This is epicenter episode 397 with guests dank advised.
Welcome to epicenter the podcast where we interview crypto,
Founders, Builders and thought leaders.
I'm Frederick a chance and I'm here with Brian Crane.
And today, we're speaking with thank had faced, who is a
researcher at the theorem foundation and heads the effort
into sharding and statelessness updates for a theorem to.
But before we talk about the theorem to with anchored, we'd
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Yeah, let's let's head over to dunk rat.
Thanks so much for coming on. Maybe you can start.
Before we dive into all of the technical topics you might need
to do things have a little bit and telling us sort of how your
journey has come to working on the theorem.
Yeah. Hello.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, my My journey to etherium
is, yeah. A bit different from probably
most people because I came to it quite late.
I'd say. So I only started fully working
in Ethiopia, research around 2019.
And before that I work for all different tech companies.
I had a start-up and I was basically recruited into the ECM
research team after I had saw after some research problems
earlier for them and worked on them.
And yeah. So basically, since early 2019,
I'm working for the ATM research team, it has been like a very
fun journey and I'm really enjoying doing research on the
future of is here. So we had an episode on ethereum
to recently with Danny Ryan and we actually ended up talking
about the merge and the switch to proof of stake for the entire
episode. But there's a couple of more
more updates that are coming with a theorem to.
So can you give us a very brief overview over the potential
protocol updates and where they are at right now before we Deep
dive into them. Right.
So yeah, I mean there, there there will be several more
updates. I think like the, the really,
the biggest one that everyone is waiting for is the big promised
upgrade of sharding and so probably like a while after the
merge, I don't know, I would estimate between six and 12
months. We will activate data shots
which essentially means we are adding this very large.
Age data, availability layer to a theorem, which means that you
might have heard of Roll-Ups, which are basically a system
where you only post transaction data to the train and you don't
actually execute them. You either use fraud proofs or
zero, knowledge proof in order to ensure that all this is
actually valid and and the data shots actually allow us to
instead of posting that data on the current very limited.
He's one chain, that will be Merged into the beacon chain on
with emerge. Instead of posting it on there,
you can post it to to these data shots and ensure like it's
available in every one can very easily verify that it's
available. But it will be much, much
cheaper because you have so much more space available there.
This further to this, there will be a lot of work on, on the
security of this. So, we will, we have kind of
opted for this gradual rollout, where we don't like Do
everything in one big bang, which kind of started with
actually started. Last December with launching the
beacon chain and we'll continue with the merge and then roll out
of sharding. And they were basically after
that, there will be many further upgrades, which are probably a
bit less obviously visible to the user because they're more
security upgrades. So, we cannot opt for this way
of rolling out features. First, we start by like making
the big rolling. The big features and then we add
everything that is required to get them to towards the highest
security. And so they will basically be
all the work around ensuring data availability and that's the
the proof of custody and data availability checks which are
basically further upgrades that are required to make it to make
data availability. Basically fully incentive comp.
Compatible like to make sure that there are no incentive
problems for validators before we go into, I think there's like
so much already. I think that you should probably
explore a bit more. So you mentioned that the first
sort of charting is this data. So data really charts.
Can you explain in? So, today, right, we have the
existing assume that we know and, you know, it's very much a
capacity and the transactions are too expensive and being too
big. Pain for a lots of to the users.
So, when you have these data visibility charts, like, how
will they help scale if you're a man?
You know what kind of parts that gets executed today or any
theorem will be moved there? Yeah, so and that's basically
going to be the Roll-Ups. So when you're here already we
already have several Roll-Ups active on ECM now, so for
example, zks think and others. And basically right now the way
they work is they, they post. So for example, zika roll up
works by posting this blob of data, on the chain that says
like here, all the transactions he is.
And then at the end there's a proof that says okay this is the
new state route that comes out of it.
So with data availability charts, you have only have to
put this very last part on the execution chain.
You only have to put the part that says, this is the proof and
this is the new state route on the on the actual execution
chain and everything else just can just go on on the data
availability shots. So you basically save like a
huge amount of guests that you don't need anymore to post this
data. But actually today, I guess you
don't have roll ups taking up a big part of the block space.
I haven't looked at the stats in detail, but I would suspect that
at least I mean, they're still, very, very new, right?
