#pegasys orchestrate

[aikoiya]

Aaagh! I put so much work into that!!

I was in the middle of doing a really detailed reblog & now it's gone!!

Uuugh!

Let's start again...

I'm gonna post the basics first, then come back to get more detail in, save, then add the actual tags so it doesn't do that again.

Colors:

Purples, blues, & greens. I actually like most every color under the sun except for dull or nasty-looking colors like grey or puke green.

But my favorites are purples, blues, & greens.

Gemstones:

Moonstones (they glow in the dark, ya'll), opals (Australian & fire are especially pretty), amethysts, aquamarines, & mother of pearl/abalone shell.

Gemstones in-general are just fascinating to me.

Flowers:

Irises, orchids, roses, lilies, roselilies, lavender, honey suckles, sakura, Jacarandas, magnolias, bleeding hearts, & wisteria. Mother of millions are also really cool.

I know that roses are kinda cliché, but my grandpa used to grow them in his yard & I distinctly remember him having this bright orange rose bush in a trellis fence & I vividly remember it smelling like candy! So, fond memories!

Animals:

Wolves, pointy-eared dogs, felines, swans, owls, dolphins, horses, cardinals, bluebirds, ect.

Mythical Creatures:

Pheonixes, sīmurghs, mermaids, unicorns, dragons, pegasi, & hippocampi.

Food:

Italian cuisine, but I've got a huge sweet tooth! Ice cream is my favorite (Homeade Vanilla Bluebell all the way), cheesecake, my grandma's buttermilk pie.

I also like bagels & lox, roast beef, & boiled crab. Sushi, ramen, Columbian empanadas, especially goat cheese, arepas, & soups! I love soup!

Cantaloupe, peaches, white grapes, champaign grapes, apples, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, pasta, edamame, peas, ect.

Beverages:

Milk, especially honeymilk, peach tea, virgin peach daiquiris, Starry, coffee, & Ghost citrus.

Music:

I'm very eclectic in my music tastes. So long as it has a good beat, I can understand the lyrics, & the words move me, I'll generally like it.

However, I have a special place in my heart for country rock, classic rock (especially the 80s), & patriotic music.

I also enjoy classical, anything with violin, even fiddling, jazz, smooth jazz for easy listening, & modern-orchestral fusion is immediately awesome. Celtic & fanciful fantasy sort of music is fun too.

I also like cultural music. It's just so interesting to listen to.

I typically don't care for rap, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some songs that I'll listen too.

One such being "Where Is the Love" by the Black Eyed Peas. It is especially relevant today.

I also enjoy lullabyes. They're very soothing & comforting. Lullabye for a Stormy Night, Song of the Sea from Song of the Sea, a Lullabye for a Ghost by Max Ablitzer, & things like that. And I know that it'll sound strange, but the Pamper's Lullabye. It's just so sweet!

Not to mention musical theater sorts of songs. Hell to Your Doorstep rocks my socks off!

As far as specific artists, Jason Aldean is high up there rn. I love his song "Try That in a Small Town." Also very relevant.

I also like Rascall Flatts, Tim Mcgraw, Brad Paisley, Caleb Hyles, Jonathan Young, NateWantsToBattle, Panic! At the Disco, Skillet, Imagine Dragons, Nickleback, Fall Out Boy, used to listen to the Beatles all the time as a kid, & others but I can't think of them rn.

Literature:

My favorite genres are fantasy & adventure.

The first book series that I can ever remember reading of my own accord was the Chronicles of Narnia. I've read every book in the series several times. So, it might've shaped my preferences a bit.

I've also read the Harry Potter series, the His Dark Materials series, the Inheritence series (lost the last book before I could finish reading it...), the Skinjacker series (though, I've only read Everlost so far).

I've also been thinking about picking up the Guardians of Childhood & Percy Jackson series too.

I know, these are mostly teen fiction. I dun care!

Tagging:

@kaezer, @gale-gentlepenguin, @zoe-oneesama, @nobodyfamousposts, @wrightfamilyagency, @thesoulspulse, @insane-arcane, @ficfanatictrf, @melonbear51

TAG GAME - FAVOURITES

Colours

black, grey pastel black, bordeaux, purple, violet, navy, teal, dark green, antique silver, antique gold

Gemstones

emerald, malachite, lapislazuli, amethyst, ruby, garnet, rose-quartz, moonstone, opal, amber

Flowers

rose, lily, lavander, orchids, sunflower

Animals

felines, wolves, spitz dogs, birds of prey, corvides, cetaceans, cephalopods, tube worms, tardigrades

Mythical Creatures

Ainur, Elves, Sphinxes, Phoenixes, Mermaids

Food

asian & mediterranean cuisine, spicy food

Beverage

still water, tea (preferably green), coconut juice

Music

Don’t take the listed “genres” too seriously. All those categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories seem quite redundant to me - imho, they’re just unnecessarily confusing … but, then again, I’m no music-nerd, after all.

Actually, there is just “Like” or “Don’t Like”, but this list might give you an idea:

Medieval, Renaissance & “Classical”

Walther von der Vogelweide, Guillaume de Machaut, Cantigas, John Dowland,Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Rachmaninov, Tschaikovsky, Smetana, Schubert, Chopin, Rossini, Wagner, Sissel Kyrkjebo, Hayley Westenra, Sarah Brightman, Sumi Jo, Vanessa Mae, Thomas Bergersen, Two Steps from Hell, Audiomachine, Howard Shore, Soundtracks, …

(Neo-)Folk

Joan Baez, Esther Ofarim, Ofra Haza, Loreena McKennit, Nolwenn Leroy, Eivør Pálsdóttir, Gudrid Hansdóttir, Cecile Corbel, Enya, Celtic Women, Blackmore’s Night, Versengold, Sumerluft, Annwn, Anois, Garmarna, Arany Zoltan, Noel McLoughlin, Luc Arbogast, Patty Gurdy, Psalteria, Estampie, Dead Can Dance, Faun, Omnia, Skáld, Wardruna, Heilung, Vàli, In Gowan Ring, Hagalaz’ Runedance, Sonne Hagal, Of the Wand & the Moon, Gae Bolg & the Church of Fand, …

“Goth”

Sopor Aeternus, Helium Vola, Qntal, Dargaard, Arcana, Artésia, Ataraxia, Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, Trobar De Morte, Triarii, Wolfsheim, Deine Lakaien, Faith & the Muse, In my Rosary, Kirlian Camera, The Frozen Autumn, The Crüxshadows, VNV Nation, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Joy Division, The Cure, Clan of Xymox, The Sisters of Mercy, AlienSexFiend, Bauhaus, Lene Lovich, Depeche Mode, …

Metal & Rock

Van Canto, Blind Guardian, Rhapsody, Wisdom, Therion, Nightwish, Edenbridge, Within Temptation, Apocalyptica, Equilibrium, Kamelot, Sabaton, Finntroll, Dimmu Borgir, Ghost, Metallica, HIM, The 69 Eyes, Mono Inc, Subway to Sally, Evanescence, Garbage, Muse, …

Other

Kanon Wakeshima, The Brilliant Green, Onmyou-za, Rin’, Kalafina, Yuki Kajiura, Akiko Shikata, Kokia, Alan Dawa Dolma, Malukah, ShadowCa7, Erutan, Alina Gingertail, Karliene, Peter Hollens, Andra Ariadna, Minniva, Aurora, Lana Del Rey, Cher, The Doors, The Beatles, The Seekers, ABBA, ...

Literature

Fantasy & Sci-Fi

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc.

M.Z. Bradley’s Avalon-Novels & Firebrand

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter

Medieval & Antique Literature, Myth & Folklore

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

The Edda

Nibelungenlied

works of Walther von der Vogelweide

Arthurian Romances (like Erec, Iwein, Parzival, etc.)

