TLDR: Lots of big updates since launch including a grant from POA, 43% gas reduction in the latest network upgrade and a post-mortem on three Clovers Network hacks 🧟

It’s been just over 6 weeks since Clovers Network launched on Ethereum Homestead during Berlin Blockchain week. In that time there have been a number of developments including 🚨 hacks 🔥 token burns thousands of Clovers registered 🍀 and thousands of dollars spent on Gas ⛽️

Here’s what’s happened by the numbers:

💰 +1 New Grant (more below)

🛠️ +1 Hackathon (more below)

🚧 +2 Network Upgrades (first, second)

🔥 +2 Token Burns (link)

🐢 +2 Artworks Exhibited (more below)

✨ +3 New Features (Search, Leaderboard & Gas)

🚨 +3 Hacks (more below)

🎙️ +4 Podcasts (1, 2, 3, 4)

📉 -0.0005 Eth (~$0.08) CloverCoin price stability (link)

💬 +91 members on Telegram (link)

🎮 +128 members on Discord (link)

🐦 +377 followers on Twitter (link)

🌎 +433 Clovers holders (link)

🍀+25,316 registered Clovers (link)

💰 +1 New Grant

Since the very first prototype, it was clear that Clovers Network would struggle with gas costs. An early version used ~9MM gas for on-chain verification (too large for a single block on Homestead). That’s why experiments and techniques for reducing gas costs have been a central interest to the project. Much of the progress on gas reduction has been published in order to help other projects struggling in similar ways. Stuff like custom serialization of data (link) and clever utilization of oracles (link) were early solutions. When Clovers launched we used a verifiers game similar to TruBit Protocol. Our new network upgrade utilizes trusted third-party signatures to further reduce the gas required by users to register new Clovers (more on that later). However, all of these techniques need users to already own Ether. If you’ve ever tried to on-board a “no-coiner” to a crypto project you’ll know this is a non-starter.

Methods for allowing users with no Ether at all to play Clovers has been high on our priority list for a long time. It’s a big task and we decided to focus our launch on users who already have a basic understanding of wallets in order to keep moving. Now with the support of a grant from POA Network I’m excited to announce a process for zero-ether play on Clovers Network! We’ll utilize meta-transactions and the new Arbitrary Message Bridge to reduce gas costs to zero 🥚 Keep an eye out for updates on that front and a full write up of exactly how we’ll utilize POA while remaining an Ethereum application.

🛠️ +1 Hackathon

Clovers Network participated in the EthBerlin Hackathon by running the Crypto-Economic Lab along with Austin Thomas Griffith and LeapDAO. We brought in an old Chromebook to on-board new users and a 3D printer to make copper filament coins for Clovers holders. We also continued to give out individual Clovers stickers with redeemable QR codes.

Here are some highlights:

⛽ ️Clovers Gas Station

Somehow I also found time to do a hack! The first version of Clovers used a verifiers game and trusted third-party oracle to finalize the claiming process which meant each claim actually used two transactions. The second transaction was paid by the user who made the first but had to use a static gas price. Since the network is anything but static, users were often over-paying for this second transaction when the price should have been lower. The problem is that there’s no on-chain gas price oracle that could allow the user to pay the correct amount.

The problem with on-chain gas prices, is that they need to be constantly updated and that becomes very expensive very quickly. Since Clovers Network had over 20,000 transactions in the first 5 days we decided to become our own on-chain gas oracle. That meant the price of safe-slow, average and fast gas prices as reported by ethgasstation.info would be included with each transaction and therefor updated on-chain an average of every 20 seconds! I pushed a shoddy version of the code for the hackathon but came back and did an official network upgrade afterwards. The hack is outlined here: https://devpost.com/software/clovers-gas-station

🚧 +2 Network Upgrades

The Clovers Network Gas Station was the first Network Upgrade that allowed users gas costs to accurately fluctuate with the network’s gas price. However the last few weeks have been plagued with consistently high gas prices due to an unsafe ponzi scheme called FairWin. Luckily thanks to Philippe Castonguay and others the project was exposed and gas costs have died down again (link). Subsequently, thanks to suggestions from Martin Köppelmann and other community members, a new method for verifying Clovers cheaply has been developed. This new method has reduced gas costs by 43 percent!!! Previously to register a Clover, it cost between 651,172 and 707,728 gas (~$1.12 and ~$1.22 respectively @10 Gwei). With the new updates it costs between 375,925 and 402,870 gas (~$0.65 and ~$0.69 @10 Gwei).

Where previously a confirmation transaction was needed to finalize a Clover’s registration process this new technique only needs a signature from the trusted third-party. This signature is submitted with the original Clover claim and if proven to be valid, then the Clover is minted.

This new process does compromise decentralization in favor of cost and speed. However, Clovers Network continues to provide a fully on-chain method for registering Clovers that alternatively sacrifices cost (1.6MM gas) in favor of decentralization and speed. This secondary user-flow has been further enhanced with a three step commit reveal process that prevents front-running and griefing. For more details about the contract updates in this network upgrade, check out the repository here . I’d also like to give a shout-out and thank you to user nightman for reading over the contracts and suggesting improvements 🙏

This network upgrade was performed from Osaka, days before Devcon5. If you’re going to be in town for the event stop by my talk on preventing front-running with batched bonding curves on Thursday, October 10th.

🐢 +2 Artworks Exhibited

At the same time that the EthBerlin Hackathon was running there was an art exhibition in the culture room organized by Maria Paula Fernández and Stina Gustafsson. Clovers Network grew out of my studio practice that continues today. Most recently works have taken the shape of turtle shells with Clover patterns subtracted from the sculptures. Here are the two pieces that were exhibited: