Understanding Ethereum Network Upgrades: Lecture 1

The following transcript was auto-generated, and may content syntactical errors.

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Okay, so we are We are live. We will get started in 3 min. Pass the hour, I'll turn on my screen.

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Play some music.

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Alright, thank you everyone for being here. If you're watching live or you're watching a recording, this is The first lecture of understanding Ethereum network upgrades and week one, we're talking about core development overview.

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I'm Tom, I'm joined by my co instructor, Matt. I also have Elizabeth and Jenny who are the course coordinators and members of the Education DAO core team.

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We're gonna jump right into it today, but. In the course itself, there is a recording, a 10 min video.

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That is an orientation of the course. So if you want more details on the course, please refer to that video.

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But we're gonna hop right into it. So As we're talking about how core development works, We thought it was important for you to understand just the complexity of What Ethereum core development looks like in the teams involved.

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So today we're going to really talk about the purple circle in the intersections within the purple circle.

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But What we have here looks like some combination of a 4 leaf clover, maybe some art project.

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It is a. Very nuanced diagram. So Matt, maybe you can talk to us about why. What?

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What's going on in this diagram? Like why does core development look like this? And contextually.

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Is this similar or different to other open source projects?

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Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, it's think about it this way, right? We have.

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A decentralized network known as a theorem, which means we need a decentralized process to upgrade that network.

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There's no kind of iOS software update that gets pushed to all iPhones at the same time and it looks the same and it means that everybody gets new features.

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And everybody gets, you know, new. You know, access to new APIs, in reality it's a lot more different than that and a lot more complex.

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Because you have all of these different groups coordinating instead of a company like Apple, that's a centralized entity that can.

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Coordinate all the bits and pieces, right? So We have at the center core devs and a core dev is a loose term that really comes down to anyone that takes an active role in participating with the protocol development.

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The reason I say this is because there are many folks that take a passive role that consume the information of what's happening, but in really in order to be a part of this kind of core development process, you have to be.

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In taking part in one of these kind of 4 overarching circles and one of those, some of those little small groups that.

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Past between the circles. And some of them you can just join by being really knowledgeable. You can get involved by learning and some of them you you know, are part of your job or a part of an open source community or a part of kind of the EF, for example.

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So, you know, we have a high level, we have the Ethereum Foundation who runs a lot of the coordinating function actually more than you'd think for these network upgrades.

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And then we have groups like client teams who are implementing and proposing spec changes from the network upgrades.

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They're proposing research. They're doing the research. They're the ones who really have to convince all of their users to upgrade their nodes to make sure that the nodes will work through the transition and they have a lot of the kind of heavy lifting.

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But they consume a ton of information from these other circles. To also included are things like educators, editors, individuals, people who have a really kind of influential role in the community to educate a lot of what's done around these a theory of network upgrades is in order to educate people who run nodes, educate developers who are using the platform about what's coming up, what they can

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start to take advantage of. How they can use new opcodes, save money, gas, etc, etc.

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All those are folks involved as well. And you have organizations like Dows and open source communities, which kind of straddle those lines.

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Open source communities being, for example, the product that I work on, Hyper Ledger Basu.

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It's an open source Ethereum client, so we have contributors from all across the world and also all different interests.

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So not all of them are kind of core developers, but we have an open source community of both Cordevs and you know folks that work on things like private networks.

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So how does this process differ from something like, a traditional open source project? It does and it doesn't and that there is the direction of what's happening with the protocol is set separately from the implementation of the protocol.

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And when I say separate, I mean that loosely, like I mentioned, the client teams are the ones that often are implementing these changes for the protocol on behalf of node runners and users and infrastructure providers.

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Or even groups like layer 2 developers. But at the same time, specification changes can be proposed by basically anybody or new EIPs can be proposed by anybody.

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You don't have to be a part of the Ethereum Foundation or a client team in order to have propose new research to propose new IPs.

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So in, you know, kind of the old model of open source or the centralized ish model of open source, you have a couple of companies really driving the direction of travel.

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They're making big changes to a protocol. You can think of something like Kubernetes, for example, where Google does the bulk of development, but other large companies that have a vested interest or other, you know, companies in general or individual users.

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They can propose things like PRs, they can work with release processes, they can upgrade that technology.

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For Ethereum, it's a lot different because you have the the client teams or in and of themselves individual open source communities you have the overarching Ethereum open source research community and then you have kind of R&D which is fully separate from the implementation.