Gregorius

Aeneasroman

Iliad & Odyssee

Murasaki Shikibu’s “Genji Monogatari” (the language is really beautiful, but I can’t stand the protagonist)

some Classics

Pride & Prejudice

Wuthering Heights

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

The Picture of Dorian Grey

Dracula

Faust I+II

Macbeth

The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr

works of the Brothers Grimm

Siddharta

some "regular" novels

Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist”, “Brida”

Nobara Takemoto’s “Shimotsuma Monogatari”

some fanfiction

“Father’s Heart” & “Process of Elimination” by Fern Withy

“Antiquity’s Corollary” by gonnabefamous

biographical books

Mineko Iwasaki’s “Geisha of Gion”

Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”

Baird T. Spalding’s “Life and Teachings of the Masters of the East”

interesting non-fiction

such as science-related books / websites

those of a more metaphysical & occult subject matter

or those about more controversial topics, such as Extraterrestrials, so-called “conspiracy theories”, and the like (Problem!? Your loss. I don’t see why I shouldn’t look into these topics. It certainly is interesting, and it’s quite arrogant to assume we have it all figured out. Besides, no one says you have to believe anything you read, but it sure can’t hurt to approach things with a more open mind, and to just look where evidence leads us, when it presents itself.)

~*~

I'm tagging:

@aikoiya, @monkey-li, @mikeilo & @chattegeorgiana

[radiation-station]

Favorite trombone song?

It’s been a LONG time, but there was this one orchestral piece my middle school band played (and played pretty poorly too lmao), that I think was called ‘Pegasi 51b’ or something like that.

The only thing I remember about it was the trombone part being very fun!

[mylordshesacactus]

[id: Discord screenshot Jo: meanwhile I'm over here like "you know what not enough fantasy settings have? David Attenborough documentaries for their magical creatures." Jo:  i want a 6-part blockbuster david attenborough BBC special featuring breathtaking orchestral sequences about the breeding habits of pegasi, intimate and tender footage counteracting the negative reputation of kelpies, a whole heartfelt spiel about how overhunting of wyverns to near-extinction devastated the local ecosystems, and full-on Blue Planet level cinematography chronicling the triumphant return of sea serpents to their ancestral feeding grounds.]

[one-more-offbeat-anthem]

fantasia

fantasia (noun):  a work (such as a poem, play, or work of music) in which the author or composer’s fancy roves unrestricted

Cas is having one of those days. 

He sleeps in more than usual, and getting up, he tells Dean, is heavy. After barely touching his breakfast, he retires to the Deancave, on the couch that they recently dragged in, and burrows himself under a mountain of blankets, turning on some procedural crime drama on low volume. 

Dean knows that the transition to being human hasn’t been easy, and that it’s not unusual for Cas to sink into depression. Dean’s no stranger to that, although it’s only recently that he’s started talking about. 

It’s his day to get groceries, so he left Cas with a gentle kiss to the forehead, and now Dean is standing in front of the check-out with a cart full of all the stuff it takes to feed four adults and one nephilim. He spies a salted caramel dark chocolate bar and slides it in with the rest of the food at the last minute. Cas might like it--he’s a little particular about his sweets, but if they’ve got a little bite, like dark chocolate, he usually enjoys them. 

When Dean returns to the bunker and traipses down to the Deancave after stowing the rest of the groceries, he finds that Cas hasn’t moved on the couch, but what’s on the television is different. 

Orchestral music swells from the television’s speakers, and colorful illustrations work their way across the screen, yellow and red squiggles chasing each other as the music swells. Then, the animation changes to a series of rolling pink and purple mountains against a blue sky. Dean walks around the couch and deposits himself next to Cas as orange, futuristic buildings replace the hills against the sky. Cas moves over an incremental amount to allow Dean to lie down, and Dean holds up the chocolate bar between them. 

“Got this for you,” he says. 

“Thank you.” Cas’s voice sounds thick from disuse. Dean sets about to unwrapping the chocolate as the music on the television fades out, only to be replaced by a man’s voice. 

“You know, it’s funny how wrong an artist can be about their own work,” the man starts, and then he goes on to talk about Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. The music fades back in, and Dean vaguely recognizes it this time. 

“He’s right,” Cas says. 

“About...?” Dean raises an eyebrow, breaks off a piece of chocolate and hands it to Cas, who slowly accepts it. 

“Artists being wrong.” Cas takes a bite, smiles a little bit. “This is quite good. I was...created to be a host of Heaven, a soldier, a rule-follower.”

“But you’re not,” Dean says in a slightly teasing tone before taking a bite of the chocolate himself. The music from whatever is playing swells. Cas is right--this is good. 

“Because I was made broken.” Cas sighs. “You heard Chuck--I have a crack in my chassis. I never listen to orders. He was wrong about me.”

“Nah.” Dean finds Cas’s hand that isn’t occupied with chocolate and takes it in his own. “That crack was a good thing. Didn’t he also say that this was the only universe where you were like that? You saved the day.”

“I tried,” Cas says. His eyes focus on the television screen. “I like this.” “What is it, anyways?” Dean rolls over so he’s not facing Cas anymore, instead tucked up against him like they’re spooning. The screen has dancing mushrooms on it.

“Disney’s Fantasia. Animated classical music. It seemed nice.” Cas pauses. “It’s very soothing.”

“That’s good.”

They watch all of Fantasia together--the dancing mushrooms fade away, and then there's Mickey Mouse with a magical broom flooding a sorcerer’s workshop, and centaurs, and pegasi, and more colors and music. Cas skips lunch but does eat dinner, and he lets Dean prod him into the shower. 

As they drift off to sleep at the end of the day, Cas soft and pliable, tucked against him, Dean knows that he will gladly spend the rest of his life telling Cas that they are all broken in some way--but that they’re also all better for it.

tag list under the cut! let me know if you wanna be added! 

@misha-moose-dean-burger-lover@smolanxiouscatvoid@trashcanlanddddd @hihelloimanerd@lizzfizz42 @pocketsized-prophet @jguesssoyeaj @ivegivenupugh

[nekky-nek]

Disney Movie Marathon #3 Fantasia (1940)

I've seen Fantasia a couple times once when I was really young and the second when I was browsing Netflix some years back. It was released in the same year as Pinocchio so interesting to see what's the same and different

Story: (the first movie on the list for Disney+ to acknowledge there are offensive depictions which yeah yikes) Fantasia is weird because there isn't an over arching story but separate narratives that are based on the soundtrack. Some pieces are abstract while others have characters and "plot" that you can follow. It's not the most engaging movie (I was almost asleep by the end). Pretty sure the live action narrator is there to explain what you're about to watch so you're not completely lost. There are enjoyable moments though like the Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey most people are familiar with but my favorite was the ballet dancing ostriches and hippos

Characters: Again most people are only familiar with Mickey in this movie and maybe Chernabog who's basically Satan in the Night on Bald Mountain. There's fairies, flowers, centaurs, pegasi, dinosaurs, demons, ets. I can't say much about any of them since they're all there for the look more than anything else. That being said I did find enjoyment when there were characters to follow but nothing deeper than that

Animation/Art: This movie is a giant flex of artistic skill. It's just "Art the Movie" and well done animation. The whole time I was in awe because all the special effects and such is done by hand! Some scenes have so much going on sometimes and I can feel my hands hurting imagining the hours put into it. Like I said before not the most engaging movie, but if you're a fan of art or animation there's something for you here .

Songs: No lyrics here except for the small bit of Ave Maria but other than that an entire orchestral score most of which you have heard before and they're beautiful pieces of music and that's about it.

[xenoredux]

if you're still doing horse talk can we hear more about flutter ponies? also did you have anything in mind for seaponies?

Ye ask for horse talk, ye shall receive horse talk.

I’ll elaborate on seaponies first: I don’t actually have much lore planned for them and that is my greatest flaw. But seriously, I probably should develop my ideal version of them. They’re fun little guys.

If I had any lore surrounding them, I’d say they were the first subspecies of earth pony to climb out of the sea (and then promptly go back in once they realized how cold it was out in the open air) and that they’re not limited to a strictly seahorsey shape. The classic seapony body type would be the most prevalent, but by no means the only observable kind. There’s seaponies out there that look like clownfish and sting rays and stuff. They’d have their own equivalent to the Gloom Witches who’d be, like, a shitty little lobster man and his easily frustrated jellyfish minions. Once the landtrotters (Starwish ‘n Co.) gained their friendship, they’d be able to call on them whenever they’re in both water and distress.