Like we haven't had Roll-Ups for a very long time, but I, I would
suspect that they would very quickly dominate.
The Block space because essentially, they allow you to
do things paying about 100 times less gas.
So, why would you do transaction and pay a 100 times more.
If you can do it for 100 times less, And and, of course, since
it's much cheaper, there will be a lot more transaction, right?
I mean, it's a kind of an obvious like consequence from
having some sort of demand curve for transactions.
So I would say, the natural economic equilibrium should be
that almost everything happens inside.
Roll-Ups. Okay, so let's talk about the
concept of a shot, right? So is the shot kind of like a
second Block Chain that runs in parallel with the first one, or
how do I, how do I imagine this? So I will I will answer for this
question from the perspective of data sharding, which is kind of
this goal that we're currently working towards and there might
be, or they will likely be in the further future execution
charts, which will actually also be also an execute code.
But that is currently like, that is several years in the future
and and so, I, I will not take that many into account because
data shots, already achieve a lot of what we want to do.
So from the perspective, Effective of the data shots that
were rolling out. Now, you shouldn't see the shots
really as, as different blockchains because they will
not come, they will not kind of come with their own Fork, Choice
Rule and build on each other. And so on, it's basically just
you could say it's just additional blocks of data that
you put on the Chain but with a special property and that
property is that full nodes. Do not need to download this
flops in order to ensure that they are available.
Like they it that we have a scalable solution that allows
for nodes to know that they are available without downloading
them. How does it work?
So this is, this comes from a very interesting technique that
is called Data availability sampling.
And the essential idea, is that you can you can sample your
sample, small amounts, Randomly selected from the data and thus
you know, that very, very likely very large parts of the data
available. So this is obviously not enough
because when you, if you do that then you notice that.
Oh like but 99.9% of the data being available is not enough
because that 0.1% could be exactly where an attacker hides
their malicious transaction. That prints one trillion ether,
for example, we need 100% and the way you do that is by
encoding the data in a special way.
That makes sure that even if you only have fifty percent of it,
you can always reconstruct 100%. And that is the key trick
towards data available T that allows it to scale.
And that means that basically with a very small constant
amount. So it does not actually depend
on the total amount of data that we ensure to be available of
these samples. You can ensure that the full
data is always available for download.
If you look at the theorem one, you have - and you will have
validators after after the mud. So, how are the shots maintained
are there? Also validators who maintain the
shots? Yes.
So validators will be randomly selected essentially, so that
they are, there are committees. A comedy is is a random
selection from the full validator set.
And these basically validate the shards, they They are kind of I
guess the right thing to say with data shots, they are the
first barrier. This is the first group of
people who like are responsible for checking that the full data
is available and they need to do nothing else because there is no
execution so they do not need to do anything except for knowing
that the data is available because that's all the data
shots too. And the validators.
They are, but they only validate on the Todd's.
They don't validate on the main chain.
They do know know that it's invalid data.
So this is It's only one set of valid data sits all the stuff,
okay? And they both they both
validate, the beacon chain and they validate the shots.
And and this is, this is essentially like I mean this is
one of the I mean this is why why sharding is so important in
our terms, like it's this notion that we call shared security.
So like the essential part is we don't want.
I mean, you could ask the question like well, Well, can't
can't can't. You just have like many
different blockchains communicating with each other
and you get the same as child's problem is that you don't you
don't get shared security. Like each of these blockchains
only has its own smaller, valid data sets, and so has much less
value securing it. Whereas like in and shouted
system the essential thing is that it's always the full value
that is securing the the whole system.
There's no like subset that is responsible for one child.
Okay, so basically say I'm a validator now, on on the main
chain and I also then have to validate the shots.
Do I have to validate all of them or do I get a subset?
Basically, you get randomly assigned every Epoch to one of
them. So, basically, it's, you have
like, a completely, a completely random one that you have to
validate. So you don't have to validate
all of them. You will be on your bill.
We will be validating all of them, but each Epoch, you only a
Prague, you only validate one of them and That Is Random.
So the you are, you're basically, you are you're only
doing the work of validating. One of them.
Okay, so does this also mean that proof of stake is a
prerequisite for for sharding. So the answer was yes.
And the reason is that - don't have any sort of identity.