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So it's a very loosely defined process around that kind of continuum of implementing the technology and researching on the technology.

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So I think that's why the decentralized kind of science and research of the Ethereum community is really interesting and really different than traditional, open source communities where someone says, hey, I have this really great idea.

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I think it'll help. And they say, oh, amazing. Let's go build it.

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Whereas in a theorem, they say, Hey, I have a really good idea. It says, oh, let's weigh the pros and cons.

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Let's see how it'll impact the network, the health of the network, there's a ton of money at stake that we have to be aware of.

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You cannot roll back. Changes to the network very easily. So there's a lot more to consider, whereas an open source project might have something like, hey, we have a quick patch for something that we introduced before.

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Coordinating a theory of upgrades is a ton more difficult and it requires all of these individual pieces to be in consensus for the most part.

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Which means we don't have a lot of doovers. We have to work at a much more meticulous kind of level and we need to coordinate across a ton of these different teams.

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Which is something that is not necessarily happening in other software environments, which is also what makes it so interesting.

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And so fun and so fast paced. But it opens up the door for a lot of complexity.

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Awesome. Well, let's dive into this. Nest nested.

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Graph of organizations that participate in it. So I said today we're gonna focus mainly on those that are in at least in part of the purple circle.

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There's some intersections. And we're gonna start with the theorem foundation. So just a couple of things I want to highlight and you can get these slides in the course.

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They've already been uploaded, which means that you can go and click on the links and view sort of some of the resources we shared.

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You know, the Ethereum Foundation itself is a nonprofit. And I think one thing that I just want to highlight is that it actually doesn't.

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Truly lead Ethereum. It's more like a loose coordinating function. Matt, do you want to go into some more detail about how like the Ethereum Foundation might differ from other open source foundations like Linux Foundation.

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Are they're sort of subgroups like Cloud Native Computing Foundation or even something like the World Wide Web Consortium, what we would call the W 3 C.

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Yeah, absolutely. So the EFS kind of initial charter was around. Supporting the protocol itself and kind of shepherding it through.

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You know, what was known to be a ton of upgrades from its inception in around 2015 to the present day when a theorem was designed and put into the world People kind of had an idea that we would need a substantial amount of upgrades over the course of its lifetime.

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And they also need they also it was also known to the to the kind of originators of this group that there would be a need for an impartial third party.

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To lead this effort, not for profit. You know has the ability to coordinate all these groups without being captured necessarily by any special interests or centralized kind of entities.

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Whereas we have some of these other groups like the Linux Foundation and W threec. Where their goal is to, their mission is to kind of shepherd different goals along the continuum of standards.

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Interoperability protocols or even technologies like blockchain in the case of Linux Foundation and things like Hyper Ledger.

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However, they are Kind of driven around mission goals based on community and building large communities around these. Whereas the Ethereum Foundation is really interested in the proliferation of the network and less about, you know, who are our members, what are they standards, you know, that we're proliferating outward.

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Ethereum is very much kind of a self-contained unit. That's slowly changing with the things like roll ups and other layer 2 networks that are being built on top of a theorem.

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It's also changing with the fact that a theorem standards are now kind of proliferating everywhere.

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So in reality, the EF is a kind of group that shepherds this protocol towards a vision that's kind of described by a number of different folks.

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It's not just the EF setting. The, you know, the roadmap, for example, it's a, they, kind of.

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Move this roadmap through its processes, but it's incorporated by a bunch of those sub entities.

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They also provide kind of key support as far as project management. So they run the core devs calls, they run a lot of the coordination, they run all the breakouts they talk they oftentimes coordinate groups to work on specific research topics so they shepherd individual research areas that they know will be needed at some point.

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They provide little nudges where it's useful. They provide grants to move a lot of these things forward.

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So the Ethereum Foundation funds internal researchers as well as external researchers to work across the spectrum of problems in the Ethereum research space, which is to say gigantic.

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And they know that they can't work on all of them. So they again, they coordinate the groups like companies like Consensus, for example, to do research.

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They coordinate the client teams, they coordinate the the upgrades as a kind of neutral party that is really kind of a self-contained unit.

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That works with all these different little pieces and has the money in many cases to fund those little pieces. In order to push these upgrades through again, cause it requires, like I said, not just the blue, Ethereum Foundation circle, but really all of those circles in tandem.

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To have a successful upgrade and they kind of work. Different areas of the EF to coordinate those different circles.

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So we're working with private companies, working with client teams, working with individuals and educators. To create a coherent picture of an upgrade and then actually delivering the technology of it.