So that’s about it for seaponies BUT I DO have a lot of a lot to say about flutter ponies (warning for horses becoming much ded):

Flutter Ponies are a subspecies of pegasus which are related to the even lesser-seen subspecies Winger Ponies, Breezies, and Changelings. Flutters are generally smaller then the average pony both in height and weight, which makes it easy for them to skirt by pony villages unseen. There is the same variation you'd find in any species - it's possible to find a "tall" or chubby flutter - but they're characterized primarily by their small stature and their round, short-muzzled faces.

The biggest difference between them and "normal" pegasi is that their wings resemble those of insects instead of avians. Different flutter pony wings come in different shapes and colors, and these seem dictated more by individuals' personalities then their genetics. i.e. you may find a flutter with ladybug wings, or dragonfly wings, or housefly wings.

Their wings are powerful enough to carry them great distances if they need to travel, but they're also fragile enough to tear if targeted, and the healing process for a torn wing is long and painful. This motivates flutters to protect their wings whenever they can, sometimes to the detriment of what they're doing. Many a flutter has abandoned ship because they instinctively wigged out over obtaining wing damage.

One of the reasons Whilderbee is such a novelty to the populace of Paradise Estates is because flutter ponies are reclusive, secretive animals by nature. They live far away not just from other ponies, but also each other. These guys are paranoid, truly the most easily spooked and horselike of the pony races given their anxieties. If any pony is going to "see ghosts" and bolt from something that isn't there, it'd be a flutter.

So shy are these guys that their family units are limited as well. The typical flutter pony's nuclear family is, at most, composed of 2 parents and their 1 child. Flutter ponies with numerous offspring are often considered "selfish" and "irrational" among their kind because more kids = more interaction with the outside world = greater likelihood of others intruding/invading/whatever. Flutter ponies value secrecy and despise vulnerability both inside and outside of their family units.

Part of this deep-seated paranoia is because of something that happened long ago. Flutter ponies have always separated themselves from other cultures, but they used to live together in herds (or flocks - take your pick) of their own. These flutter herds would be lead by someone who had shown themselves to be unusually brave and wise, and this pony (dubbed "The Royal" by the others) would determine what was best for their herdmates.

The largest flutter herd ever recorded, one lead by The Royal Morning Glory, was destroyed because of an invading goop referred to only as "the Smooze". Little is known about this substance or its origins, but what we do know is that Morning Glory made a mistake in determining how to resist it, and so her entire herd was swallowed up by it and destroyed.

When other flutter herds caught wind of this tragedy, even after the Smooze had disappeared they were all too shaken to remain in their previous living accommodations. They came to the conclusion that living in a herd was too dangerous. There's just too much room for human (equine?) error, and working together under some wise guy's delegation didn't prevent all the flutters lost that day from being eaten by sentient sludge. Unusually, the trauma of the event didn't bring the community together but instead drove them apart, and that's how they've lived ever since.

When you combine all this isolationism, ingroup shaming, and self-limiting fear, it's not hard to see why Whilderbee was frowned upon by her people. She's wildly outgoing by flutter standards, not to mention her cardinal sin of actively seeking communications with other creatures. Ever since she was a little kid she's been trying to buddy up with blewbirds and jackalopes and sparkledogs, and this quickly earned her a reputation as, well, a freak.

Flutters don't often interact with one another (if only because a lot of them are curmudgeonly) but word spreads fast among them. This is part of the reason why Beebee, despite her cultural upbringing, still actively gets involved with her friends. She learned her own form of emotional invulnerability, and that's making everyone too cheery and giggly to ask her why they saw her wiping her face of tears the other night.

As you can imagine, all this stuffiness makes flutter ponies a bit more hoity toity then you'd think a buncha forest-dwelling recluses would be. They often pressure their only children into behaving in a very put-together, boring manner so as not to invite the scrutiny of their nearest neighbor two woodlands over. Imperfection is weakness in their eyes.

They also don't do much to hide their distaste for other animal species, non-flutter ponies included. Most other animals are simply beyond their comprehension, but other pony species unnerve them because their ways are so unfamiliar. Like, what, they just have family gatherings and cry openly and own television sets? Inconceivable! Ugly! Wrong!

All this probably makes flutters sound like a bunch of miserably stoic fuddy duddies. In a sense they are given the sort of lives they've subjected themselves to, but still waters run deep. Flutter ponies are beyond powerful if you can get them to cooperate. When enough flutters get together and beat their wings with great speed - a phenomenon they used to call "flutter stutter" - they have the power to change the weather, move buildings, and overcome just about any tangible treachery.

Pony historians have written tales about how long forgotten herds of flutters once defeated great evils by joining forces and literally fluttering their enemies away. It's also been theorized that not utilizing this ability was the mistake that killed Morning Glory's herd as they'd surely have won against the Smooze had they used it. Sadly a flutter stutter hasn't happened in about as long as anyone can remember, and it'd be a difficult thing to orchestrate these days given, well, everything.

I can imagine if this were a real show, part of a major arc would be earning the flutters' trust, convincing them that being persnickety passive-aggressive assholes to each other is bad, and motivating them to unleash this long dormant power on a common enemy. Maybe by the end of it an exceptionally clever and altruistic flutter would be dubbed leader of a new trial community the flutters would tentatively propose, a matriarch of a new age flutter pony herd. She's probably have a name like Rosedust or something. Who knows?

[imaginefodlan]

I would like to read some ClaudexLorenz headcanons, because I think that this pairing has potential =) How they could have ended together, how Claude has managed to keep his lover while becoming king..have you some ideas? please?

Yes!! This is such a quality ship, and i will happily sail with it!

-------------

Claude and Lorenz may have their differences, and Goddess knows they've had more than their fair share of petty arguments, especially when the subject of noble behavior arises

But ultimately they both want what's best for Fodlan, and Lorenz and Claude have this uniquely deep trust in each other because of this common goal they share.

During the years Teach was missing, Claude was distraught with worry, but Lorenz often came to visit or invited him to tea, trying to distract his dearest friend from his grief, as well as abating his own.

The two grew even closer after their time at the academy ended, and if Hilda was Claude's left hand lady, then Lorenz was his right hand man.

Claude and Lorenz had many a secret strategy meeting to determine their plans of attack and defense, and it was ultimately, this led to secret trysts of a more... romantic kind, down the road.

During one of their meetings after Byleth's return, while Claude and Lorenz were leaning too close together in front of the war maps, their lips a mere head turn away from each other, there was a crash outside the tower window, and the tower shook. A pegasus ran awry and crashed into the side of the tower's upper portion. They turned to look at each other in surprise, but having forgotten the miniscule distance between them, Lorenz's lips just narrowly grazed Claude's before they both pulled back, blushing furiously. This was both their first kiss together, and the moment they both felt the kindling of their love set ablaze.

This was also the first time Lorenz ever had to lecture anyone, let alone Marianne, to fly the pegasi AWAY from the buildings, not INTO them. But that's another story for another day.

After their first kiss, Lorenz couldn't help being flustered around Claude, especially with his deliberately flirty nature, but it wasn't until Hilda (who probably orchestrated the pegasus incident with Marianne to get those two to realize their obliviousness to their own feelings, let's be honest here - Marianne's too good with animals for this to have been a simple unorchestrated accident) began teasing them in front of the other Golden Deer that the full extent of their feelings became known.

After the war, Claude and Lorenz would have drifted apart and gone their separate ways, with Lorenz assisting Byleth in the goings on of Fodlan as her chief advisor, while Claude focused on Alymra- if it weren't for the incessant amount of letters Claude sent to Lorenz, filled with pretty words on his work in Almyra, and how he couldn't wait to bring Lorenz to see his homeland, and to come see the brilliant work Lorenz has done in Fodlan, and for the number of times Lorenz takes leave to meet Claude in the dead of night at the Almyran border in what they both believe are secret trysts.

