During EthGlobal, participants were given a glimpse into the ecosystem of Fuel Labs by its Developer Relations Engineer, Call Delegation. They highlighted the recent developments made by the company, showcasing new tools and features tailored for builders and users.
Emphasizing the importance of enhancing user experience, one of their notable tools, Predicate, was showcased.
Fuel Labs, a startup established in 2019, has made significant strides in expediting crypto transactions by constructing one of the fastest execution layer for the modular blockchain stack. In late 2020, they became one of the pioneering optimistic rollups to be launched on Ethereum.
Recognized as the force behind the Fuel blockchain, Fuel Labs has devised a permissionless and trustless layer-2 protocol for Ethereum.
With an emphasis on facilitating low-cost, high-throughput value-transfer transactions, the Fuel blockchain serves as a modular execution layer (MEL).
Its primary objective is to provide smoother execution while upholding the security and decentralization advantages associated with Ethereum.
Fuel is powered by a highly-optimized optimistic rollup design, and it is among the top scalable optimistic rollups, with a unique UTXO-based design.
Developer experience on Fuel
The speaker noted that the experienced blockchain developer can often be fragmented and overwhelming due to the presence of numerous frameworks, programming languages, and security challenges. However, it wants to solve that problem by taking a unique path.
This has been achieved through the design of the Fuel stack from the language targeting the Fuel VM (Sway) to the surrounding SDKs (including TypeScript and Rust) and the indexer, all of which are developed in-house.
This approach guarantees a seamless and comprehensive developer experience which removes the need to navigate multiple frameworks and languages.
Another noteworthy aspect of Fuel’s developer experience is its focus on security. In traditional blockchains, developers face the risk of reentrancy bugs, which have caused significant losses in the past.
Fuel’s Sway compiler is designed to detect reentrancy bugs at compile time, reducing the chances of security vulnerabilities.
This enhancement makes it more accessible for Web2 developers to transition into the Web3 world, as they don’t have to dive into the intricate details of solidity or spend excessive resources on audits.
Predicates on the Fuel network
Further describing the protocol, he also introduced the concept of “predicates.” Predicates are a fundamental feature that enables account abstraction, making it possible for users to spend their assets based on specific requirements or conditions.
The unique aspect of Predicates is their address, derived from a hash of the code, allowing the transfer of tokens to be unlocked based on their evaluation.
Predicates offer a solution to prevent state bloat, a common issue on many blockchains, including Ethereum.
State bloat refers to the phenomenon where the size of the blockchain’s state, which includes information about account balances, smart contracts, and various other data, grows significantly over time.
This growth can have several implications and challenges: increased storage requirements, slower synching, higher cost of running a full node, and more.
Issues with Predicates and the Solution
While Predicates have huge potential, the Developer Relations Engineer noted that they have limitations. They cannot be updated once created, but they can access transaction data.
By offering account abstraction through predicates, Fuel Labs provides a solution to several blockchain challenges, ensuring less friction and a smoother development experience.
In explaining this, a live demonstration was done at the event to show how to build a Multisig Predicate using Sway.
Multisig, short for multi-signature, is a digital signature scheme that requires multiple signatures to authorize a transaction.
Combining the features of Predicates with a Multisig design, account abstraction can be harnessed to solve the gap experienced by developers when using Predicates. This in turn makes the developer experience easier on the Fuel network.