So you cannot the notion of assigning like a minor to a
random committee and telling them like you need to validate
this chart. Now doesn't make any sense
because they don't have any. The only thing that identifies
them as how many how much hash power they have whereas
validators improves take the I have to pay this deposit and
after that, they have a public key and we can say like this is
the public key that is now in this committee.
So in that way, it is essential to have proof of stake for
shaving. Okay.
And I am data shots created equal or are there different
flavors and how many of them were there be?
So they, they are, they are exactly equal.
There's no difference between them.
The only way is how applications use them.
So, they could be Roll-Ups, which basically decide, I only
accept blocks that are submitted on a certain shot number, which
makes sense for them. Because then they need to check
less data for whether it's relevant for them.
But but from the from the consensus layer, they are
exactly equal. And how can I make sure that my
transaction gets send to the right chart so this would this
would only be relevant. So I mean this is an application
specific detail but like but the and the answer will depend on
what kind of roll up your use. And it's I would say it's very
likely that in most applications a user will not usually at least
directly send their transaction to a heart or like to the
validators even and they were rather send it to who Verb is
responsible for creating blocks of the stroll up and they will
then put it on on a chart. So if I understand correctly,
the data shards, are mainly targeted at Roll-Ups, can I use
this to store other kind of data?
So kind of say, for instance, Oracle data, that kind of clogs
the blockchain currently Yes. I mean I don't see why it
couldn't be used for oracle's. Yeah, I mean you have to think
about basically the only thing is it would still be a kind of
roll up Oracle, I guess. Like, so in a way in a way, it's
all Roll-Ups. Yeah, but but I mean, you can,
you can have many different kinds of Roll-Ups.
Like, you could have like, a contract specific roll up.
Like, I mean, actually many Roll-Ups right now, are very
application-specific. Right.
For example, they only do transfers which is in essence
one application. So, I think the roll-up notion
is not is not restrictive. It can do everything.
It's just, it's just an a way of implementing what you want to
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epicenter. Maybe we make sense to spend,
like, a few minutes, if you could explain a little bit like,
how you roll ups work, and what do you think the role of
Roll-Ups is going to be in the future?
Yeah. Roll-Ups are essentially this
notion that you use the chain, only to ensure that data is
available without itself, Computing.
The correct execution of the of the data.
So most obvious way this is when you when you use.
So there are two flavors of Roll-Ups, right says, they're
optimistic Roll-Ups and ZK. Roll-Ups also do not roll ups so
the way ZK Roll-Ups to do this as maybe the more obvious ones.
Like you put all the transaction data on the chain and then you
have a zero. Knowledge proof that says, this
is the result of the execution of that.
And here is the new state route. Now you could ask the question
why, why do I Neva need to put the data on the Chain?
If I know that the computation was done correctly, right?
What why does that matter? And the reason for that is that
you need to be able to reconstruct the state as well as
just the route. Like if you just have the root
of the problem is that the root is not enough to Access your
account. You always also need a proof
that shows that your balance in that account is X, right?
You need this as well and you can only generate that if you
have the stage. So that's why it's essential for
preserving this. Trust listeners that you that
you also get all the data that's required to reconstruct the
state. This can actually be less than
all the transactions so you can also in a 0, ZK, Roll-Ups for
example, it can also just be a diff of the state.
It Just beat literally like the difference in the states that
you need to put on chain. But that part is essentially an
optimistic roll-up. Does it slightly differently?
It's puts all a list of all the transactions.
And in this case, it has to be all the transactions, even
including signatures on the chain and also adds like the new
statute says, like this is the result of executing this.
And then anyone can, if there was an incorrect one, if there
was some incorrect execution and this is not the correct outcome.
And then anyone can post the fraud proof that regards this
block and and resets the chain to the previous state.
So that ensures that and a fraudulent transaction can never
be included in that roll up. To get some more background on,
ZK, sink, and ZK Roll-Ups. Last week's episode was with
Alex Kowski of matted apps. So you can also go back one
episode and check that out. So tancred can I ask about this
switch from full charts or execution, charts.
As you call it them earlier to date, availability charts
because if I require it correctly, a while ago, with the
idea was to actually have full execution charts, that would not
just Data available but also be able to execute smart contracts
and then loop back into the main chain.
Why was this abandoned? Or at least, if not abandoned,
then kind of split into two into a journey of two parts.