Unbeknownst to them, they're not really secret at all, because Hilda and Byleth are 100% orchestrating these day or two long openings in their dear friends' schedules behind their backs, specifically so they can continue to have these meetings. The first meeting was secret, but it wasn't hard for Byleth and Hilda to figure it out when each man returned to his home base, blushing and swooning around their respective co-leaders/advisors when they mentioned the other man around them even more than usual.

Claude and Lorenz never officially put a label on their relationship while they were courting, but it was obvious that's what they were doing to everyone close to them. People around them took notice of the differences in their leaders. Especially their fellow Golden Deer, who, with Hilda and Byleth leading the herd, were already secretly planning the wedding between the King of Almyra and the Queen of Fodlan's Chief Advisor.

It took them ages (and by that I mean around 5 years after the war, once they'd stabilized Fodlan and repaired the relationship between Fodlan and Almyra), but eventually, Claude came to Fodlan on a surprise visit to see Byleth. He spent the whole time avoiding Lorenz, meeting with Byleth outside of Garreg Mach's grounds, away from prying ears and eyes.

What were they doing, you may ask? Claude was discussing how best to propose to our dear Lorenz, and of course, to ask their dear professor for her blessing. And of course, Byleth, who has been waiting for this moment for years now, agreed readily, on one condition: she gets to help plan and officiate the wedding.

Claude agreed to those terms easily enough, knowing she and Hilda were already probably planning something anyway, and that Byleth would likely keep Hilda reined in enough that the wedding wouldn't be TOO outrageous or expensive.

Anyone who sees the interactions between Lorenz and Claude at dignitary meetings between Fodlan and Almyra could tell that the usually composed, noble-mannered Lorenz gets flustered and loses his manners in the subtlest ways around Claude, and that sharp-witted, sneaky Claude seems to be just that much more at ease and softened around Lorenz.

Claude asks Lorenz to marry him in what is quite possibly the least noble way ever: surprising him at a private garden party, amongst the Golden Deer, with their friends cheerfully singing something shockingly akin to the song All Star by Smash Mouth. And yet, despite the silly, ignoble gesture of his lover and their friends, Lorenz cannot bring himself to say no, and he wouldn't have had it go any other way.

Everyone in Fodlan and Almyra can pretty easily agree that this pair is a perfectly met match, although there are many saddened suitors for them both when their engagement is publicly announced, and their wedding is a day of both great joy and great sorrow for both nations as two of the most eligible bachelors between the two nations marry each other, with the Goddess' blessing upon their union.

------------

Fun fact: After my fiancé proposed to me, our friends serenaded us with All Star by Smash Mouth. So that's real life slipping into fiction here. It feels like something the Golden Deer would definitely do, though, so... Sorry, not sorry.

I hope this fulfilled your need for Lorenz x Claude!

[sharpspi]

Orchestration // Python & Leif

Part of the Valkyries’ training is learning to maneuver their pegasi dauntlessly through arrow fire: a pegasus knight’s worst fear. However, with so many of the archers who usually assist them assigned to other duties or relocated throughout the Alliance, they’re short on hands. Anyone who has some experience with a bow and is willing to help with their flight drills or man a mock ballista would be a huge asset. [Grants Bow +1]

The day started early. Way earlier than anyone would’ve liked it. The horn had sung before the sun rose from beyond the mountains, before it was even light outside. The tune was simple but well-known: the fortress was under attack. Or so it would seem.

In truth, it wasn’t. It was but a drill, one that had to take place at an unfortunate time, still little to actually worry about. To add, it wasn’t for the Locket itself - the garrison had proved to be competent once and again, and didn’t need more trouble than they’d already borne. And so, most, once they were woken up by the call to arms… went back to sleep. The only ones that stayed awake were the lookouts and the archers. Excluding the ‘enemy’, the pegasus riders who supposedly laid siege to the Locket.

How ‘fortunate’ it was for Python to be in the fort on that day. Like everyone else, he had been warned of the upcoming training, but the time had never been specified. So, when he shot awake to the alert, functioning solely on adrenaline, he couldn’t help but grumble, gathering arrows and gearing up.

There was only one thing he’d had to do before joining the others. There was this boy he was supposed to accompany, who had arrived only recently. Hazel hair, brown eyes, white garb… Was that him? 

“Ey! Leif, was it? Come on, it’s starting!” he shouted, as the strumming of bowstrings and the neighing of pegasi grew louder and louder, deafening.

(@nobaettadr​)

[digitalnotice]

ConsenSys Is The Technology Partner For A Blockchain Agribusiness Initiative

ConsenSys Is The Technology Partner For A Blockchain Agribusiness Initiative

Covantis, a blockchain initiative backed by global agribusiness giants like Cargill, has selected Ethereum-focused firm ConsenSys as its technology partner.

On Jan. 23 a press release stated that within the partnership ConsenSyswill build an Ethereum-based blockchain platform to digitize the post-trade finance industry and bring efficiencies and cost savings to the international agribusiness…

[dnd-vigilante]

Crashin' the Party

Lieche and Ereden successfully revived Martin and Uluthrek. Looking a little worse for wear the party made camp to rest one last time before heading back to Bastion. Discussing amongst each other MED decided to reach out to Lady Erochnein as soon as they arrived in Bastion. Breaking camp, we gathered our supplies, placing most of it inside of Lieche’s bag of holding. We distributed flying brooms and the remaining two Pegasi, Leeroy Jenkins and Garyl, and started the long flight back to Bastion. In the distance we could still see the great city of the Ocrait Magisterium, thinking of our not so fond memories of the place, we couldn’t wait to get away from it. Even in the air, we could tell the ground was beginning to shake. A large cracking noise ripped through the air. Ereden pointed back towards the Ocrait Magisterium, halting our advance towards Bastion. A giant orb had erupted around the Ocrait city and it was slowly rising out of the ground… (Out of character my brother and I started laughing because a wizard city in the air is clearly Dalaran, lol.) Our haste to get back to Bastion was now more than justified. We had to reach the city before the O.M. or who knows what could happen. Bryce, who was still with MED even though I fail to mention him all the time, suddenly received a package via magic. Inside was a ring, a necklace and some other pieces of jewelry. They were his father's... And if they had come to him that could only mean that his father was now dead. He had failed in his attempt to convince the other members of the Ocrait to stop their plans to destroy Bastion. Bryce encouraged MED that he would speak to Erochnein on behalf of the O.M. and his father. He was now the leader of a faction of the O.M. and would not have all of his people at fault for what was to happen. After several hours of travel, we arrived ahead of the floating city in Bastion. We landed at the adventurers guild to resupply and get dressed for the masquerade. We met up with a Gnome called Fambin, who outfitted us with all the essentials. From there we headed to the Ruby Palace, passing townsfolk celebrating outdoors, music, lights, dancing, the whole shebang. The Masquerade was in full swing across the city. We entered the Ruby Palace, guards nodding to us as we passed. We found Lady Erochnein entertaining a group of smaller nobility. Martin walked up in his usual fashion and demanded to speak to her. The conversation died immediately as the lesser nobles gaped at Martin and Erochnine glared. Erochnine excused the lesser nobles and took us aside, she didn’t seem to believe we were standing in front of her. MED let her know that the mission was over, no one was trying to assassinate her. Everything since her assassination attempt and maybe even before that had been orchestrated by Justinius. She started asking more questions, but Bryce interrupted. There was no time to discuss formalities, the O.M. were on their way that very instant. MED then explained the flying city and the danger it was to Bastion. MED readied for the assault on the O.M. city, we would lead the first assault and try and bring the city down. Bryce gave June a red ruby from his father’s jewelry, letting her know that when we break it near the shield it should open enough to let us inside. Martin turned to Erochnein, “Listen if we win you’ll give me your hat.” She blinked at Martin and nodded. We mounted up, riding brooms and Pegasus, and launched into the sky towards the advancing city. We arrived just as the city began firing spells at Bastion. They clearly saw us coming as we began avoiding fireball after fireball launched at us. June reaching the outer wall of the shield cracked the ruby and an opening large enough for the group to move through appeared. The spells that followed this cause the party to split. June, Uluthrek, Hilda, Bertok, and Leiche crashed into the side of the city entering an underground area. Martin, Bryce, Ereden, and Edna veered up above the city trying to find the control tower. Bryce noted a large structure where light poured from that seemed to be the main source for the shield and possibly the controls for the city itself. I break these next parts into two sections because the party was separated. Martin, Bryce, Ereden, and Edna in group one and June, Uluthrek, Hilda, Bertok and Leiche in group two. Group One: Martin directed Leeroy Jenkins towards the center building. In front of us, the houses suddenly exploded, exposing an earth, air, fire and water elemental. Martin dropped from Leeroy directly onto the air elemental destroying it completely with his magical quarterstaff once glaive… Ereden and Edna then caused the other elementals to become confused and instead of fighting them we continued to head towards the central building. As we approached we saw a group of Mage Killers all surrounding a large orb radiating with energy. We had found the power source…. So naturally, we wanted to destroy it. Surprised by us being there at all, the Mage Killers were too slow in reacting. Ereden let loose an empowered shatter on the orb cracking it, just as Martin who had just magically received aid from Bardarittaville fell on top of it with an empowered thunderclap. The orb shattered and with a lurch, the city began to fall as the shield disintegrated. “Huh, Bardarittaville just saved us.” Group Two: June and the others landed and soon discovered a room where three rings resided. It was clearly a puzzle but we said “fuck it” so June started putting on rings. The different ring combinations did different things that affected the city. June was able to either cause healing or harm to different parts of the city, as well as causing changes in Bastion. These effects varied depending on the rings June wore. June discovered with one of the combinations she could impact the Ocrait city, with another Justinius and with a third the golden defenders of Bastion. It took a lot of figuring out, some results were bad such as the destruction of all of the Golden Defenders of Bastion. Others were good, all of the floating city regained a large portion of their health, that included us since we were in the city. The last combination transported June to where the real Justinius was. As she appeared near him she saw the fellow adventuring guild OCD slaying Justinius. She used the ring again and appeared right as the city began to fall. Bryce pointed at an outside platform floating around the falling city and yelled for us to head to it. By some luck, we would be able to slow the descent of the city from there. Below us, we saw Ocrait members grabbing belongings, family members, etc and blinking out of the city. Spotting June and the others we flew past and yelled for them to follow. We reached the outlying platform, where we found a small group of Mage Killers attempting to correct the shield. We knocked them out and Bryce set to work at slowing the fall of the city. It began to work as a group of Mage Killers materialized in front of us. They pulled out their wonky looking magic daggers and engaged us in combat. June leaped forward as the one who seemed to be in charge raised his hand and she winked out of existence, banished. Martin and Hilda connected blows with the two other Mage Killers, slowly being beaten back. June rematerialized and smashed into the boss man. Martin, successfully cutting down his foe joined June in fighting the Boss. He stabbed Martin draining some of his life away. June made contact with his skull and Martin seized the opportunity to cut him down. Catching the Mage Killer’s daggers and tossing one to June. June: “You dirty kill stealer. But hey, I killed all of Bastion’s Golems so that is like 80 kills for me.” Martin: “I feel like killing things on our side doesn’t count in this competition of ours.” The city smashed into the ground and the party fell to the floor of the platform. The city continued to slide, smashing its way through trees, hills, etc until finally coming to a stop. The fight was over, but the destruction of the city was vast. We rushed to the aid of people still trapped inside as the city continued to burn around us. After several hours of search and rescue, we managed to save everyone we could. Near the refugee point, we were greeted by Lady Erochnein and a large group of Drow soldiers. She would be taking the refugees into custody, that included Bryce. Martin demanded that MED is compensated for saving her sorry noble ass. She sighed and an agreement was made for a magic item from her vault be given to each member. Martin held out his hand, “I’ll also be taking her ladyship's hat.” June and the rest of MED stood up for Bryce, claiming that without him we wouldn’t have been able to stop the city. He deserves as much credit as MED. Erochnein agreed that she would take this into consideration once thorough interviews had taken place.

[femblemfiction-archives]

As you stepped into the courtyard, you could already see the two pegasi that a redhead was holding the reins of-the mystical horses shuffled and whinnied at first, but as you got closer, you noticed that the rider was softly petting each one of them and reassuring them in a gentle voice. That sight alone would be enough to make your heart flutter, but as Subaki turned and saw you and flashed a winning smile, you knew that the rest of this outing-er, date-was going to be nothing less than perfect, just like the man who orchestrated it.

“There you are-and lovely as always, I see. I’ve brought us some beautiful pegasi to use, and afterwards, I’ve got plans for dinner. How does cabbage and potato miso sound?”

The way he stood in place between the horses, and how put-together and clean he looked, would likely make one think that he had a handle on everything-but by now you knew that sparkling look in his eye, and you could tell he was nervous.

“That sounds delicious-I had no idea you could cook, Subaki.”

Pride flashed in his gaze, and he subconsciously puffed out his chest.

“I can whip up anything you so desire, my dear-just say the word, and I’ll bring out my cooking pot!”

The two of you laughed, and finally, it was time to mount your pegasi for a scenic fly. Subaki held on to the pegasus for you to hop on-but no matter how many times you set your foot in the stirrups, and tried to pull yourself up, she reared up and shook you away. You could tell that your date was getting more flustered by the minute of his pegasus not co-operating, but finally you had to give in and plant two feet back on the ground. As soon as he let go the creature took off running back to the stables-but before he could stammer out an apology, you held up a hand to silence him.

“Perhaps, if she doesn’t mind, we could just ride together..?”

You sowed the idea into his head, and with a quick pause it grew into a plan. Subaki’s confidence returned and he helped you atop his mount, hopping on in front to grab hold of the reins. A pleasant shiver ran down his spine as your reached around his abdomen, and held on to him firmly to keep your balance.

“R-Right…and, we’re off!”

With a running start, the beast took off the ground with its powerful wings and soared into the air, and you could feel Subaki chuckle as you clung to him even tighter while so high up.

“Trust me, I won’t let you fall-you’re safe with me, lovely.”

He glanced over his shoulder to see you gazing longingly out over the sky, looking down to see the people rushing about in the world below. Some waved up to you as you flew over Shirasagi town, and it brought an even bigger smile to his face when he noticed you waving back.

“It’s beautiful up here, Subaki. Now I understand why you would want to be a sky knight…”

He flicked the reins and the pegasus dipped further down to the ground below, so you could see the town even closer and livelier in the daytime.

“Yes. Hana is so talented with a sword, and Lady Sakura is a healer herself-besides that, I saw that she looked up to her elder sister, so I suppose I wanted to be that sort of person to her. Someone she could look up to, and put her trust in.”

As the ride became smoother, and his pegasus started tiring out from the double load, Subaki began to make his descent, seemingly thinking over what he wanted to say next.

“You know, I’d like to be that person for you, too. If…it’s not too bold of me to say.”

Even so, he had a grin on his face, and you waited as the mount came back down and slowed to a trot before you decided to answer.

“Well, maybe if you fell off your horse a little less…”

The colour drained from his face and he looked wounded, but thankfully it didn’t last long as you started laughing.

“I’m just teasing, Subaki. I think you’re a wonderful role model for Sakura-and, let’s face it, you’ve helped me out plenty on the battlefield. I really rely on you.”

That seemed to grant him even more confidence than before-and once the two of you had dismounted, and you gave the pegasus a little pat on the head, Subaki was cupping your face with his hands. Before you could react he was leaning in, and as a parting gift, he so gently pressed his lips to yours in a fluttery, soft kiss.

“Usually I wouldn’t dare do this, but considering this is what one might call a date..”

He couldn’t even finish his slightly smarmy sentence, as you were already wanting another one, and had a hold on his tunic to get it. You exchanged several more kisses before a few of the handlers stumbled upon the two of you-and as soon as you went to dinner, the entire army knew about “the retainer and the healer smooching in the courtyard”. Not that Subaki minded, though, as now he could drape his arm around you and pull you close when he wanted-even in the heat of battle, as long as both Hana and Sakura aren’t looking. Though, for the rest of time, his samurai counterpart would most definitely tease him about it for the rest of his days.

