Inside Fuel: Q3 2023

Welcome to Inside Fuel, our quarterly review of technical developments and everything happening in the Fuel Ecosystem. Take a moment to catch up on all the latest news.

Releases

Introduction of Hybrid Proving

This quarter, we introduced Hybrid Proving, an Optimistic / ZK hybrid solution. A key technique we believe will offer untapped benefits never before utilized. It arises from the fusion of ZK and fraud proving, representing a new category of scalability solutions that straddle the line between optimistic and ZK rollups. FuelProver is an implementation of this idea.

Introduction of Beta-4 Testnet

Following the Beta-3 testnet that has settled over 2,000,000 blocks and 10,000 deployed contracts, we introduced Beta-4 which came up with a set of new features such as a strengthened P2P networking, Multi-token-support, new VM opcodes, parallel predicate execution, and many more.

Upgrades and design choices that went into Beta-4 have been discussed during an X/Twitter Spaces with David Mihal (Head of Product Research at Fuel Labs) and Nick Dodson (CEO at Fuel Labs). Listen to the replay here.

Read the full dissection of Beta-4 here.

A new and enhanced documentation portal

We've launched a new and enhanced documentation portal, combining all our books into a single, easy-to-use interface for developers.

The new portal comes with:

Beta-4 compatible versions of Fuel and Sway documentation in one place, guaranteeing you have the most up-to-date info
A seamless search engine that will search across all Fuel docs, simplifying your quest for answers
A revamped design offering an improved UX.

Start exploring it here.

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Update of the Fuel Wallet

With over 80,000 downloads since launch, we’re excited to announce that the Fuel Wallet has been updated for Beta-4 compatibility and is now available on the Chrome web store.

This update enables:

Beta-4 compatibility
Light and Dark theme support
Standalone SDK usage

Learn more about it and install it now at https://wallet.fuel.network

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Introduction of the Fuel Guild

With already over 62k members, in July, we introduced the Fuel Guild, a place for everyone in the community to root deeper into Fuel’s DNA, enabling users to complete social missions in exchange for exclusive roles within the Fuel Discord server.

Technical Updates

Client Updates

Better Telemetry: We’ve upgraded our node monitoring to provide clearer insights into network performance and the internal state of nodes.
Network Sync Speed: Updates to the P2P protocol have improved network synchronization speed, making transactions faster and more efficient.
Pricing Model: New benchmarks have been added and calibrated, leading to a more accurate transaction pricing model.
Developer Experience: We’ve streamlined the command-line interface, removing redundant options and adding a --debug flag for advanced functionalities. We also now support .env files for easier argument management.
Performance Optimizations: Block production and transaction execution have been optimized, reducing memory usage and storage footprint. We’ve also integrated parallel verification for faster processing.
Beta 4 Testnet: We've launched the Beta-4 testnet and continue to maintain and debug it.

New Types support

Support Secp256r1 signature recovery and Ed25519 verification.
Enable Passkey wallet support by adding Secp256r1 signature recovery.
u256 primitive type has been introduced and will replace U256.
Native big-integer support with new u256 type.
Introduced AssetId type.
Support native multi-tokens with the new AssetId type.
New native String type in Sway, with support across the TypeScript & Rust SDKs.

Standards

Fuel's recent switch to native multi-token support unlocks new possibilities for assets on Fuel, including support for native NFTs and native ERC-1155-style tokens. The Fuel Labs team has released a new set of standards to enable access to these new types of assets.

The SRC-20 standard provides the basic metadata for all native assets on Fuel, both fungible and non-fungible. The SRC-7 standard extends this functionality to allow arbitrary metadata to be attached to assets, using a system inspired by ENS. Work is in progress to extend this functionality further, standardizing assets like bridged tokens, "vault" tokens, NFTs, and more.

In addition to asset standards, the Fuel Labs team has other standards for Sway development, such as SRC-2 standardizing inline documentation and SRC-5 standardizing smart contract ownership.

More updates, features, and bug fixes have been implemented during the quarter. If you need more information, we encourage you to look at Fuel’s repositories on GitHub for the full change logs.