Right, so to be actually clear here, I think doing this data
shots. First has always been on the
road map, but was probably less emphasized.
I guess, several years ago, it was thought that this is like
just a first step to kind of test the whole system out and
test it under load and more and more it has become clear.
I would say how awesome Roll-Ups are like how, what's because
they own their own? Own already provide, provide
this 100x geylang essentially if they do, if you do them well.
So in the end, you could ask the question.
Like, why would you do? Why would you even do and like
even on the execution trials? Why would you do anything other
than Roll-Ups? So this is I would say why it
has more converge towards this notion of well actually like the
main the main advantage like the the huge scaling comes when you
have the roll-ups And, and maybe execution in the end, won't even
be necessary. But the fact of 100, I mean
that's still not enough, right? I mean, basically, if you look
at the adoption of a theorem right now and the potential
adoption of a theorem and if you if you then also look at what
the, what the gas prices currently are, it seems to me
that a factor of 100. Yeah, it's something but it's
not a lot. All right.
Absolutely. Oh no.
But I mean the the Roll-Ups can scale the current system as it
is pre sharding by I 100 x. Now once we add sharding data
shots, just data shots. So that then you get another,
like, 100x of the data availability roughly, like order
of magnitude. So now, we had 10,000 x, so that
is, that is a serious amount of scaling to start with.
And that is not an absolute limit like we can add further
shots. So the 64 shouts is, is
according to that. Is that is just a constant and
of course there are Trade-offs and like, it depends on how much
value we have at stake and also importantly, how many users they
are? How many shots we can support
securely but it can be scaled further from that point.
So there's no dead that that 100x is not the limit that we
are at. Let's go back to the execution
charts. So I Now understand that the
data availability shots were always part of the plan, but
what do you gain from execution? Charts that currently data
availability charts. I cannot give to a theorem.
So I guess this depends. So this basically, this depends
on how far zero knowledge proof technology will develop in the
future. So I think the main downside
there are basically some downsides of optimistic Roll-Ups
in terms of their finality interests while I mean.
Yeah. So so basically, they need this
very annoying to week withdrawal, delay that you can
kind of work around. Small users like that.
Don't have too much value but but it's always gonna be a
problem. Like the solution is great for
many things but it's not perfect.
So now if you if you have very good if we can get a very good
zero-knowledge virtual machine basically complete virtual
machine that you can run inside a zero knowledge proof within
the next few years. Then theoretically Akley, you
can already with that, like build, essentially what I excuse
and charts from from what we have now and then potentially at
that point, getting execution charts might just mean nothing
more than a training that that ZK roll up, that is doing that.
So that might be like a very simple step, if we if we get
there. Well, I mean, I'm very
interested to see the progress on those.
Like, there's your knowledge proof.
Space has like made Really amazing progress and almost
every year, like delivered more than I would have expected.
So I would I would not say it's impossible, but it is still a
very, very difficult thing to, to deliver the full.
The full kind of everything that the ebm does now in a, in a
Sleek a roll up. If we don't get that, then
execution shots might basically special kinds of sharks, where
you essentially get Much faster finality because the difference
to like the problem with the with the optimistic Roll-Ups is
that you have these kind of finality delays and and if we if
we do make validators responsible again for taking
execution which is essentially what an execution child would
mean. Then then you would basically
get get this another settlement layer on top.
I would say. Well that's super interesting.
I actually I would love it if you can speculate a little bit
on how you think to sort of supply of if you block space and
through produce going to develop, you know in the next
year or so and how much and when you think those different
technologies will start to have an impact.
Right. I mean, I think my intuition, is
that we can see the impact of Roll-Ups right now.
Like we have seen this huge crash in gas prices,
essentially, and I think that is probably partially because a lot
of people have actually moved to roll ups.
Now, for some simple applications, which is amazing,
I don't think the gas reduction on the main chain is going to
last, but the reduction on the roll-up is going to last.
So, so That's pretty great. So there there's basically right
now at least for simple things. There is already.
This pretty much 100 X increase in Supply as Longwood as what
you want to do, is transfer some of the theory, ether or ESC, 20.
And then, the next the next, very big thing from that will
essentially be shouting. So, when we activate the data
charts, then for everyone who uses Roll-Ups, there will be
another 100x. Increase in Supply and block
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epicenter. One of the problems that you
also get with execution charts, but if you were to introduce
them, right? Is cross shot.