[thecryptoreport]

PegaSys Ethereum Suite Now Available on Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace

PegaSys Ethereum Suite Now Available on Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace

Developers can now access the tools needed to manage a full-scale Enterprise Ethereum network through Microsoft’s Azure marketplace.

The PegaSys Ethereum Suite, which includes ​Hyperledger Besu,​​ PegaSys Plus​ and PegaSys Orchestrate​, will help developers deploy multi-node networks with blockchain explorers, monitoring and dashboards, Ethereum development studio ConsenSys said in a press…

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition, Week in Ethereum News, March 21, 2020 issue

Shill alert: Gitcoin’s 250k in matching grants is live.  My grant is here.  If you give because you particularly want the annotated edition to continue, could you add .11 to whatever you give?  eg, 1.11 DAI or .11 ETH or .01011 ETH.  The previous round went great but tracking what people like is hard.  

The $250k includes $100k for tech, 50k for media, and 100k for public health, mostly related to covid.  I’m curious as to how this goes - I find it very hard to evaluate the public health proposals, whereas Eth proposals are easy for me to evaluate.  I mostly know the people, I know the ideas, etc.  None of that is true for the public health category.   There’s an opportunity for someone knowledgeable to (anonmously?) evaluate all the applicants and shape what gets funded.  

Eth1

Latest core devs call. Tim Beiko’s notes.

Discussions (non-exhaustive list) about EIP inclusions in next hard fork: eip2537 (BLS12-381 curve precompile) final, so we can have eth2 light clients on eth1. eip2456 timestamp for scheduling instead of block number, eip2542 vs ungas, eip2046 reducing gas cost for static calls, and eip1962 generalized precompile

Geth v1.9.12 – eth_call no longer defaults to first account

Merry Go Round – an idea for syncing state, a la Bittorrent

Lots of talk in the core devs call about all the different EIPs being evaluated for the next fork.  

In some ways this week is a synopsis of what’s happening at the protocol layer: people are working on the things for the next fork and arguing over what should go in, as well as what is ready to go in.  The Geth team are chugging along keeping the majority of the network humming, and there is research and ideas being passed around about how to get the current Ethereum mainnet to be stateless.

Vitalik’s long-term roadmap below also does a good job of explaining the main things being worked on in eth1.   I wasn’t exactly sure where to put it, probably incorrectly chose to put it in eth2 since so many things are long-term.

One interesting thing to note is that this is Vitalik’s “personal” vision.  Of course most of it is not controversial, but he just did this by himself.  Does it mean that it is Ethereum’s roadmap?  No.  It means that Vitalik came up with it at some point and decided to publish it - it does not necessarily reflect what everyone thinks.  He didn’t build consensus, he just published what he was seeing on the day he wrote it down.  

I noticed plenty of misinformation about Vitalik’s roadmap, as if none of this will happen for a decade.  Quite the opposite is true: the top 2/3 of the page is being worked on right now.  The Beacon Chain of eth2 is still set to launch in the next few months. 

The bottom third of the graphic is much more speculative.  Polynomial commitments instead of state roots?  That just got published last week, that’s likely years away.   When CBC Casper?  I’m not sure but it’s not soon and the transition is far from clear - to me, anyway.  Perhaps Vlad would give you a different answer.

Eth2

Danny Ryan’s Eth2 update

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Prysmatic client update – stable testnet for a month (but to be rebooted to current spec), surround vote slashing

Tutorial to run your own Lighthouse testnet

Vitalik’s personal long-term ETH roadmap, beyond eth2

Mikhail Kalinin’s writeup of his eth1<>eth2 bridge idea

Sensor fusion for BFT clock sync. Alex Vlasov’s research on hardening timestamps

State transition in Eth2 explainer from Nethermind’s Sly Gryphon

How Eth2 improves on Eth1’s weaknesses from Prysmatic’s Ivan Martinez

Gitcoin playlist of short eth2 explainer videos

I know probably no one else sees the order of things when I try to order things properly.  So here’s who it went: Danny’s update was high-level.  Ben’s was a bit more in the weeds.  Even further into the weeds is client update and “run your own testnet node.”  Then we got into Vitalik’s roadmap, which bridged the current eth2 with the future work.   So then we got writeups of research like eth1/eth2 merge, hardening timestaps, before getting into a few explainers that were a bit more for broader audience.

The ordering flowed perfectly in my mind, but probably only in mine!

Layer2

Why iden3 is using zk-rollup for universal identities

Having been using Loopring’s exchange running on zk-rollup, gotta say: it’s a great experience.  It’s like using a centralized exchange, only it’s a dex.

Stuff for developers

Solidity v0.5.17 (last?) release of 0.5.x (since 0.6 is out) disallowing overriding of private functions

TenderlyPro released – simulate txs, advanced analytics, debugging

Debugging transactions with Buidler and Truffle

Subspace v2, much easier to track events in React.

A demo on observing Defi with Subspace

svm: Solidity version manager

Choose how many IPFS replications you want pinned in each region with Pinata

Austin Griffith video on gas limits and gas prices

Intro to Eth for Python devs using web3py

Compare Eth API performance with the Versus tool

Tutorial on Ethereum RPCs, methods and calls in Infura

Mahesh Murthy updated his famous “Full Stack Hello World Voting Ethereum Dapp Tutorial” to use current libraries

Guide to building a margin trading platform on 0x

A quick start guide for devs to borrowing assets from Compound

Solidity went back to the v0.5 series to fix a bug that not everyone agrees is a bug!

Meanwhile, lots of interesting tools and tutorials this week, I suppose they all speak for themselves.  I thought it was neat that Infura released a tool to let you compare API performance.  Nice little bit of subtle bragging.

Ecosystem

A taxonomy of the advantages/disadvantages of different types of Eth wallets

How do we better onboard newcomers to Ethereum?

Custom text records on ENS

Onboarding newcomers is something I’ve been thinking about lately, and was tangential to my EthCC talk, which that post references.   Community has decentralized, which is good, but also poses some challenges.  A good portion of people who think of themselves as “Eth community” get their news from publications which are outright clickbait or have historically not done a very good job at ascertaining facts.  Still churning over this one, should probably turn some of my talk into a series of blog posts myself.

Someone at EthCC told me that they summarized my talk as “Make r/ethereum great again,” which is fair.  Yet while I continue to put a decent amount of time into r/ethereum, it’s not crystal clear whether we should try to revive it to be the main community discussion point.  For one thing, the existing rule is that it’s English-only, which feels unfair, but perhaps necessary for moderation purposes.  Can Reddit be the main ecosystem gathering point?  Do we need new tools?  Should they be web3-friendly sites, or should we keep Reddit as something that new people can find?  

Enterprise

Baseline Protocol is now open source, a common system of record between enterprises

“blockchain will do, for networks of companies and business ecosystems, what ERP did for the single enterprise” – Paul Brody, Cornell Blockchain interview

Resolving key considerations for blockchain connectivity with PegaSys Orchestrate

Hyperledger Besu v1.4.1

First public meeting of EEA’s mainnet working group scheduled for April 3

EY and Brody have made a big bet on mainnet, and it appears to be paying off.   In his interview, he framed the competition as between public mainnet and private chains, as EY is far ahead in expertise of using mainnet.  

It was also super interesting to get some of the backstory that led to the IBM/Samsung washing machine in 2014.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Technical overview of Vocdoni’s anonymous voting system

The two token structure of SingularDTV’s SnglsDAO

Application layer

USDC added as collateral for Maker to help restore DAI to 1:1 parity with USDC and more Dai liquidity in liquidation auctions and MKR auctions. In Maker parlance, liquidation auctions are flips, and MKR auctions to cover system deficit are flops

flops.live to track the MKR auctions

Backstop syndicate is live. Pool your DAI to buy MKR at a favorable price, if an auction should drop that low

NexusMutual declined claims from Maker liquidated auctions since smart contract cover doesn’t include the risk that only one bot bids on the auction

DeFiSaver and liquidated auctions, the oracle delay was a problem but did 12500 ETH worth of Aave flash loan volume over 4000 transactions

Also check out Covalent if you need advanced notification as a user

Balancer’s 80/20 liquidity pools

Making requests on ErasureBay

OpenLaw: smart clauses for digital legal agreements

Depending on how you count, DeFi was 5 or 7 out of 9 bullet points.  That’s my running tracker that I like to occasionally check on.

