on Alephium is that the abstraction may that you don't even get that you're building on UTXO model. I never had the trouble of telling myself like, wow, okay, so it's UTXO model, how I should do this and how I shouldn't do this, okay. 

0:20:40 - cgi-bin
The coming roadmaps or the coming developments you see in Alephium. 

0:20:43 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah. So for the community part, it's more like yeah, the thing we already have on Ethereum, like Lending Protocol or Oracle or some game like I don't know. I know people like collectibles, so why not having a game suite, nft, self-ripping loans, so everything that the DeFi have, alephium could have them. But in my opinion, I like Ethereum, I like what they are doing, how it's evolving and everything, but on Alephium it could be, I think, more efficient. For example, on Alephium you can, in one transaction, move multiple assets, so for a user perspective, it's pretty interesting to not have to sign multiple things. 

0:21:32 - cgi-bin
Tell me I know you like Nostar how active are you on Nostar and what integrations do you see happening with Alephium in Nostar? 

0:21:41 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so I'm pretty much on Nostar. I think it's a pretty interesting concept. For me it's like having to decentralization for protocol. It's almost like Bitcoin in a sense. It's not Bitcoin but for protocol. I think it's pretty bullish. 

On this one, I did not use Nostal for a bit For now I'm focusing on other thing, but I am still looking what happened and the development is still like a lot of Nostal. And on Alephium there is also already some collaboration. But you can interact with Nostal with the web wallet that Alephium developed. They implemented Schnorr signature, so basically you can already use Nostal with your Alephium wallet to sign when you want to send message or if you want to change your profile picture. So it's already there. But something it could be very nice would be to have a like a true decentralized marketplace using Alph as the currency, or why not having there is on Nostal. There is the zap, where you can send a set to the Lightning Network with Nostal, and why not having like a zap with Alephium? If some people want to develop it, it could be very interesting to have it. So this is the two things I'm bullish to see on Nostal and Alephium. 

0:23:18 - cgi-bin
Is there any other things that I didn't ask you that you would like to talk about? 

0:23:22 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
like to add yes, maybe if I can add something about the two things. So on Alephium, there is something called the APS, it's asset permission system. It's like you have to permit the asset. I have to explicitly ask you the amount I'm going to take from your wallet if you interact with me. So basically it means that if there is something bad that happened on the zap, the zap cannot take more than it was authorized before. And for me it's something interesting because it's like on Ethereum, something you sign something and you just see your wallet being empty, and on Alephium it's something that they mitigate with it. And another thing or maybe I don't know if you want to talk about this after, but there is an hackathon soon. 

0:24:19 - cgi-bin
A hackathon? Ah no, go ahead, mention it no. 

0:24:21 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, so basically there is an hackathon. I'm a part on Alephium as a DAO. It's just people like we are five or six people just getting some awareness of Alephium and then Alephium is going to do an hackathon. The DAO will participate by adding some alph and with Notress. Very far you are going to sponsorize it too. Basically, if you are a developer, it's like the time to be there. I think the hackathon will bring new people. 

0:24:56 - cgi-bin
Ah, and when is that? 

0:24:58 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
It will be next year, beginning of the next year. 

0:25:01 - cgi-bin
Okay, what was your background before you got involved with Alephium? 

0:25:06 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yeah, I'm still working. I still have a fiat job. I'm working as a network and security engineer and system engineer in Switzerland. 

0:25:15 - cgi-bin
Okay, fiat for me does not necessarily mean a dirty job. It's okay. In Switzerland, we're one of the few countries where I would call our currency a good, strong, relatively good strong currency and not a shit coin. 

0:25:29 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
But they're very few in the world. I agree, yeah. 

0:25:32 - cgi-bin
Maybe Norwegian Kroner, the Singapore dollar and Swiss Frank, but not many more. All right, and let's wrap it up with a few rapid choir questions while continuing on fiat money. How often do you use cash? 

0:25:46 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
In fact, more and more. I've even changed the bank I was in to be able to have like more I don't know to say ATM access, and so, yeah, I changed bank to be able to use cash more and more. 

0:26:03 - cgi-bin
That's good, because I try to use it as well much more often. Yeah, I don't want merchants later to tell me no, no, I don't take cash anymore because it's not convenient, so that's good. Are you more active on Nostra or on Twitter? 

0:26:16 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
I'm more active on Twitter right now, but when the Alephian community will be on Nostra, I'm going to be more active in Nostra. I hope I'm more bullish on Nostra than Twitter. I would far more prefer to spend time on Nostra. And what do you think it's gonna? 

0:26:34 - cgi-bin
because most people will be critical of Twitter, but I'm always surprised by the fact that there's such a strong network effect and it's difficult to get people to move from one network to the other. So what do you think it would take to get a lot of people to move from Twitter to Nostra? 

0:26:52 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
I think, mostly the user experience. In fact, it's going very, very well and very good, but still people have to understand. It's like on Bitcoin why are not everybody using Bitcoin as a currency? Because I think it's the user experience, not only, but mostly. On Nostra, you have, like, your private key to handle. You have some relay that you have to connect. You have to understand the system. On Twitter, you're just going with your email address, create an account and then yet you can play in it. You don't have. You're connected to everybody. Everybody sees everybody and, yes, on Nostra it's a little bit different. 

0:27:30 - cgi-bin
Okay, a great piece of advice, and who gave it to you? 

0:27:34 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
So yeah, and I think like, maybe just be yourself. Be yourself, do what you want, do what you like to, because when you're doing what you like, you don't even think that you're working. Mostly play on what you want. 

0:27:49 - cgi-bin
Okay, what is something that your coworkers don't know about you? 

0:27:55 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
I think it's that I'm building on a blockchain, like with a plural, and playing on the decentralized world and everything. 

0:28:09 - cgi-bin
Okay, and how did you earn your first paycheck? 

0:28:14 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
I think it was when I did my apprenticeship. I don't know how to say in English, it's the apprentissage in French. 

0:28:24 - cgi-bin
Okay, great. So thank you very much, sven. Just, if ever people want to follow you or learn more about you, or learn more about Alephium, where should we send them? 

0:28:36 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Yes, so there is the website, alephiumorg, and my DM are open on Telegram or on Twitter. I'm 1, underscore bin, yeah, and this is where people can find me. I think my DM are open. I can help. I want to get people on Alephium. So if you have any question, even the most if you think it's stupid, even ask me, then I'm going to help you to get on the right place. 

0:29:08 - cgi-bin
Okay, great, all right. Thank you very much, sven. It was a pleasure to speak to you. 

0:29:12 - The Swiss Road To Crypto
Thanks. 

0:29:12 - cgi-bin
Yiji, thank you, thank you. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page