KZG Ceremony Duo Summons The Ethereum Road Map

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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⏱️ Timestamps
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!

Now, onto the transcript:

Crypto Journey

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?

Trent: 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.

Carl: 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.

Ethereum Foundation Work Culture

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?

Trent: 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.

Carl: 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.

Twitter Question

Trent: 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.

Carl: 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?

Carl: 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.

Trent: 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.

Near and Long-term Roadmap

Trent: 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.

Carl: 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.

Next Steps

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

Carl: 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.

Trent: 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?

Trent: 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.

Carl: 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.

Twitter Question

Carl: 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.

Trent: 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.

EIP-4844

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

Trent: 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.

Carl: 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.

Danksharding

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?

Carl: 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.

Staking Withdraws

Can you tell listeners what that is and any timeline you can share?

Carl: We are involved in a project that involves many testnets and applying them to the execution layer and beacon chain. Initially, we had the Beacon Chain and a deposit contract that receives ETH, but the ETH cannot be withdrawn. The Beacon Chain creates new validators every time a deposit is made, and the validator performs validation duties on the execution layer. After the merge, the execution layer is not aware that the Beacon Chain exists. We made this decision to simplify and de-risk the merge, and it worked well.

We learned to simplify over the years, and we are now working on creating a withdrawal process that allows people to take their stake and rewards from the beacon chain and put it back into the execution layer. This process makes things more tightly coupled, but we are in the final timelines and ready to ship the project soon.

Trent: We’ve chosen the mainnet date of April 12th.

ETH Governance

How do you usually approach the community when you make changes to the roadmap, and how did they handle it?

Carl: The Ethereum governance has undergone significant changes, moving away from a model where a few researchers made decisions and towards a more open and community-driven approach. The roadmap for Ethereum development is not a fixed plan but rather a collection of ideas that are discussed and debated by various stakeholders, and changes may occur based on input from the community. The process involves multiple pipelines, and upgrades are scheduled after extensive discussion and consensus-building.

Trent: The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) process is open to the public and encourages iterative feedback to improve ideas. It has become increasingly important to engage the broader community to understand their needs as end users. It is crucial to maintain this open access to avoid decisions made in back rooms and ensure good outcomes for the protocol’s future.

Proposer Builder Separation

Could you please explain what that is, its purpose, and any timeline you can provide?

Carl: The purpose of the proposed builder separation is to separate the roles of who is mining the block and who is putting transactions in the block because these are different roles. In the past, mining required farms of ASICs or GPUs, while extracting maximum MEV from a block requires people with advanced algorithms and skills.

The proposed builder separation aims to separate these roles further, allowing for more specialization and expertise in both areas. The proposed builder separation could enable the chain to be aware of how much MEV is in a block, which can be used to direct funds elsewhere, rather than just giving it mostly to the proposals. By making the MEV Boost software a part of the protocol, the chain can keep the searches honest about the way they build blocks and can direct the MEV toward other uses. The proposed builder separation could enable the chain to recapture MEV and use it for other purposes beyond rewarding validators.

Single Slot Finality

Can you share what that is and any timeline you have?

Carl: Single slot finality is a proposed optimization for the Ethereum beacon chain that aims to compress the time it takes to achieve finality for transactions. Currently, the beacon chain works in epochs that last roughly 6.5 minutes, and within each epoch, validators vote on which blocks will be part of the chain permanently. After two epochs, the chain achieves finality, meaning that the economic weight of the validators’ stake is fully behind the selected blocks.

The downside of this process is that it can take up to 12-13 minutes for transactions to achieve finality, which is a long time in the context of modern blockchain transactions. Single slot finality aims to achieve the same finality within a single block, which would significantly reduce the time it takes for transactions to be confirmed.

Achieving single-slot finality is still in the research phase, and it requires solving several technical problems and re-architecting the system. The Ethereum community values accessibility and the ability for anyone to run the protocol on a reasonably modern computer, so any changes must also consider this factor. As such, the timeline for implementing single slot finality is multiple years away.