Backstop was a very cool community effort.  Love to see that people get together to make sure the system functions - and they were also incentivized to do so.  

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Microsponsors: mint and auction your time as NFTs on a 0x market

Making sense of synthetic assets on Ethereum

Ryan Sean Adams on Covid-19 and crypto

Capital markets meltdown signals the birth of DeFi

Jonathan Joseph’s piece on how Black Thursday is the beginning of the DeFi area would have made the #Mostclicked if I’d tweeted it out just a bit later. 

General

AZTEC’s Plookup tables for faster SNARK verification of digital signatures

Using machine learning classifiers and SNARKs to detect improper video transcoding in Livepeer

Benchmarking performance of Rescue and Poseidon hash functions vs MiMC

ICL paper says bZx flash loan attackers left money on the table

NYT’s Nathaniel Popper reports on how the lead dev of Venezuela’s Petro scam got screwed

The NYT on how the Venezuelan kleptocrats screwed the dev is the epitome of something-we-all-saw-coming, which you already knew if you’ve read the newsletter for a long time.  I got criticism from a bunch of different corners (”oh that’s because you’re an American,” “you can’t say that, people will think it represents us,” etc) for calling the Petro a scam when it was announced, and I ignored it.  I don’t know why you got into this space, but I didn’t get into it to help kleptocrat leftist authoritarians.  

Meanwhile, lots of cool stuff in SNARKs, including in Livepeer about how they might be able to detect improper transcoding.  

Finally, Cristian Espinoza translated last week’s annotated edition into Spanish, which to my knowledge is the first time that the annotated edition has been translated.  Very cool, and support his Gitcoin grant for more translations!

I’ll add the #mostclicked here.  Amusingly I had some maxis spreading more lies about me this week because my tweets auto-delete.  So here’s a screenshot since that’s more durable than linking to a tweet

[jclaro1956]

Comércio agrícola

A Covantis, iniciativa blockchain apoiada pelo agronegócio global selecionou a ConsenSys, focada na Ethereum, para construção da plataforma global de comércio do agronegócio. A plataforma blockchain baseada na Ethereum digitalizará o setor financeiro pós-negociação, trazendo eficiência e economia de custos à cadeia de suprimentos internacional do agronegócio. O conceito da Covantis estabelecido em 2018, implica quatro das maiores empresas mundiais do agronegócio, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge e Louis Dreyfus Company, na iniciativa conjunta em digitalizar transações globais de remessa usando blockchain e inteligência artificial. Enquanto investigam modos de padronizar e digitalizar transações globais de transporte agrícola desde 2018, a marca oficial do projeto foi revelada há tempos atrás. 

Os membros fundadores da Covantis lançaram um site para a iniciativa, covantis.io, planejado para 2020. O foco será automatizar processos de execução pós-negociação de grãos e oleaginosas. A Covantis é iniciativa blockchain focada na modernização das operações de comércio global, cujos membros desenvolvem plataforma em conjunto  tornando o comércio global simples, seguro e eficiente, trazendo eficiência e economia de custos às empresas na cadeia de suprimentos internacional. A ConsenSys fornecerá à Covantis ferramentas e serviços de blockchain corporativo, incluindo PegaSys Orchestrate, Kaleido e MythX para construir a rede de blockchain no Ethereum. Construirá plataforma segura baseada no Quorum, via blockchain permitida baseada no Ethereum e desenvolvida pela JPMorgan.

Moral da Nota: o agronegócio é uma das principais direções das implementações blockchain. Nesta linha, a empresa de auditoria Big Four KPMG lançou plataforma de rastreamento blockchain, para aumentar transparência e rastreabilidade dos processos agrícolas e outros setores. A Cargill, maior empresa privada em receita dos EUA, investiu na engenharia digital para desenvolver o Hyperledger Grid, otimizando cadeias de suprimentos com tecnologia blockchain.

https://ift.tt/2Sg9ztQ

source http://notasdeaz.blogspot.com/2020/07/comercio-agricola.html

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition for latest Week in Ethereum News

So last week I mentioned the annotated editions and then...didn’t do one.  Just got too busy.  So we’ll see how this one goes.

One thing to note: Edcon and EthParis both got cancelled.

Original Week in Ethereum News issue.

Eth1

Geth v1.9.11. DNS peer discovery, EIP2464 implementation, faster Geth console

Latest core devs call. Notes. Lots of next fork planning. EVM subroutines likely happening pending Solidity benchmarks, ProgPoW back on the agenda, lots of eip1962 precompile talk

Draft spec for block witnesses

Stateless Eth1 update

draft EIP to add BLS12-381 precompiles to the EVM

Implementing account abstraction via new PAYGAS opcode

Rich transaction compile draft EIP. allow transactions from EOAs to bytcode directly

Literally nobody: 

A few people on core devs call: ProgPoW!

I don’t really get it.  The reason ProgPoW keeps being so controversial is that core devs don’t publicize it much, and then they suddenly announce that it’s going in a hard fork.  Add to that the fact that every time miners advocate for ProgPoW, they show themselves to be outside of the Ethereum community, and you can understand why it produces such strong reactions.

Add to this the fact that one ProgPoW proponent (though oddly he sometimes says he isn’t) has told me explicitly that he doesn’t think the community can evaluate ProgPoW so he doesn’t even try to convince the larger ecosystem.  

I go back to what I wrote a few weeks ago:

at some point there is going to be (another) fight over ProgPoW.  It’s an odd beast where both sides are convinced that they have already won - meaning that anger and disgruntled ragequits are almost guaranteed.  

It only gets worse when you just announce forks and don’t try to set a process and make sure people are heard.

I have more thoughts on governance, but that’s it for now.

Meanwhile, lots of very interesting work going on for stateless Eth1, which is currently necessary to turn off proof of work (though I don’t think it should be)

Eth2

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Update on fuzzing the beacon chain clients. Finding bugs, expanding capabilities

A short history and a way forward for phase 2

Automated detection of dynamic state access

Casey Detrio’s simple protocol for cross-shard transfers

Quick demo on getting an eth2 EE up and running using Quilt’s SEE tool

Lots of phase2 stuff this week.   An overview is that we’re still not particularly close to phase2 as there are plenty of research and design decisions to be made even before all the nitty gritty of engineering tradeoffs.

The flipside that I don’t think many people understand is that once we get data availability on phase1, then we have all the scalability we need for years and years.  64 shards which can each process 3000 rollup transactions per second, means we get to 200,000 transactions per second.  and 3000 is probably low, as we can further reduce the gas cost of opcodes used by rollup, and add a few more shards too if we need to.   [Caveat: we still don’t have a rollup chain live, but....soon™.  Check out Daniel Goldman’s state of optimistic rollup below]

Furthermore, when we have phase1, we can turn off PoW which will cut issuance way down and stop wasting so much electricity.

tldr: phase2 is hard and not near, but phase0 is imminent and phase1 has a spec for review. 

Required reading: Casey Detrio’s phase1 and done, which was the first writing of this.

Layer2

Daniel Goldman: the state of optimistic rollup

Celer working on optimistic rollup using its State Guardian Network as block producer

Replay protection in rollups by including networkID

Cheaper zkrollups by using generic snark circuits for state maintenance

Channelizing an Eth app using an API

Rollups are all the rage right now, as indicated above, but state channels are still happening.  They’re hard as we’ve found out over the years from attempts on Bitcoin and Ethereum - doing channels is easy but channel networks are hard.

