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With Carl and Trent, we dive into the KZG ceremony, why it’s important for scaling Ethereum, the ETH roadmap, demystify jargon like Dank Sharding, IP 4844, and we talk about the culture of the Ethereum Foundation, why Ethereum has become a bit more adversarial with time, how they plan to continue scaling without sacrificing decentralization or censorship resistance and more. But first, they tell us their origin stories about entering crypto, why they joined Ethereum and what they’re focused on today.

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00:00 Crypto Journey
04:57 Ethereum Foundation Work Culture
08:08 Question from a Twitter follower
11:30 Near and Long-term Roadmap
18:06 Next Steps
25:41 Question from a Twitter follower
28:55 EIP-4844
31:58 Danksharding
33:31 Staking Withdraws
36:47 ETH Governance
41:44 Proposer Builder Separation
45:42 Single Slot Finality
49:17 Use Cases
55:33 Impact

🔒 Premium subscribers get a full transcript of the podcast below. Thank you for your continued support of independent journalism for web3!

Carl and Trent, you both work at the Ethereum Foundation. I would love to dive into your crypto journey. What made you commit to working on Ethereum and what are you focused on?

 I have a background in architecture and design, which is different from the typical developer path in the crypto field. I found the architecture profession slow and conservative, which led to my interest in Ethereum around 2016. I decided to leave architecture and worked for various companies, eventually joining the Ethereum Foundation.

My current role involves engaging the community with network upgrades, raising awareness about upcoming developments, and connecting people. Two significant projects I’ve been involved in are the KZ G ceremony and Protocol Guild, a collective of core contributors working on distributed funding for the core protocol.

 I entered the crypto space when a friend started making a lot of money from it. Initially, I was interested in machine learning and AI, so I built trading bots. As I learned more about crypto, I became fascinated by the various challenges it presented. In 2016-2017, I came across a proposal to switch to Proof of Stake (EIP-1011) that required 1,500 ETH to stake, which I didn’t have. So, I developed a distributed validator technology (DVT) to share the stake among friends.

I worked on networking, consensus, and cryptography problems and became more involved in the protocol. When I realized EIP-1011 wouldn’t happen, I shifted my focus to the core protocol, working on similar concepts but at a different level.

I want to ask a little bit about the current culture around the Ethereum Foundation, because Laura Shin, as I’m sure you both know, wrote a book on crypto around the early scenes and there was a ton of drama. What is it like working at the Ethereum Foundation these days?

 I haven’t read the book about the company’s early days, but I understand that it has changed significantly over the years. Now, it’s a bigger and different organization. I feel privileged to work here, as the culture is great and it’s the best place I’ve ever worked. There’s a lot of freedom and autonomy, allowing us to explore our interests within the scope of our work. However, you must be self-motivated, as there isn’t constant supervision. I enjoy this environment, and I’ve had an amazing experience in my two years here so far.

 I believe there is a diverse culture within the Ethereum community, as we are divided into distinct teams. Each team has its own focus, internal culture, and perspective on Ethereum’s development and the Ethereum Foundation’s role. While we share common goals, our approaches and visions for the technology vary greatly. This leads to passionate debates among us. Depending on whom you talk to and their team affiliation, you’ll find differing opinions on how to achieve our ultimate objectives and what the Ethereum Foundation should do.

 My family and I will build a Lego set together. Each of us will contribute one piece without knowing which one it is. Afterward, someone will assemble the set for us. The completed house will be used once the construction phase is finished.

 Imagine a dark room and everyone gets a little piece of Lego that they’re gonna add to this construction. We couldn’t see the final outcome, but we knew we contributed our part. Using cryptography, we ensured the structure remained hidden. In the end, we created an unknown yet fascinating construction together.

What are you trusting in this example or within the ceremony? What do you have to trust, if anything?

 We have this role called the sequencer. The sequencer’s role is to manage access to the stockroom by fairly determining who goes next. They ensure that everyone gets a turn and that no one spends too long in the room. The key assumption is that the sequencer maintains fairness and inclusivity for everyone involved.

 The sequencer cannot alter the final output, only potentially censor participants. However, if someone makes a valid contribution, it would be noticeable if they were censored. The sequencer cannot modify the end result, such as a completed Lego house.

 The project began in May last year and focused on developing cryptography components and undergoing audits. A demo was presented at Devcon, followed by refinements and another audit. The ceremony started in January and had an open contribution period for two months, where anyone could contribute entropy through various methods.

After the open contribution period, a grants-funded special contribution period will take place from April 1st to 16th. This will feature 15 unique contributions to produce entropy, create cultural markers, and add some fun to the project.

Following the special period, the ceremony may reopen for public contributions. The final output will be verified and then integrated into a client release for use in scaling initiatives like Dank sharding.