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It requires. Huge amounts of coordination, testing, DevOps. Security research audits, you know.

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It's kind of boggling to think that individuals would be able to work on these problems.

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Kind of an isolation. So the client teams, for example, don't necessarily have the bandwidth to look at the breadth of this.

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So the Ethereum Foundation has a lot of breadth of knowledge and in many cases depth of knowledge, but they really are valuable coordinators because of that breadth because they have folks across all these research topics, all of these kind of areas, including client teams, including security, including DevOps.

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So they're really, you know, both a mile wide and or sorry, a mile wide and a mile deep, but in many cases, the fact that they have breath over the whole system is how they're such a valuable coordinating function.

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And so talking about one of those, you know, we saw that there were the client teams, but there is one specific client team that we're going to talk about today.

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That is essentially funded by exclusively the Ethereum Foundation are and. Kind of emerged out of.

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While it wasn't the first Ethereum client it in many ways is like the first Scalable etherium client, I think is the way to say it.

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And that is the Goa theory and client team. That is a, as you see here, it's a team of 10 developers distributed across the world and they're funded exclusively by the Ethereum Foundation.

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Why does, you know, in looking for decentralization and they're actually being quite a bit of Ethereum clients.

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Maybe you could just give a brief history of why did the, if there's fund this team and why do they continue to fund them?

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Yeah, absolutely. I think that with the GET team specifically, the Ethereum Foundation knew that for adoption.

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They would need initially a really robust client implementation. That could be spread across the ecosystem. It could be a gold standard.

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It could be a literal standard. In many cases, the Ethereum yellow paper as it was initially published.

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Was not updated to represent the current state of affairs for the actual network. What I mean by that is as we But into place these upgrades, these are theory of network upgrades.

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The initial specification of Ethereum is sort of loosely updated and maintained. So in reality, you have to look at a client like Geth in order to be able to build something similar.

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So they wanted a client that was a reference implementation for researchers. They wanted a reference implementation for for folks building new clients so expanding Ethereum's footprint and also expanding the capabilities of the network as a whole.

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So they had the GET team kind of come in and create this client with. Essentially, you know.

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The resources to do it and the people that they needed to do it. And they gave them the time to do it.

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And then we had the proliferation of the guest client in proof of work, which was perfect, right?

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It worked really well. Proof of work didn't have any of these client diversity requirements that we do in proof of state.

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So everyone could run this gold standard client. The network could be really performant, very interoperable with itself.

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But at the same time, we had a standard set of, we basically had a go reference implementation that could be used to create new clients.

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So after that point, we saw things like open Ethereum, continuing to push the kind of the world forward.

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We had a lot of different forks of GET, some that exist today like Aragon, some that no longer exist.

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And we have, yeah, more clients now like base to another mind, which are undoubtedly influenced by guests in the initial implementation in different languages.

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But what was really key was having different implementations of the EVM. So the goerium team has the gold standard EVM implementation as of right now, meaning that it's kind of the most battle tested.

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It has the most usage of any of the EVM implementations but they knew that as the Ethereum Foundation they would need to expand that to other EVM so that if we have bugs in the Gap EVM, we don't get totally hose down as network participants But I'm kinda getting a little bit off base here.

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In reality, this, this again, this was to create a a set of repeatable specifications and standards at a time where none didn't really, none really existed and to create a gold standard client that could be used to access the network, you know, effectively and easily.

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And as we got to the consensus layer launch with the beacon chain, the Ethereum Foundation made a deliberate choice to actually not.

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A

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Create a consensus client. And the reason being is because they said, we do want this kind of client diversity initiative.

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We do want more, teams to be building these clients so that the Ethereum Foundation doesn't really hold all of the keys.

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Because they want to be impartial right it's in their best interest to be very impartial Previously, the GEF team would drive a lot of the network upgrades because 90% plus of the nodes on the network on main net especially we're running GEF.

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So their interpretation of the specification and what should happen next or their design space for these clients was very well respected and it was very influential.

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But now we're seeing that open up with more clients participating. More client teams are proposing EIPs.

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It's better for the health of the overall network to not have the theorem foundation kind of stamps clients where they say this is the best go use this they really want to open these other clients up to spread the influence around in this process, but also to make sure that we have more groups of people building on a Ethereum and building out.

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Advancements to the technology and the the parallel that I like to use here is around kind of browsers for example.