Stuff for developers

dEth node: claims to be 60% faster than Ganache

Security considerations around flash loan patterns

Austin Griffith video on flash loans

Patterns for computing/accumulating interest

Samczsun and Mudit Gupta find Nexus Mutual bugs

Email notifications in dapps

Solidity unit testing using Remix tests, part 2

Loredana’s ChainLens contract searcher is available as a Remix plugin

A video intro to studio.ethereum.org IDE

Revert comments in Brownie

Embark v5.2 – proxy contract support and scripts execution

Math in Solidity series: Numbers and Overflow

Realtime websocket integrations via API, aimed at devs new to Eth

composable Airscript v0.7

Eth2 things you can hack on at hackathons

This week’s issue was pretty late.  One thing I often do is roughly group things by subtopic under a header.  This week that didn’t happen, things just got thrown into “stuff for devs” with no rhyme or reason to placement.

I’m very interested to see if people check out the eth2 list for ETHLondon.

That Sam Sun is a machine!

Ecosystem

Ethereum Foundation’s wishlist for ecosystem support

EthDenver finalists

Waku spec v0.4

Last week I mentioned annotated versions of Week in Ethereum News and then…got too busy to do one. It’ll happen this week.

Register a .kred DNS domain, get NFT that controls ENS and DNS records

Etherscan’s 2019 year in review charts

The DAObacle of EthDenver judging means the submissions got put together today, so they will be in next week’s issue, along with here.   I don’t think anyone was shocked that the DAO judging didn’t work, but if you never have a few failures, you aren’t taking enough risks.  Cheers to John Paller and all the EthDenver stewards for making the American Devcon a great event year after year.

Check out EF’s wishlist and see if EF wants to fund something you want to work on.

Enterprise

4 key things PegaSys Orchestrate fixes for enterprise blockchains

Using Eth mainnet, CargoX approved as bill of lading provider by shipping reinsurers

Utility Settlement Coin to work with Adhara on commercial bank money as alternative to central bank digital currencies

Enterprise on mainnet means that the line between enterprise and app layer is blurring.  I should probably move this section.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Submit your startup to TheLAO for funding

MolochDAOs on Aragon (Dandelion orgs) are live on mainnet

ProgPoW returned as a debate topic this week, as core devs scheduled a separate hard fork for just ProgPoW. Meanwhile my Twitter feed is decidedly against ProgPoW, eg here

ERC2520: Multiple contenthash records for ENS

ERC2525: ENS login

It’s fairly well known that I was a skeptic of TheDAO in q2 2016, but I’m very interested to see how these reincarnations of TheDAO go.  

bZx hacks

bZx hack using flashloans was the topic of the week after two attacks, here is bZx’s post-mortem of the first attack. Meanwhile here is Peckshield’s analysis: within one transaction, get a 10k eth flash loan from dydx, use as collateral on Compound to borrow wBTC, shorts on bZx which uses Kyber’s liquidity and inflates the price, sell the wBTC at that inflated price, repay the 10k flashloan for ~1300 ETH profit

Here’s that analysis in graphic form from Kerman Kohli

Check out the transaction in Tenderly

Peckshield’s analysis of the second hack, netting ~2400 ETH

Palkeo’s analysis of both hacks, with a little more code. The first hack had a price check get bypassed, whereas in the second hack the price checks functioned

1inch says they found a bZx bug months ago and apparently did not get paid for it

Nexus Mutual pays out the first claims for smart contract cover for bZx

This section took a surprisingly long time to put together, but it’s definitely what people in the community were talking about all week.

I’d say it’s bullish for NexusMutual to pay out, especially because the mutual members first denied the claim but then paid out the claim when the facts of the matter became clear.  It’s also bullish for Opyn - NexusMutual and Opyn aren’t competitors exactly, they have different tradeoffs for people looking to hedge or protect themselves from risks.

Application layer

Decentraland’s Metaverse launches, build on your land in a GUI or by SDK, as well as a marketplace, and a DAO that governs it all

Enjin Platform to create and manage game assets is live on mainnet

Compound hits 200m in assets

Melon as asset management automator

Synthetix’s Achernar release is live, adding ETH as collateral

the tech stack for Status v1

1x.ag – an automated leverage aggregator

Uniflash: a decentralized flash loans protocol, live on Goerli testnet. Remco Bloemen, Austin Williams and Stephane Gosselin also have some flashmint contracts out there

Dharma now has fee-free debit card fiat<>Dai deposits and withdrawals

Maker changes: activates 24 hour time delay on any governance changes, DSR spread to 0, Dai ceiling to 150m

Meanwhile the flashloans made Maker’s holders decide to add the time delay to prevent any flashloan governance attack.

Compound hit a big number and now they’re decentralizing their governance, which means that the value accrual will probably be voted on by its token holders.  Fascinating stuff.

Cheers to Decentraland and Enjin for going live, and Synthetix adding ETH as collateral should be big for them.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Enigma settles with SEC for unregistered securities offering

Personal gratitude tokens: social money (or “challenge coins”) issued on a bonding curve

Forking Gardens: conditional tokens can change gaming

Enigma wasn’t necessarily who I thought the SEC would go after next.  

Simon’s personal gratitude tokens are very interesting to me.  It’s like challenge coins but with intrinsic value.  

General

Break RSA assumptions: bounties for solving the adaptive root problem

More PLONK benchmarks: 5x faster than Groth16 on Pedersen Hashes

Trustless Groups of Unknown Order with Hyperelliptic Curve

Barry Whitehat zk ideas: private social network search and private order matching

WebAssembly/eWASM explainer

How Nym improves on traditional mixnets

Andreas’ Mastering Ethereum is looking for translations; uses Creative Commons license

The general section is becoming the cryptography section.

One odd thing about Mastering Ethereum is that Ethereum is still under construction.  Writing that book ensures lots of future work for it to be kept up to date.  Or a second volume.  But in the meantime, let’s get it translated!

[jclaro1956]

E-commerce e agronegócio

A ConsenSys constrói plataforma global de comércio no agronegócio através da Covantis, iniciativa blockchain apoiada pela Cargill focada no Ethereum. O Projeto Agritech associado à ConsenSys Covantis é focado na transformação do comércio global e operações da cadeia de suprimentos. A Covantis estabelecida em Genebra como entidade legal após receber aprovação regulatória necessária, é iniciativa conjunta da Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, Louis Dreyfus Company e Glencore Agriculture. A plataforma blockchain digitalizará o setor financeiro pós-negociação, trazendo eficiência e economia de custos à cadeia de suprimentos do agronegócio.

O conceito Covantis estabelecido em 2018, apareceu com o anúncio da iniciativa em digitalizar transações globais de remessa blockchain e inteligência artificial. Em 2020 a Covantis escolheu a ConsenSys, focada na Ethereum, como parceira de tecnologia na criação da plataforma blockchain digitalizando o setor financeiro pós-negociação e a cadeia de suprimentos do agronegócio. O esforço conjunto Covantis lança um novo site à iniciativa, covantis.io, focado na automatização dos processos de execução pós-negociação de grãos e oleaginosas em transações globais de transporte agrícola. A ConsenSys fornecerá à Covantis ferramentas e serviços blockchain corporativo, incluindo PegaSys Orchestrate, Kaleido e MythX construindo rede blockchain no Ethereum. Especificamente, a empresa construirá plataforma segura no Quorum, blockchain permitida no Ethereum desenvolvida pelo JPMorgan. A startup Agriledger sediada no Reino Unido, construirá o ecossistema blockchain visando transparência na cadeia de suprimentos otimizando vendas de safras.

Moral da Nota: o agronegócio é um dos principais focos nas implementações blockchain. Em 2019, a empresa de auditoria Big Four KPMG lançou plataforma de rastreamento blockchain, projetada para transparência e rastreabilidade dos processos na agricultura e outros setores. A Cargill, maior empresa privada americana em receita, investiu em engenharia digital para desenvolver o Hyperledger Grid otimizando cadeias de suprimentos blockchain. 

Nota de rodapé: grandes corporações se organizam na digitalização do agronegócio exportador. Internamente urge desenvolver e-commerce agrícola em relação ao pequeno e médio produtor, otimizando com transparẽncia a colocação da produção no mercado interno. 

https://ift.tt/2Sg9ztQ

source http://notasdeaz.blogspot.com/2020/05/e-commerce-e-agronegocio.html