Use Cases

Zooming out, let’s say scaling is complete. What are we going to do with all this additional block space? What are some of the use cases you guys are excited about?

Trent: Fortunately, we don’t have to figure out the hard work of getting new users or building products and iterating with users. Other people are doing that, making it easier for developers and companies to launch their own chain. We believe that abundant cheap block space will unlock new use cases, and there will be new products available, such as on-chain gaming. The possibilities are wide open, and we can expect applications or products that were not possible on a 14 transactions a second mainnet Ethereum to be enabled on new layers with cheap block space.

Carl: It’s hard to imagine, it really is like a new paradigm. In the early days of Ethereum, it was cheap to upload images onto the chain and keep them there forever. However, now it would cost thousands of dollars to do the same thing, and it’s hard to imagine the new possibilities that will be available in the future. With the potential for completely changing the paradigm and lowering the cost of trustless transactions, there are opportunities for fund coordination and large-scale projects that don’t rely on big tech companies or governments.

Trent: The builders of products in the L2 ecosystem need to become familiar with the new capabilities it offers to combine different affordances. While L2s like faster confirmation and cheaper fees can help, they are not the final determinants of a product’s success. Good ideas and execution are still crucial.

One interesting product I’ve come across is called Stealcam, which is like an on-chain Only Fans where people can buy stolen photos, and the previous stealers get a cut. It has some game mechanics and could be suited for a fan base interested in purchasing individual photos. It’s a cool product enabled by Arbitrum.

Impact

Why are you both passionate about this? What do you think the impact will be in like 10 years from now, and why have you dedicated so much of your lives to solving this problem for Ethereum?

Carl: Ethereum serves as a coordination layer and current systems for coordinating are reaching their limits. Existing institutions, such as governments and large tech companies, have become opaque, and harder for individuals to have a voice. I’m excited about the potential for trustless and open coordination using Ethereum, which allows people to collaborate and build without regard to jurisdiction, personal history, or identity. This primitive has the potential to create interesting options for people from different walks of life and an exciting future.

Trent: I agree with the importance of Ethereum and blockchain technology in expanding trust and reducing the need for intermediaries in transactions. As our world becomes increasingly intermediated, it leads to centralization, censorship, and negative externalities. By onboarding the world’s financial system to blockchain technology, they hope to reduce these issues. I plan to focus on working with Ethereum for the next five to ten years to contribute to this goal.

I’ve noticed the Ethereum ecosystem specifically has become a little bit more adversarial. Would you agree with that? And how are you thinking about that within the Ethereum ecosystem?

Carl: I believe that there have been significant changes in the ecosystem over the years, particularly in the increased value within it. In the early days, there was more trust and less focus on security and safety, but now with more value present, there is a need for more adversarial thinking and immediate implementation of solutions.

It’s also important to avoid being boxed into a regulatory structure, so researchers and developers are working towards ossifying Ethereum to make significant changes for scaling and security improvements while becoming fully featured before regulators can lock down on them.

The goal is to reach a point where even if there are no changes from the current model in the future, Ethereum can still achieve its original goals and visions with its capabilities.

The last question and then I’ll let you both go, is just how are you defiant?

Carl: I believe that everyone in the ecosystem has their own defiance, driven by their visions and dreams for change. However, I am particularly invested in the original cypherpunk vision and am willing to make sacrifices to ensure that Ethereum remains a value-neutral and trustless system. My focus is on creating a strong base layer that can support innovative projects in the future, and this drives my research toward maximizing the robustness of the system.

Trent: I believe that the core foundation of Ethereum is based on designing things and working on specific projects with an adversarial mindset. It’s inevitable because of how the chain operates and how incentives are structured. Therefore, it’s worth pursuing excellence in trustless mechanism design and thinking about ways things can fail to ensure the most secure censorship-resistant design possible. I think it’s important to stay true to the ideals of what we’re building, despite the increasing pressures to compromise. So, to summarize, I will make sure to stay true to the core ideals of Ethereum and pursue excellence in trustless mechanism design.