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So imagine that Geth was the internet explorer of you know the 20 sixteens for a theorem everybody used to get everybody developed against it not to say that G has become what Internet Explorer is today, which is to say a dead unsupported product.

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But at, you know, There was kind of an intentional deliberate choice to proliferate new browser technology in order to push the web forward.

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And I think that we're seeing the same thing with these client teams. And again, with the EF choosing not to build a consensus client.

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So it's really been kind of a great. It's been a lot of help for them because the pressure is off.

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They don't have to worry about bugs in their client destroying 95% of the network anymore.

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So it's it's it's been great and they still have a lot of influence and a lot of passion for building this space and it's it's you know they they they do drive a lot of influence in this process.

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So from here on out the names are only going to get more whimsical. So let's talk about Ethereum cat herders.

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One thing that I want to talk about. With Ethereum cat herders. Just to contextualize is.

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As Ethereum has grown from its genesis. You know, really. Starting, you could make an argument.

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As the germination of an idea in 2013 but really you know going towards launch and seeing the adoption that we've seen with Ethereum, it became clear that processes in order to ensure that all the participants in the Ethereum ecosystem were able to coordinate in a successful way needed to change over time right so it's very easy to coordinate when folks in you can fit kind of everyone that's

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working on something in a single room. It's much harder when all those folks are no longer able to fit in a room and that's that's a good problem to have.

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And Ethereum cat herders. Basically. Emerged as a wraparound service. To help.

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Shepherd many of the processes that were developed. Anything that you want to add on that map.

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Yeah, I mean, I think that they're extremely valuable and that they do a lot of the like Social coordination.

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It decentralized research and development is extremely complicated and you need people like the cat herders that can literally herd the cats and you know go to all of these different groups and say hey like How can we progress or coordinate this EIP that needs a little bit of love that's sitting in draft, for example, or they run, you know, the, you know, the different sessions to break down the

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EIPs for client teams and for regular folks for developers, smart contract developers. You know, they work together with the Ethereum Foundation to do kind of the peep and, series, which is a breakdown of EIPs by their authors for Anyone?

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And these are hugely helpful because think about having a new opcode that goes into place on a may not upgrade.

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Solidity developers will need to be aware of what is now possible due to these things, how they can, you know, better optimize gas, how they can have more functionality.

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And the EF doesn't okay job. To talking about this, the client teams doing okay job talking about this.

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Even private companies do an okay job of talking about this and they're getting better, right? There's a lot more media around these upgrades, but the cat herders are really the kind of original folks that took.

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All of the things that are being included in these upgrades break them down for developers and for client teams because client teams might not be aware of what's happening on the consensus layer versus the execution layer and vice versa.

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So even we, you know, have a lot to focus on so we think through what are, you know, what's going in place on main net or we need something broken down so that we can build it ourselves into the client.

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And cat herders do a great job of this. They also have an awesome discord that provides a insane amount of.

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Detail of just like. This is all the stuff that's going on. This is a theory of news.

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It's a place to chat about this kind of stuff. It's where a lot of the EIP editing Help goes.

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But yeah, it's just a great group and it's kind of a nonprofit that's incentivized.

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Or rather a volunteer group that's incentivized by the Ethereum Foundation through grants like just like other groups.

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So it's really kind of like I said, One of those pictures of the Ethereum coordinating functions that's really, really awesome and that's incentivized by the community because they provide value.

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In education and in understanding and awareness.

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And I think we can say in this lecture that our guest. This week will be, Pooja from Ethereum cat herders.

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So we'll be adding that information. It'll be at the end of what we're calling week one.

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So we'll be having her come and talk specifically about a theorem cat herders.

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On December fourth. So we'll be adding that to the calendar. The big takeaway I would just say is that it's very important.

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All the project managers out there would say, you know, you don't. Always realize just how important project management is until you don't have it and You can see that it took until January, 2019 for this to emerge.

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Because there was a gap that needed to be filled and that's what's just to Talk to what Matt's sort of explaining around the decentralized process like If in Ethereum the processes are able to change and there are emergent groups that sort of step up and say we need to do this.

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And speaking of emergent groups that say we need to do this. Another one that is become very important is Another one's whimsically named group, the Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians.

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And I would. Say that the primer on a theory of magicians is a really good article that you can refer to it's in in the slide that we posted but this is a group that essentially created a forum to help drive discussions specifically around EIPs.

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And they have really establish themselves. As a place that folks can go to in order to have.

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Deeper technical discussions on EIPs. Anything you want to add to that map.

