#layerone

What layer-one blockchains are bringing to DeFi

Issues with Ethereum congestion and high fees have led to many companies adopting layer-one solutions like Optimistic Rollups, OMG Network and many others. These platforms allow transactions to be created outside of the Ethereum network on what are known as “sidechains,” which then can be reconciled on the main Ethereum network in one simple transaction. These layer-two options are gaining a lot…

First off, there was a conspicuous lack of vendors selling much of anything. literally the two that were there was the LayerOne merch booth and the lockpicking booth. (Which, selling picks to people without locksmith’s credentials is a legal grey area but moving on) I brought alot of cash with me fully expecting to blow it on some cool stuff.

On a related note was the complete and total lack of any and all security Professionals, Vendors, or anyone I would be even a little interested in making a business contact. The place was flooded with a whole lot of the Skeevy hacker types.

For those asking for a bit of clarification on that last sentence, here is an example. I walked into the CTF event fully expecting a clear cut, hacking competition. What I found was a bunch of dudes at a table buried in MLP stuff, busily working away on.....something. There was definitely a weird vibe there.  When I asked about the competition they just kind of gestured towards the URL posted on the wall and said have at it. The actual room the CTF was held in had no wifi that was accessible unless you were staying at that hotel (mine was across the street)  The CTF twitter wasn’t all that helpful either. 3-4 posts about the actual event and an episode of My Little Pony. fantastic.

The Hardware hacking guys were nice enough, but there wasn’t really anything much to do there. They had a smaller, less functional blinky badge I could trade my con-issued badge in for, to practice soldering, but i didn’t feel that was exactly a decent trade, and quite frankly the guy wearing the “Make America Great again” trump hat was giving me some odd looks.

As far as the badges went, they made a good effort to provide alot of space to hack on and customize the badges, but their choice of a Cypress ARM microcontroller, that could only be programmed with a Proprietary, windows only software package (a stupidly large package I may add, making it difficult to download over hotel WIFI) made it Nigh impossible unless you were already familiar with Cypress controllers. I pretty much abandoned any and all hope of getting the badge to do anything unique.

Why They didn’t go with something more common Like an ATMEL Arduino, or a similar Linux SOC, baffles me. it would be much easier for alot of the Hardware hackers to pick up, and increase the chances that any walk in would know what to do. Others must have felt the same as walking about the con, I didn’t see much of anyone that had additional parts soldered on to their badge.

I guess if I had to make one complaint that Isn’t quite quantifiable, and maybe cannot be blamed on the event organizers, is how much of an outsider I felt there. Everyone seemed to already know each other, had their own Little Cliques, and were busily working away on something. 9 times out of 10 if I went to a booth or talked to someone I would be interrupting a conversation.