Communication and composability and the consequences of this on
finality. Do you think this is, this is
such a hard problem. That it's it won't be solved or
do you think if we need to we can solve this It's not so much
that cross shots like cross track.
Communication is not an unsolvable problem.
It is just a difficult engineering problem to get all
the details, right? At least for a synchronous,
communication for synchronous. Then then yes.
The you have, you have a very difficult problem at hand.
Not an unsolvable one again, but I think that that yes that is
essentially my guess would be, that's not going to happen.
That you will do synchronous Communications across shots or
in data shots World used. You actually have the same
problem. It's basically cross roll up
core Communication in this case, Okay.
Can you just explain synchronous and asynchronous communication
in this context? Yes.
So asynchronous is basically without like without a certain
delivery guarantee like you can't you can't so so so far as
communication would be what enables composability directly
linking charts which I think is is not is not a very realistic
thing to expect in that in this sense because Because it would
mean that anyone can lock up resources on the blockchain.
Like, I mean, essentially what compost ability means is that
you have this lock on the on the whole chain in a way, right?
Where only you get to determine what happens and I don't feel
like this is likely to be a thing across Trout's although
very theoretically possible. I mean, in Computing, we have
all the models to do that. Doesn't make that much sense to
me. They are all kinds of ideas to
get around this, but I think the more realistic thing of how that
will work out is that that you have certain ecosystems interest
certain shots or certain Roll-Ups that care about
composability internally. But not but are a little more
Loosely coupled to the other systems around them.
And our key was as synchronous communication, which is If you
send a message and it will be delivered at some point, but you
don't have any guarantee. When like any absolute guarantee
and practice, it will always be very, very fast but you have to
consider this very worst case that it could be delayed for a
very long time. Okay, so let's talk about
composability across data shot. So basically, if I have data
within different, Roll-Ups are these still available after the
fact? Was that a problem?
Can these be accessed by other applications at a lot later
point in time? Yes, so that is basically the
way we've designed it. It's instantly available to
everyone. So, there is no delay in
communication between between the different data shots, there
is a limit in. I don't think the, I think it's
theoretically possible to have some notion of composability
between ZK Roll-Ups. I don't know if that will be
built. It's T much impossible for
optimistic. Roll-Ups to do anything like
that. However, I think maybe one
notion we should we should correct you that many people
have. So, one roll up, doesn't
necessarily have to be only on one shot.
So you could have a roll up that basically takes up 10 shot
blocks like every in every cycle, right?
And, and essentially, that roll up internally can provide full
composability. So it is not like we are
limiting. Any sort of composability
between the data shots, as long as there's one roll up.
And at least for ZK Roll-Ups, we, we can and see where you
build these big Roll-Ups. It's a matter of optimizing,
everything enough that proved us can handle this and are not too
crazy expensive, but you could, you could have these huge
Roll-Ups that provide internal composability at least.
Aqua that's that's super interesting to hear.
And I think this kind of clears up most of our questions around
chatting so I'd kind of like to switch gears and move into the
second topic for today which is statelessness.
So say this is another big issue that the theorem Foundation
research team is working on. So can you explain what the
theorem state is? And how it's used?
So the theorem State essentially, it consists on
everything that is stored on the Athenian blockchain.
So it would be for example, for you as a user, it would be your
the balances of your accounts. It would be the balances in.
Yes. The 20 tokens that you have but
also any other kind of data that is necessary for, for example, a
smart contract to know whether something is valid, it's the
code of the smart. Contracts and add.
All of these things. Those are all part of the
etherium state. And, and at the moment, every
every node in the theme network has to store this.
Because the only way to know from whether one block is valid
is to have the state and execute the the all the transactions in
that block and update that state and and know that this was all
done correctly. What's the current state of the
theorem? As though the size of the state
and is that in itself? The problem I don't have the
very best idea of the numbers here, because they also depend
on on implementation details. It's somewhere in the tens of
gigabytes. As far as I'm aware, I've been
quoted numbers between 10 and 100 here, but I believe it
really depends on what exactly how exactly you store it.
And you can do that more or less optimized.