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Yeah, definitely. So. With, improvement proposals, which is a topic we will cover in depth next week.

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Those are typically actually written into a get book which is just a wrapper on top of GitHub issues.

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So Ethereum for Magicians actually becomes a extremely relevant place because folks will author EIPs, but you're no one is gonna go in that thread and like dissect it to bits and get into a heated argument.

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So the theory of magician's thread is where larger topics can be taken and spread pretty far and wide to people that have knowledge and expertise to provide comments.

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To provide feedback. To pick and poke holes in these things. And this is really kind of where a lot of the sausages made.

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This is before something becomes an official specification. So the maybe I have an idea for an opcode that would you know, maybe replace self-destruct, which is something that we're working on right now.

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The

00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:31.000

New opcode, I would say, hey, this is my rationale. I'd start in a theory of magicians thread.

00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:34.000

I would maybe link to an EIP and draft, but I would be pulling the community for help to say, hey, like, what do you view as the the real value here?

00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:50.000

What do you view as the difficulties? What am I missing? And this is a place to collect somewhat formal, somewhat informal feedback to get all of the way through kind of that process.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:58.000

And again, it's mostly a loose forum. It's called the Theory of Magicians because they

00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:24.000

Are a group of really smart Ethereum people that would be called magicians. I suppose. And this is where the contributions loosely essentially think of think of literally like an old style kind of chat for written forum that have a bunch of really smart people coming in and providing upgrades to Ethereum, not all that make it to be EIPs, not all to make it on main net, but it's a really valuable place where

00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:34.000

we will do coordination of. Literal research and development. As far as the stages of EIP editing.

00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:45.000

I'll break this down more in the next week. But what you need to know for now is that this is how the real kind of, this is where the real magic happens as far as creation of ideas.

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:52.000

There's a group, even there's a forum even to the left of this, which I'm not sure if we're going to be talking about today called EF Research.

00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:56.000

And, research is kind of the precursor to this. So that's where really pie in the sky ideas go to get born.

00:30:56.000 --> 00:31:09.000

Things like like sharding for example, big topic, right? High level concepts and designs get noodle through on research research on the network gets posted there.

00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:20.000

But if you want to take it to a more real implementation phase, you go to the magician's, a theory magicians forum, and that's where it kind of the the the research becomes a little bit closer to reality.

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:26.000

We might even have POC code, pseudo code. Something along those lines to kind of push that across the line.

00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:36.000

And that's where real kind of you know branding happens with regards to specifications that goes into the Eip's which go into the network.

00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:42.000

And so I think. To kinda well we'll jump into that real quick. Yeah.

00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:54.000

So There is this forum, E the research. And I would say that if you're in magicians, as Matt was saying, this is like.

00:31:54.000 --> 00:32:04.000

It's more ready for prime time or like the perception is. It could be a candidate to be included in a network upgrade.

00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:18.000

If you're putting in on Ethereum magicians. That's not all. It's not always ready to be in a network upgrade, but someone believes that it could be and they're at least willing to debate it openly.

00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:26.000

If you go to the Theorem website and you click on this rink, if you go to the theorem website and you click on this rink, it's website on research.

00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:35.000

You actually see there's a huge amount of research that the iterian Foundation is conducting. If you've heard the talk that Metallic has done about the roadmap for Ethereum, kind of his hopes.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:50.000

For etherium there's a lot of technologies. Both old and new that are being pulled together in order to create, you know, future.

00:32:50.000 --> 00:33:03.000

Future states of Ethereum. Both in literal state management and then also just in literal like in the sense of like trying to get to another phase of Ethereum.

00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:13.000

And, ERD has in some form existed since the Theorem Foundation. The theorem sort of project became the Ethereum Foundation, but it was really formalized in 2017.

00:33:13.000 --> 00:33:28.000

But it was really formalized in 2,017. So you can see there is a discord here which is Pretty important and it's really embodying the principles of of decentralized science, which Matt was talking to.

00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:44.000

But I think we kind of are introducing this. So there's a lot that goes on with each research and Not all of it is ready for primetime, but there is a group that tries to coordinate and does coordinate.

00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:50.000

Getting things ready for prime time. And so now we have finally arrived to all core depths, which is stylized altogether, but a little bit easier to read as all core devs.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:34:04.000

So it is now a It says a weekly meeting, which is technically true, but also technically untrue at the same time.

00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:21.000

Quantum quantum state of yes or no. So basically there are multiple meetings at this point. But there are, regular occurring meetings where the actual discussions live of technical issues and coordination occurs.

