All About ETH -- February 18, 2022 -- Vitalik Buterin

11:36PM Feb 18, 2022

Speakers:

Christine Lee

Vitalik Buterin

Keywords:

ethereum

bridges

roll ups

intermediaries

sharding

blocking

concern

working

issues

guess

layer

decentralized

multi sig

chains

eath

merge

people

act

give

alternatives

When you're looking at Ethereum in next couple months, like what are the biggest challenges on your mind?

I'm getting the merge done. I think that's been the biggest challenge for a long time. And it's it's been it's a big problem. It's a problem that research has been working on for like almost a decade now. What's the problem that developers have been working on for several years and like now, you know, finally testing finally getting quite close to actually getting it out there. So I think that's the merge is going to be this big moment that Aetherium entire Ico Ethereum ecosystem is really looking at info and focusing on and I have people have a lot of big hopes and expectations for

in the meantime, we're seeing that the fees are coming down. There's been this inflationary deflationary from the burning of eath effect. What do you say to the developers who are kind of frustrated with this and, you know, are looking at other layer one alternatives?

Yeah, I mean, I think scaling is like, aside from the mortgage definitely, Ethereum is biggest problem at the moment. And there are a lot of different projects that are working to fix it. So there are the layer two teams, for example. So you know, optimism arbitrage, and meta stock dat DK sanka LoopRing, like this longer and longer list of projects. Then on top of that, there's a lot of the work that's been happening on sharding. So we just had an online workshop where we talked about like some, like parts of the sharding spec. And there's been a lot of really good progress on that. And I think there's like a lot of like community well, to put a huge amount of effort into it, like research effort starting now, but development effort, once the merge is like I've closer to being finished and repaired. And we're past that step, then, you know, all the i's are gonna turn on to sharding and giving us some more scalability. So I'm confident that Ethereum is going to be much more scalable a year from now than it is today. And like even Ethereum today, I think roll ups are much further ahead than than they were a year ago, right, like a year ago, doing anything on a roll up. lagers basically unrealistic, and they barely existed. And now like, we know, the roll ups are just a regular part of people's lives on Ethereum and

the exploit with wormhole. Does that give you concern over the bridges between blockchain?

Definitely a concern. And I think there's many different kinds of concerns. Like I think the software bug issue was definitely one concern. And it's definitely one of the reasons why I'm, like very dangerous, or a very cautious about solutions that try to move really quickly. And there's other concerns as well. Like, for example, the Yeah, just all of the issues around like, how would the bridge even work? Like if it's a multi SIG, then, you know, could people steal the key as if it was a governance token? Can people take over the governance token? Could people even 51% attack one of the chains? Like, I do think that once you start going between chains, there are all these really complicated issues that don't exist? If you stick on like any one of the chains. And that is a concern. I mean, and like, the the problem is, what's moving between roll ups, for example, are definitely like smaller just because, um, I think the Brit, the bridge is already interesting position where like, the way that I describe it is like they have anti network effects in that I think crashing bridges become less secure, the more users they have. And so if there are only a few people using them, then I would, I would trust them, I would say that they're very safe. But the more people start using them, the more incentive there is for people to attack them. So they can like steal money from all the users at the same time. So like, I would feel more comfortable using the bridges when they have 50,000 Like Ether in them then when they have like, 500,000 or 5 million, right. So like, I do, like I definitely expect them continue to be used. But you know, are they going to be this like really big thing that turns assets into something that's like very independent from which layer they're issued on? I would say I would say no.

Larson's book drops on Tuesday. Have you had a chance to read it? She talks a lot about the Ethereum community founders and the, I guess, egos involved in the the mismatches. You've had a chance to speak to her about it. And I guess one of the things she wrote about you is that you were very conflict resistant. And

sure, that's probably that sounds true. Yes, I do. Yeah. So that this is a Yeah, the Nathan Schneider and seven stories are kind kinds of stuff to make this kind of lovely. I guess compilation of all of the, or all of the best essays, I would say that that I've written over the last, basically eight years or so since Ethereum started so it's, I mean, I guess I definitely recommend it. You know, if you I guess, if you want to have a chance to kind of read everything in life. and see, you know, the, I guess, the progression of like thinking around Ethereum and and how the way that like we've we think about things has changed over the years and the kinds of issues that we've grappled with. And I think it's definitely a lovely,

one last question. You're Canadian right now Canada has the emergencies act. invoked. They are blocking cryptocurrency addresses to prevent Chuckers protesting COVID restrictions from accessing funds. So I wonder your thoughts on the whole crisis?

Yeah, I mean, that stuff's definitely like, getting a little crazy. Like, I think, like, my view on this is like, you know, if you're, like, if the truckers are blocking the road, blocking the roads, and that's breaking the economy, like, Fine, you know, blocking the roads is illegal, and there's laws against that. But like, if they're not willing to actually, you know, follow the processes, or if the government is not willing to, like, follow the processes, follow the laws give people a chance to defend themselves, and all of those things, and they just want to, like, you know, talk to the banks, and basically cut out people's financial livelihoods without due process. I mean, you know, honestly, like, that is an example of the sort of thing that like this, that decentralized technology is there to make more difficult. So, like, it's, it's also a good example of how like, it's, you know, it is definite, like it's not about like being the Wild West, right? It is that in some ways, it's about bringing a rule of law back, right, like, you know, they can still like, you can still go out, like, find people, you can still go after people, you can still like, you know, go just act, the government can and police can act lawfully, as they always have like that this concept of like, going after intermediaries and like basically using intermediaries as a way to bypass all that like it is dangerous. And I do think that like having decentralized alternatives to an answer to intermediaries is a good way to limit the damage, the limit the damage that this kind of dependence on intermediaries can do.

Thank you so much metallic for your time. We're just hanging out with the devs chilling out here at eath Denver with Vitaly Spooner and the founder of Ethereum