It is a l'm in the sense that already that makes it necessary
because each block does a lot of State accesses right, like each
block, each single transaction already access like at the very
least two accounts like the sender and the receiver and and
and so you have this hundreds of transactions and potentially
like thousands of State accesses in them and if you if you know
anything about this guy, oh then like you know that For example,
in moment, hard disk, like can't really handle that.
Like, each access costs already like on the order of 10 or more
milliseconds. So, like that.
That is a very long time to wait.
And that is why right now. If them notes basically need
ssds, there's no way around that.
So it is a problem right now. It is also a much bigger problem
is that you can do a Dos attack against this and blow the state
up relatively cheaply to and even much larger size.
And so like a lot of our gas costs, our have to be structured
around this, making this so expensive that it won't happen.
So, basically, the goal for statelessness is to kind of go
to a version of etherium, that doesn't have this humongous
state, right? So, how would that look like?
Yes. So to be clear, the state will
still be implicit and some people, and this is something to
be discussed further. Some people will still store
that full State and the question of statelessness around who
needs to store that state and And so one thing that you can do
basically with statelessness is to structure everything so that
you can you can validate a block without needing the state like
you can like just if I just send you that one block in isolation
without anything else, you can just from that information
decide whether it is a valid issue in block or not, you do
not need any other context and that that is what statelessness
does. So, how does this work?
Technically wouldn't I have to have like some sort of
representation of the entire state for that to actually work?
So it works because we have cryptographic techniques that
allow us to commit to two states and various extinct forms.
And like basically everyone knows about these are called
Merkle trees. As, for example, one of these
that. So basically, it gives us this
just 32 byte what we call state route.
That, that is a commitment to the state in the sense that You
cannot find any other state that would would allow you to compute
this commitment. And and what statelessness does
is that, it gives you all the data that has been read by the
transaction, including so-called Witnesses.
And the witness is a proof that this is the correct data given
the state route and you have the state route, like, you know,
that because it's only very short, so, you can just have
that. So, that's the only thing you
need to store as the current state and the witness Tells you
yes, this this is the, this is the correct data given that
state route. Okay, I see you said earlier
that some people are some valid data, still have to have the
entire State. Why is that?
Well, I mean, this is a design choice and there are different
potential designs here. But the design that we are
aiming for now is, is what we call week statelessness and week
statelessness means that you do need the state in order to
produce blocks but you don't need it in order to validate
blocks and that is a very good trade off in our opinion because
it's okay to limit somewhat more The number of people who are
able to produce blocks and that is in practice, unfortunately,
in some ways going to happen anyway, because of the whole Mev
thing. But as long as you have the
ability to very easily, verify it by everyone, that is okay,
that has that has some very nice implication in terms of the
design space. Like, it means that as a user
for example, you don't like, if you don't have this week's
ageless if you want like Wrong statelessness, and in quotation
marks, then then what you would need is that every user always
keeps the witnesses for their accounts around and I don't
think that is a very practical design.
I think like from the ux point of view the the week list
statelessness is really like a sweet spot that is a very like
can I spot to live in? Okay, so this would then not
reduce the size of the state. But basically, you reduce the
number of people who require to actually keep that state.
That's correct. Another idea that's been thrown
around us statement, right? So basically, so you don't
actually pay to store some sort of data on the blockchain.
Once when you, when you send it in your transaction, but you
actually pay continuously until until you need it.
No longer store. All your money runs out and it
gets deleted automatically. Where's that had?
Do you think that's going to happen that do these ideas work
together as to something else entirely?
We have these discussions around State rent and in a way so
statelessness alleviates this problem a lot because suddenly
instead of like, I mean, we want a very large number of full
nodes, right in the ideal World. Everyone who works in any way
with the theme blockchain would run their own full note for
several reasons, that's not really completely realistic.
Ignou at. This is the future that we are
working towards that in some notion that this is possible.
And and therefore like statelessness really like
reduces this problem of like having the state a lot because
from like tens or hundreds of thousands of parties or Millions
who need to have all the state around all the time on their own
SSD. You suddenly reduce it to like
Say, hundreds of parties who are actually producing blocks on
easy? Are you who have very large
incentives, any way to keep the state around?