Ecosystem AMAs

In our ongoing efforts to foster community engagement and transparency this quarter, we have hosted Twitter Spaces to introduce projects building on Fuel. Here are some of the projects we've featured so far:

Aori: A decentralized options protocol on Fuel. Replay.
ArtDAO: A digital marketplace built on Fuel. Replay.
Elix Finance: A hybrid automated market maker built on Fuel. Replay.
Pepa Labs: A blockchain-based gaming platform on Fuel. Replay.
Common Ground: A web3-powered app for communities. Replay.
The DEX Debate: Decoding Order Books and AMMs. Replay.

Stay updated about the latest news from the Fuel Ecosystem projects by following this List, and discover more projects from the Fuel Ecosystem with the Fuel Ecosystem Page.

The Fuel Ambassador Program

The Fuel Ambassador Program has expanded over the quarter and now counts 20 ambassadors. Among them, you can find a dedicated team of general-purpose and language-specific moderators, developers, and translators from all over the world.

Do you want to be a part of the Fuel Ambassador Program?

We're scouting for technical heavyweights. You stand a chance if you're already doing the work—propelling Fuel's vision, helping other community members find their way through Fuel’s stack or leading tech-centric initiatives. Do it well, and you won't have to come to us. We'll come to you with an exclusive invite to join.

Most valuable community and contributor content

Posts on X (Previously Twitter)

Past events

EthCC

The EthCC week was a great time for us to spend time with the Fuel community, the Fuel ecosystem builders and giveaway swag on the Parisian ground. Take a look at the full event recap:

We had a great time at @EthCC last week, powering up with the community, our ecosystem, and builders.

For those who couldn't join us in Paris, here are the key events from the week 👇 pic.twitter.com/xtxhgZ8pC9
— Fuel (@fuel_network) July 27, 2023

Sway Summer Hackathon

The Sway Summer online hackathon, hosted on the DoraHacks platform, kicked off in July and ran for an intense month. Aimed at global developers, the event started with an opening ceremony with Nick Dodson, and three specialized workshops followed in the first days of the hackathon. Competitors vied for a noteworthy $100K prize pool, with projects judged stringently on quality. Read all the details on the official hackathon page: Sway Summer Hackathon.

EthArgentina

Better than words, here’s a small video to sum up the great time we had during EthArgentina:

Thank you to everyone who joined us at @EtherArgentina last week.

We're inspired by all of the discussions, projects, and ideas at this year’s event, and we hope you’re as excited as we are for what lies ahead for the rest of 2023. pic.twitter.com/qYsYoc4nup
— Fuel (@fuel_network) August 24, 2023

Singapore’s Token2049 & Ethereum Singapore

We traveled for the first time to Asia and were impressed by the innovations and passionate minds coming out from there. Here’s a glimpse of the events we attended there:

ETH New York by ETH Global

This September, we were thrilled to be part of the ETH NY Hackathon in New York! We engaged with the community in a meaningful way, handed out some slick Fuel hoodies, and genuinely had a great time.

Upcoming events

Coming up next, we’ll be on the ground for the following events:

Epic DeFi Security Day (Nov. 2, Lisbon): a half-day technical event with DeFi builders, researchers, auditors, and hackers.
EthLisbon (Nov. 3-5, Lisbon): a community-led hackathon focused on the Ethereum community.
DevConnect (Nov. 13-19, Istanbul): a week-long gathering of independent Ethereum events to learn, share, and make progress together.
Fuel House (Nov. 15-20, Istanbul): a 5-day-long all-inclusive hacker house to take your skills and understanding of the Fuel stack to the next level.
VM Day (Nov. 13, Istanbul): an afternoon to learn and engage with the builders behind these cutting-edge execution environments. We will co-host this event with Cartesi.
Abstract Istanbul (Nov. 14, Istanbul): The Heartbeat of Account Abstraction & 4337.
L2Days (Nov. 14-15, Istanbul): The largest conference dedicated to Ethereum Scaling.