https://255c.org Igor Mandrigin — All updates https://255c.org/notes/private-doors-interoperable-roads/ https://255c.org/notes/private-doors-interoperable-roads/ Igor Mandrigin Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Listening back to the conversation with Ben, one analogy I think captures the broader problem well: A financial market needs doors and it needs roads. Doors are a useful way to think about institutional privacy. They create boundaries around sensitive information, while defining who gets access, under what conditions, and what can leave the room. Technically, that starts to look like private state https://255c.org/notes/apps-without-shame/ https://255c.org/notes/apps-without-shame/ Igor Mandrigin Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Streaks did not make me consistent. They made me quit. At some point I was tracking everything, everywhere. Every app wanted a log, a chart, a chain not to break. The tracking became its own job. I got overwhelmed — and stopped following all of it, the good habits included. That is the failure mode no dashboard shows. The streak works on you right up until it collapses the whole practice. The mech https://255c.org/notes/stateful-vs-stateless-zk-proving/ https://255c.org/notes/stateful-vs-stateless-zk-proving/ Igor Mandrigin Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Stateful vs stateless Ethereum asked one question: does a node need the full state to do its job, or can it work from a witness? A witness is a self-contained slice of state. It ships with the block. You can verify it against the state root. The same split exists inside zk proving. It played out the same way. Before: stateful proving The Hermez prover in its research era was stateful. To prove a b https://255c.org/writing/work-is-work/ https://255c.org/writing/work-is-work/ Igor Mandrigin Wed, 12 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 image by Paul Albertella “Work Is Work (in Which Results Diminish)” is an article from Coda Hale. Its main topic is that scaling teams is hard . Internal tooling, training, and services must be developed and fielded to ensure that all members are able to work on problems of continuously increasing impact. The ceaseless pursuit of force multipliers is the only possible route to superlinear producti https://255c.org/writing/kv-witness/ https://255c.org/writing/kv-witness/ Igor Mandrigin Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000 an alternative approach to block witnesses Update (2026): the opcode-based first-generation format this post argues with didn't stay on paper — it is what stateless ZK proving runs in production today: cdk-erigon generates it and the zkevm prover consumes it, both since January 2024. KV-Witness below is the proposed second generation. The full story: Stateful vs stateless ZK proving. There is curr https://255c.org/writing/regenesis-explained/ https://255c.org/writing/regenesis-explained/ Igor Mandrigin Sun, 28 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 The amount of money locked in DeFi apps surpassed $1.500.000.000; DApps are being announced almost every day. At that rate, Ethereum can become a victim of its own success. One of the struggles on the infrastructure layer is boundless state growth. A couple of days ago Alexey published an an article at EthResearch forums with an interesting idea on how to help with exactly that. He called it ReGen https://255c.org/writing/semi-stateless-initial-sync/ https://255c.org/writing/semi-stateless-initial-sync/ Igor Mandrigin Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Raw data and scripts for the experiment: https://github.com/mandrigin/ethereum-mainnet-resolver-witness-stats One of the possible ideas to speed up the initial sync process it to use block witnesses to pre-build the cache trie to avoid slow state access. That will cost additional disk space and network bandwidth but potentially can significantly speed up the sync process. How will that work? Basic https://255c.org/writing/stateless-ethereum-binary-tries/ https://255c.org/writing/stateless-ethereum-binary-tries/ Igor Mandrigin Fri, 03 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 data & scripts for this article are in a github repo: https://github.com/mandrigin/ethereum-mainnet-bin-tries-data What is Stateless Ethereum? If you are already familiar with what Stateless Ethereum & Block Witnesses are, skip to the next part. To run blocks and validate transaction, Ethereum nodes need to know the current state of the blockchain — all accounts & contracts balances and storages. https://255c.org/writing/mobile-energy-efficiency-bok/ https://255c.org/writing/mobile-energy-efficiency-bok/ Igor Mandrigin Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Happy New Year everyone! While working at Status, I put together a small guide on testing energy efficiency of a mobile app. Of course, some of the parts there are Status-specific, but there is enough information useful for the general public. Here is it: https://github.com/status-im/energy-efficient-bok. Sections of this BoK that have the most interesting parts are: Dev Guide — a short document d https://255c.org/writing/ethereum-node-services/ https://255c.org/writing/ethereum-node-services/ Igor Mandrigin Wed, 02 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 I did a short explanation about how https://status.im interacts with Ethereum. I think it is a decent explanation about how Ethereum RPC APIs work and how to tweak them.