I mean, they, yes, they will needed to produce the block, so
it alleviate this problem. A lot, it is a debate, I would
say whether that whether with that state rent is still
necessary, I would say if it comes it will come in a very in
a slightly different form or from what People consider stage
right now so it won't really be an ocean of you continuously pay
in order to have your state alive.
It's more that your state will be will be will after some
period say one year if you didn't do anything with it it
will become part of offer kind of Old State where it can be
reactivated at any time for like maybe paying slightly more gas,
it's not you you can't. Work with it anymore.
So basically, there's, there's no continuous payment.
There's just like, probably this at least the most likely where
version of stay Trend that I see would be that if you don't use
your state for a very long time, you will pay slightly more
because you have to pay for a slightly larger Witness.
Okay, so I see how the size of the theorem state is a problem
for some users, and that it requires ssds and so on.
But, in some sense, an even larger problem with aetherium is
the fact that the evm doesn't allow for parallelization of
computation, right? So, basically, you have to do
everything in a certain order and always look at the entire
state where some other Like chains have taken a more
advanced approach and I mean, they were also later to the
party. So, basically, for them, it was
easy to see what the problems are.
So I'm not taking sides here, but how do you feel about this
inherent inability of the evm to allow for parallelization?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's a good point and that,
this, that that's why interesting.
I honestly I'm not an evm engineer, so I cannot say in
detail. If they, if it's impossible to
change this, I can I I think like one large part of that is
actually related in some way to statelessness in that one thing
you would need in order to paralyze, things is to know what
state each transaction axis. Right.
And in a way we are starting to do that.
Now I don't want to say we have a complete way to paralyze
things, but yeah, I mean I can see that that is that is
definitely like a very, very important part and that that
would allow for a certain amount of scaling.
If you, if you, if you paralyzed things and I would say like it's
certainly a very good decision to that to design around that
and I would encourage people who design work Claps to do exactly
that to think about that as well and and maximize the
parallelism, they can get out in order to be faster.
Well let's zoom out a little bit and talk a bit about you know
aetherium and where this project is going, I'd what makes you
excited and what you think is the impact that it will have on
the world. Wow, I think like that is it's
still I mean, it's very, very hard in our time to make
predictions about things further than five to ten years out.
I would say because there's just too many things that are on on
exponential trajectories, I'd settle for five to ten years out
there. I think if they are young can
provide many, many different things for different.
This, it's essentially this coordination layer that allows
you to make certain certain parts.
Of course, it doesn't replace a community in any way, right?
Like it's only a technical layer but allows you to solve some of
the problems of getting communities aligned on certain
goals and turning things into positive, some games.
I think that is the amazing thing that this technology
allows and we have seen that around This Resurgence.
Now after I guess the initial shock of daoist like, where
many, many people have started creating dowels and and they
seem to work in some ways at least for now, which is great.
Like this is amazing, communities are found together
and have found a way to coordinate around certain goals
without having to go through the traditional way of doing this by
a corporation, for example, which would have been the old
way which has like other costs associated with it is
essentially You said that it turns things into positive, some
games. So let me ask you for the
metric. So basically, what's the metric
that you think is going to improve for the average Joe
using blockchain technology? I mean, the average Joe right
now doesn't use blockchain technology, right?
Basically, nobody does that and I think the question can be on
many, many different levels and I think we are already seeing
it. Surprisingly, like, it, it
essentially, it changes the game of Finance at the moment.
Mainly because Financial applications are what comes
first just because they had just have the most money, the most
willingness to pay. But but this permission is
ecosystem that allows anyone to just go there and create like
create something and deploy it without having to ask anyone for
permission allows people to just play with it a lot.
And I think we are right now we're already seeing the effect
of that in terms of all the the fintechs.
Like I mean my Barton my online banking apps have improved like
tons over the last year's and I think this is obviously not
based on blockchain technology but it's based on the pressure
that these Companies now see where the compute competition
will come from like you don't have to be a blockchain user in
order to see the Improvement, it will come to you anyway because
the others have to keep up. Otherwise we're coming for them.
So you mentioned finances, this kind of first area that's
getting a lot of traction. And then you also talked about
how, you know, on a high level you see if there are more block
changes this, like coordination layer that allows, you know,
allows people to accomplish things more efficiently together
to what extent do you also think that blockchains will kind of
financial eyes? A lot of things around
coordination that are today don't Rely on financial
incentives, directly. Oh this is a difficult question.
