November 17, 2023: Vyper Day Redux 🐍🇹🇷
FOMOers recap of the major dev event in Istanbul
If you’re anything like me, your FOMO about missing Vyper Day is off the charts.
With videos of the event not yet public, and most of the attendees busy nursing hangovers from the unhinged debauchery, we can only speculate about what happened at the major holiday.
But what is crypto for if not passing off underinformed speculation as authoritative…
What follows is armchair 𝕏 archaeology, in which I attempt to reconstruct the entirety Vyper Day based on the fragmented remains of random artifacts posted throughout the event. We’ve confirmed that rumors of a Vyper Chain announcement are false.
The following can serve as a companion guide for the eventual release of the videos, and provide good supplemental reading in the meantime.
State of the Vyper Ecosystem 2023
by @CurveCap
We can say for certain that the event started with a bleary but otherwise notably handsome speaker delivering a recap of the past year in Vyper.
The introductory speaker fortunately recorded a backup copy of the talk, but unfortunately we can confirm it possessed the lowest concentration of alfa among all the talks, so not recommended unless your FOMO runs particularly strong.
More:
Using Vyper in Remix
by Chris (ApeWorX)
Many of us first got started in smart contract programming using Remix, but their support for Vyper was fairly superficial. We haven’t personally used Remix since we went fully Vyper pilled, but since it remains the major hub by which coders first get started with smart contract programming this is an important topic. Will surely be heavily bookmarked once the video goes live.
Making Lido's Emergency Brake with Vyper
by Azat (Lido)
Although Lido is primarily coded in Solidity, the team coded GateSeal as an emergency stopgap which can be used once within an expiration in event of emergency.
It’s a slick contract that uses Vyper’s create_from_blueprint function also used by Curve factories to deploy pools and an outstanding example of Vyper code.
GateSeal is an innovative workaround for the often bureaucratic process of DAO voting. Until the talk is live, this thread does a great job of summarizing.
For more details on Lido using GateSeal in the wild, check the codebase and deployment:
Vyper LSP
by @z80
The talk here reviews a Vyper Language Server Protocol to allow for anybody to easily put together a Vyper VS Code extension, such as a linter, formatter, or code analysis.
The talk is itself notable for being done entirely in emac (though as a vim maxi ourselves, we’re pleased to see the approach could be compatible with emac’s less intuitive rival).
We’re admittedly impressed by the autocompletions on display in the presentation.
"Vyper developer experience is coming together. We are almost mainstream and now developers are starting to take us seriously."
Links:
Break for lunch, FOMO intensifies…
Snekmate
by pcaversaccio
The Vyper-pilled counterpart to solmate is the inspired Snekmate, which got released earlier this year and provides all the building blocks an aspiring developer could need to get started using Vyper.
Vyper adoption would necessarily be limited absent a comprehensive and secure set of templates like Snekmate, so the ongoing progress to Snekmate throughout the year has been integral to Vyper’s success.
The talk also touches briefly on the forthcoming release of Vyper modules, which would also be addressed in the closing keynote.
Fun fact: it’s possible to fuzz so hard you can break Foundry.
Links:
Inside the Vyper Compiler
by Tanguy Rocher (Chainsecurity)
Chain Security has a great reputation, and the subject matter is fascinating, so we can’t wait for this talk to drop. We also thank them for the only aspect of Vyper Day that didn’t make our FOMO itch.
While we wait for the full talk, you can whet your appetite for the topic with some related supplemental reading on a similar theme.
Building a Static Analyzer for Vyper
by alpharush (Trail of Bits)
Alpha Rush was responsible for adding Vyper support to Slither, one of the major priorities accomplished by the Vyper team in the wake of the exploit.
Until the talk is public, check his blog and the work on Github.
Fuzzing Vyper Contracts
By Robert Chen (founder @ OtterSec)
Robert authored an utter banger on his experience with the Vyper recovery, so we’re particularly excited to see how this talk turned out.
For related reading on the same topic, here’s a good post on Fuzzing Vyper
Venom IR
by Harry Kalogirou
In a word, Venom IR, the intermediate representation language being built for Vyper, looks slick.
While we wait for the video, we’ll have to satisfy ourself with perusing the codebase.
Ship Faster in Vyper and Don’t Break Things
by Copypasta (Cog Finance)
Cog Finance is an isolated lending protocol on Scroll zkEVM that’s turning heads for all the right reasons.
The talk introduced the new maxim that a Jupyter notebook is worth 1K white papers
Plus it highlighted just how fast Titanoboa is.
Until the talk goes live, we’ll satisfy ourselves by perusing their github repo, the architecture of which was inspired by $crvUSD.
Vyper in a Multi-Language Protocol
by storm0x (Yearn)
Yearn is one of the heavyweight DeFi blue chips using Vyper.
For some hint about how the talk may go, check this prior thread on his experience handling internal security.
Contract Oriented Programming
How to slay a dragon design a language for a new programming paradigm
by Big Tech Sux (Vyper)
We’re particularly looking forward to this one dropping, from the snek godfather himself. We’ve at minimum known the talk would contain some lite logo alfa
The talk apparently clarified that the logo is not in fact a pair of Christmas stockings hung by the hearth, but sneks.
We observe ze memes…
But the thrust of the talk was on the concept of “contract-oriented programming” as opposed to other programming styles.
The talk appears to delve heavily into the forthcoming and much anticipated concept of modules in Vyper. The release of modules has been delayed because it fits in poorly with the Vyper philosophy, in which everything is simple, deterministic, and easily auditable.
By way of example, the slides posit the following dangerous codeblock.
We get a peek at how external contract interactions are syntactically marked. This slide demonstrates proper and improper use of the call keyword.
Modules within Vyper will apparently be treated as contracts, and directly import the contract into the storage.
A lot of alfa can be discerned from the slides, which have already been made public.
We asked Charles for his overall impression of the event, and he commented “Bullish on Vyper” — this may not exactly be news, but all the same it’s great to hear.
While you wait for this talk to be released, you can whet your appetite for Vyper content with this well-timed release of a Strange Water podcast featuring an in-depth interview with Charles himself.
We have a personal rule about not listening to podcasts, but made an exception for this one, and it proved to be a great relapse. Rex and Charles go in depth into the philosophical underpinnings behind Vyper. Keep this link bookmarked in case you need to Vyper-pill somebody.