The main idea behind scaling Ethereum is to transition to a roll-up-centric model with Layer 2 (L2) solutions. However, the bottleneck for achieving faster and cheaper transactions is the cost of on-chain data storage.

EIP 4844 proposes snapshotting as a solution, offering inexpensive data storage without computation. This allows L2 solutions to provide affordable transactions for users. Advanced cryptography and polynomial commitments, such as the KZG scheme, are used for this purpose. KZG relies on a secretive construction, which is this Lego box that we were referring to earlier.

How can people get involved in these next stages of the ceremony?

 We have received over 83,000 contributions from the community so far. During the special contribution period, we allowed people with cool projects to sign up and receive funding. We plan to reopen contributions after April 16th, and you can follow updates on Twitter and other crypto news sources. We’ve had three months of open contributions and want to include as many people as possible to ensure fairness. However, the significance of adding one more person diminishes as the number of contributors increases. The trust assumptions have evolved over time, making this different from past ceremonies.

 I understand that having open access to a public ceremony is important, but adding more people doesn’t necessarily improve security. When we aimed for 10,000 participants, we thought it would be a huge success, but now there are over 83,000. Participating in the ceremony may feel good, but it’s not required to trust the mechanism. The trust model relies on all contributions being compromised or colluding, which is highly impractical. Even if you don’t participate, you can trust the ceremony’s security due to the large number of contributions and diverse clients involved.

If you yourself do not participate and throw away the entropy, then knowing that you’ve done that, how can you trust the system?

 At the end of the day, you’re trusting somebody to implement the cryptography. I have been working on a project for a year, but not on the cryptography aspect. I trust Carl and several other contributors who have more technical skills in cryptography. There’s always some level of trust in the process.

Regarding the question about entropy, there are three sources of it: text input, mouse movements, and browser-generated randomness. All three contribute to the random output. To compromise the system in this way, one would need to remember and record all three sources of entropy for every participant, which seems highly impractical and unrealistic. Other vulnerabilities may exist, but remembering the entropy is not a feasible method of compromise.

 I believe there are fundamental flaws in our current understanding of cryptography, and we’re now facing new levels of failure involving collusion. It’s essential for us to devise innovative and unconventional failure models before quantum computers become a reality.

 The computation involved in the current ceremony is significantly smaller than previous ones, requiring only a brief burst of computer power to process 3.5 MB of compressed data. This is in stark contrast to past ceremonies that dealt with hundreds of gigabytes. The smaller data and computation requirements for KZG commitments in EIP 4844 have allowed more people to participate, which is greatly appreciated. Although the individual computations are small, the total amount of computing power used across 80,000 participants is becoming substantial.

 We are excited to announce the largest ceremony of its kind, though it remains small compared to others that involve transferring hundreds of gigabytes. Scheduling such events is challenging, and we acknowledge the contributions of those before us, especially Zcash’s initial six-person setup in 2016. We have built upon their work and the successive setups, and while the Zcash protocol has moved on to using Halo or Halo 2, our ceremony benefits from a lower computation requirement, allowing us to involve a significant number of participants.

Can you tell our listeners what that is and share a little bit about the timeline?

 EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) refers to significant proposed upgrades for the Ethereum network. EIP-4844, also known as “prototype sharding,” aims to make data more affordable for rollups, enhancing scalability in a cost-effective way. This proposal is currently in the implementation phase.

The next priority for Ethereum Protocol Lab is enabling withdrawals, which is crucial for completing the proof-of-stake cycle. This will allow users who staked their Ethereum to withdraw their funds, fulfilling the original promise made during the transition to proof-of-stake.

The next major upgrade, EIP-4844, is expected in the latter half of this year and will provide cheaper data for Layer 2 solutions. Future upgrades, such as Stateless Ethereum (SLE) and in-protocol Partially Synchronous BFT (PBS), are still in the research phase, with no guarantee they will be integrated into the protocol due to unresolved questions.

 We hope to include the feature in the next upgrade, but there’s no guarantee. This isn’t a confirmed roadmap. Many community members enjoy following protocol updates, but we’re currently in the implementation phase, fixing bugs. We aim for later this year, without making any promises.

Can we talk a little bit about how it got its name? I know it comes from the researcher, Dank, but is it a meme?

 Oh, it’s definitely a meme. We enjoy coming up with funny names for the proposals and projects, even if they may not be taken seriously by the marketing department. The “Danksharding” proposal was named after a researcher’s idea to simplify charting and unify the community. The proposal was later simplified even further into “proto-danksharding” and named after another researcher who made significant changes in the early days.

With Carl and Trent, we dive into the KZG ceremony, why it’s important for scaling Ethereum, the ETH roadmap, demystify jargon like Dank Sharding, IP 4844, and we talk about the culture of the Ethereum Foundation, why Ethereum has become a bit more adversa...

KZG Ceremony Duo Summons The Ethereum Road Map