I'm not sure what you mean like do you mean your local sports
club is going to become a dowel and suddenly everyone has a
token or something. I'm not sure what that question
refers to. Well I guess it sort of ties
into like it. I think knows especially is
done, like some work around ideas like this to right?
Where you'd use that prediction markets to have make decisions
as organizations. And I think I mean, I can see
the sphere but I think Mainly it provides new options.
I don't, I don't think nobody is going to force you to use
Financial eyes. Prediction Market.
It is still like, it is still your choice.
So I don't see why it would would become like a forcing
function for average people to just financialized everything.
I'm you can, but this is your choice.
And I think, like, many men, blockchains will provide things
that are not Financial in nature.
Like Systems can be built on top of them.
Who says, we can't now already, for example, build a Twitter, a
decentralized Twitter. For example, I think that would
absolutely be possible. People are already beat building
decentralized messaging apps, that doesn't have to be dfb
financialized, so I don't see that automatically everything
has to be financialized. So you think the fact that open
finance has moved in fast is just because of ideological
proximity or, you know, being Tech adjacent and the more
social apps are going to come at a later point in time, but they
are come. I think right now, I think it's
just that the more social for example apps as you call them
are just priced out of it and that is a natural consequence of
Finance. Just always liked being there
and and being just a very valuable application.
Like let's be honest about it, Finance is a very valuable
application, but it means that it prices a lot of things, which
is kind of a shame from the development perspective.
Because obviously, We are losing kind of important time where
these other systems could bootstrap themselves and could
start providing valuable things. But but I mean, we are now
building the rails that will allow those in my opinion.
I think like, when we have sharding, when we have those
people will build all these other systems on them and they
become I think and I think I'll end on a divisive question here.
Do you think the applications that Eat less economic security
because they will not be securing the values that
Financial applications. Inherently do will actually
needy theorem as a base layer, I mean quote, they quit, they run
on any number of other particles that don't have the economic
guarantees that a theorem currently has.
I think we're there are different questions.
The and I mean, I would say probably yes if you if you
expect that the decentralized Twitter will just put its data.
On the shards. I don't expect that that will be
the case. I think what it will do, what
many applications might do is use some blockchain and maybe if
they're young because it is the settlement layer, but who knows?
Whether that is nestled the case in the future will use this.
For example, any of these applications they can right now
let's talk about two or for example, which is concrete,
decentralized applications, there's out there now.
But it has huge problems. Getting people to actually run
notes, right? We do need some sort of payment
for this, like we knew do need some way of getting people to,
like, run the infrastructure and so on.
And I think that is more important like, that, that, that
is where blockchains like etherium coming.
Probably not for the data itself.
You don't, you don't need to, but, but it could be for some
sort of commitment to the data that makes a lot of sense, but
not for the data itself, I would I would predict in the long run.
But the economic incentive, they are surely, the, The Economic
Securities that should require depend on how large the
incentives are, right? So basically if the intent of
miniscule compared to the security that if you affords,
you then using a theorem as based am a be over care.
Right. I expect that ethereum with
Roll-Ups and charts will be will be quite cheap.
So I Not think that you expect to pay wiii, I would say it's in
the send or substandard range, what you would expect for normal
transactions in in that future in Ethiopia - I think a lot of
applications will be able to pay that.
I think this is actually a super nice closing statement.
So subsequent transaction fees. You heard it here first.
Thank rat. Thank you so much for coming on.
It was a pretty technical but I think there was a lot there.
So If people want to dig into this somewhat, where should
where can they go? And find more information on
these topics. The, the depends, obviously, on
the technical level that they want to get into.
There are a lot of people trying to write blog posts about about
these things. I can certainly collect some
resources and we can add them to the description of the podcast.
Honestly, we could do better in that respect.
I don't think we're like, we're and I would encourage if
anyone's to come forward and is good at it's digesting.
The information writing it up. We need more of that.
It's way too little and the whole space and I know many
people have trouble catching up. If you really want to get into
the tech, then I think III search.
The Forum is an amazing like resource that has a lot of stuff
and it's usually not super difficult to understand people
try to make it somewhat understandable.
The main problem is just a huge amount of information to digest,
that most people probably can't completely catch up with.
Okay, we're linked to these. Thank you for joining us on this
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