00:34:21.000 --> 00:34:27.000

We've provided you with the theorem project management repository. Please go and follow that on GitHub and start it.

00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:33.000

The all-core Dev channel in the, Discord is where the discussion continues. After those meetings and sometimes during those meetings.

00:34:33.000 --> 00:34:42.000

And you can see a calendar here and links to the calls.

00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:49.000

I you know, we're kind of at that we're hitting the midpoint of our time together.

00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:58.000

So. What we'll do is Describe all core devs and then talk about like how this process works, but Matt, anything you want to add about all core devs?

00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:08.000

This group that lies at the intersection, if you remember, of our graphic, it's right in the middle.

00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:12.000

The intersection of everything.

00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:22.000

Yeah, so as you said, this is kind of where it all comes together. I think what's worth hitting home is that while this may seem like a Exclusive group, it is not.

00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:39.000

And while this may seem like It may be run by a handful of talking heads. It's it's not and at the same time this is kind of the ultimate place to decide what actually happens on the Ethereum network.

00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:52.000

So it's It I think that's why it comes off as a little bit daunting and a little bit exclusive is because you have to have a little bit of cache in order to propose a change that will impact.

00:35:52.000 --> 00:36:01.000

Millions and billions of dollars in value and millions and billions of users one day. So it's, it's really kind of important to understand the dynamics.

00:36:01.000 --> 00:36:08.000

Of all of those individuals coming into it, but at the same time, like Tom said, it spreads across all those circles.

00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:14.000

There's always a niche for somebody to get involved and at the same time everyone's providing a different kind of value here.

00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:19.000

Attend the calls on YouTube, like if you want to lurk, definitely attend the calls on YouTube.

00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:21.000

People are very active in the chat there. It's fun to see how people react to certain news.

00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:30.000

It's also fun to see how you will get quoted in the news if you speak on the core Devs call.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:32.000

So be Be very careful with how you represent things, but it's fun. It's it's definitely an interesting time.

00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:39.000

There's no such thing as imposter syndrome in this in this kind of slide.

00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:49.000

I think that if you have the wherewithal to. Do something for a theorem, whether it's any IP or an ERC or a, even a pull request to a small.

00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:56.000

You know, to a minority client, I think that you can you can start to quickly into your way into this camp of developers.

00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:03.000

So since this is week one, we're going to ease you into. This process of. Upgrades work.

00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:13.000

So if we start with the question, how does the theorem get upgraded? We just wanna cover a couple of things.

00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:19.000

There have been. 15 today, I think you could argue that maybe there's been 16 or even 17.

00:37:19.000 --> 00:37:31.000

We're gonna we're gonna use 15 here just because those are like the major ones. But if you hear a slightly different number, you, that's, sort of a matter of, debate.

00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:38.000

We do provide a link so you can actually see all the upgrades in the timeline of Ethereum.

00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:51.000

There's been 3 to date on the beacon chain. So you could say that there's been somewhere around the order of 18 to probably 20 upgrades.

00:37:51.000 --> 00:38:08.000

The 8 years of it being live. So we're specifically in this course started tracking along with something called the, the Den Coon upgrade and that's because execution layer upgrades are named after Devcom locations.

00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:12.000

The the one that's coming up that was. In terms of the naming structure would be the Cancun.

00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:25.000

Devcon, which happened in 2017. If I have my timeline right. And then the consensus layer upgrades are needed for start.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:36.000

So the next one would be, so Dev Coon. And, and these. Don't have to happen at the same time.

00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:43.000

They can happen. Together independently but that just depends on how the upgrades need to be coupled.

00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:51.000

So this is kind of our general overall. It's simultaneous network wide. Largely backward and compatible.

00:38:51.000 --> 00:39:05.000

It is exceedingly difficult to roll back and upgrade. And so, you know, in theory, this is This is how the simplicity of how it works, but.

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:12.000

Wait, like really how does it work? Matt, do you want to sort of explain kind of in a little bit more granularity.

00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:17.000

Let's zoom in a little bit more. How does how does this how does this work?

00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:25.000

Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, there's a loose coordination layer at the core devs process.

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:32.000

We are continuously accumulating changes to the protocol that we would like to include in a fork upgrade.

00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:41.000

And then we hunker down at certain points and we pick what we actually are going to include in the Ethereum upgrades.

00:39:41.000 --> 00:39:52.000

What this translates to in practice is that each a theorem network upgrade typically has one main enhancement to the protocol that we want to ship with some urgency.

00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:58.000

So we call that, you know, in some metaphors there's the driver of the fork and then there are the passengers.

00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:05.000

Or there's like the, you know, the main stage and then the, you know, the little side acts at the, at the, at the concert.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:12.000

But there's like drivers like the, this work for example, Dan Coon is driven by EIP 4 8 4 4.

00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:19.000

Aiming to scale layer twos. That is the primary reason to ship this fork. However, there's maybe 4 passenger EPs, maybe more.

00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:25.000

Those pastor EIPs are often included because they're simple, easy to test. They provide real value and they can be reasoned about quickly.

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:33.000

Or they've been and developed in the hopper for a while and now is the time to get out there.

00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:53.000

So in reality, again, we are constantly evaluating research topics for What goes into the next fork the main 2 for the next fork which we're already thinking about the pro fork are likely to be EOF and Verkal tries and we'll see how that kind of.

00:40:53.000 --> 00:40:57.000

Battle of Mines plays out. I think a lot of it has to do with convincing the client teams in the core devs that one way is better than the other.

00:40:57.000 --> 00:41:09.000

And there's usually a loose consensus that happens there. But for the mechanics of it, we have, for example, 2 VIPs that are slated for those.

00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:17.000

So there's a Berkeley try, EAP, there's an EOF, EIP, there's also a bunch of VIPs that are slated to be included.

00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:25.000

We have a process around what that looks like where we basically spend multiple of those coordination calls. Debating what we should include in the forks.

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:32.000

A number of reasons people make impassioned arguments and then we have in theory a magicians thread where we continue to espouse on what we want to include in the forks.

00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:43.000

Thankfully, these are now broken down by 2 layers. So there's the execution layer changes and the consensus layer changes.

00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:51.000

Oddly enough, forks actually kind of break down that way where, for example, 4 4 4, the majority of the development work that's happening right now is on the consensus layer.

00:41:51.000 --> 00:42:03.000

So the execution layer is also kind of a passenger on this pork. If we do something like Verkal Tries or EOF in the next work, the consensus layer will have very little to do.

00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:12.000

With those upgrades and they'll primarily be focusing on maybe client enhancements or some other fun projects that those teams want to work on.

00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:18.000

So we take the EIPs on the Cordevs calls, we listen to the arguments about why they should be included.

00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:22.000

We essentially vote on a rough consensus of what should be included and then we have stages for those EAPs.

00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:23.000

So EAPs will be either, you know, considered, slated for inclusion, included, or discarded.

00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:33.000

There's another name for discarded that is escaping me but basically we pass on those VIPs.

00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:38.000

That process takes months and we eventually get to a point where we have a spec. List for the following upgrade and we translate that to these repositories that Tom has on the screen here.

00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:43.000

So the consensus layer specification will be updated against those EIPs. There's a very new execution layer.

00:42:43.000 --> 00:43:01.000

A specification called ELS, which is written in Python, with the goal to have it be a fully functioning execution client at some point that will be extremely slow, but it'll work and you can run reference tests against it.

00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:14.000

You can do whatever you want. So those repositories are updated. And then the downstream things are consumed by client teams to build into the The clients so that we can test them together.

00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:18.000

Once the client implementations are done, we test them all together in the kind of Dev Nets test nets, that kind of order.

00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:28.000

This is a simplification. We will touch. More on this in I believe week 4 or 5 for our testing call.

00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:33.000

So if you're very curious about the testing and inclusion process, we'll talk more about EIPs next week.

00:43:33.000 --> 00:43:42.000

We will talk more about testing in the following weeks and we'll break these kind of all down. But If the 5 s answer is that we kind of just.

00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:47.000

Go with it and we build the plane a little bit as we fly and we listen to the needs of the network.

00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:49.000

Which is scale right now. So that's why we're building something like 4, 4, 4.

00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:57.000

We desperately need scale and roll ups. We need a data availability scaling. We're building it.

00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:06.000

There's arguments about what we might need next. I'm not gonna get into those now. There's topics that address some of those arguments and those problems on the network that we see today.

00:44:06.000 --> 00:44:12.000

And that is will drive the next work. Yeah, Cordevs, roll ups all the way down also.

00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:13.000

I see top.

00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:22.000

It's all the way down. So just to kind of hit those brief points. They're right now they're fortnightly or every 2 weeks largely Thursdays.

00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:28.000

At 1,400 UTC, their live stream did saved on YouTube. There's actually one coming up on December seventh.

00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:33.000

Anyone can join shared by Tim Biko. You have his, Twitter right there. In this link.

00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:43.000

And as Matt said, falls a right rough consensus process. We also have, as was mentioned, the consensus devs.

00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:50.000

One is happening tomorrow. So definitely go watch it if you want to see it's chaired by Danny Ryan.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:45:04.000

Largely subordinate to the all core devs call though they do act independently and there was a great question about with the increase in complexity modularity all coordinates has splintered into execution and consensus as separate calls, which has happened.

00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:11.000

And do you foresee future fragmentation like all data availability devs, all DVDs, or is there a logical forcing function that prevents it from happening?

00:45:11.000 --> 00:45:19.000

Such that core devs may have to attend 3 to 5 calls a week with respect to core dev work.

00:45:19.000 --> 00:45:28.000

And what we, what Matt and I have seen is actually this already kind of happened if you look at the calendar that we shared with you, the number of calls.

00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:33.000

That are happening and some of them are, and there many of them are recorded, we're already seeing that there are many coordinating calls that are happening.

00:45:33.000 --> 00:45:40.000

So if history is a guide, if you look at groups like the W threec, it is only natural that you'll see more.

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:55.000

Specialization and we'll get into more of this as specifically as we talk about. Eip 4 8 4 4, prototype sharding and kind of all that could open up.

00:45:55.000 --> 00:46:00.000

So we'll table that till next week. But I guess then the question becomes how do I become a core dev?

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:03.000

And That's a good question.

00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:07.000

We need a consensus of the core devs to do that. I'll do it. I mean, you're not a core dev.

00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:13.000

I'd be a cordev. No, you're not the core death. How do I become a Cordov?

00:46:13.000 --> 00:46:16.000

We'll talk about that offline.

00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:20.000

So I guess we're offline, so it's a good, if we're online, but we're not in a core desk call.

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:29.000

So we could talk about how you become a core dev. This is from I think what April, 2,020 or March, the 2020 call of the core devs.

00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:31.000

And. So sorry if I'm playing that again.

00:46:31.000 --> 00:46:36.000

We need a consensus of the core devs to do that.

00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:47.000

So, so how do I become a chord dev? There actually isn't like a clear process, but we do have some guidance for you of how you can become a core dev.

00:46:47.000 --> 00:46:49.000

It would be attend to all core devs calls is a good way. Propose EIPs, apply your expertise to existing EIP, EE.

00:46:49.000 --> 00:47:02.000

Magicians Forum is a great way to do that. The fellowship of Heath Magicians. Participating discussions cordevs at live and hybrid events.

00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:11.000

Work with an Ethereum client team, work with projects and initiatives that support Ethereum. Find a way to contribute based on the active, the current active areas of Ethereum research.

00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:28.000

There's countless ways that you can become a core dev and there isn't just like a clear path which I think is challenging for people because they want a clear way in but when the response is well just you know show up and figure out where you fit in.

00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:34.000

That isn't always the most accessible way. So having groups like Ethereum magicians. If eat cat herders give easier entry points.

00:47:34.000 --> 00:47:47.000

Having programs like this summer I think was like the summer of protocols if I remember correct

00:47:47.000 --> 00:47:50.000

Yes, it is. I saw you wanna mute.

00:47:50.000 --> 00:48:01.000

Sorry, there are grants given to researchers. And so that was a way for them to start to.

00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:02.000

What's going on? Yeah.

00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:11.000

It might accidentally beating everyone. Sorry if I am. And, so it's like an easy way to kinda join in and be a part of it.

00:48:11.000 --> 00:48:19.000

So we'll just wrap up here with a few more. And then we'll get into any remaining questions.

00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:25.000

So we have office hours on Friday. We're going to talk about some of the other groups within the Ethereum community in a less formal way.

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:33.000

This is kind of like exactly what you need to know. In order to, sort of move through the process, but there's actually a lot more complexity here.

00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:38.000

We wanted to simplify it. We'll answer any questions that you have about today's material.

00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:44.000

And then you can submit questions in advance. I think Jenny, OPM, and Elizabeth have provided that.

00:48:44.000 --> 00:49:01.000

So let's open it up to questions. We got about 10 min left. You can either we can either read them out from the the link that was shared or if people want to drop them in the chat or you should also be able to come off mute and ask questions as well.

00:49:01.000 --> 00:49:07.000

So, let me just.

00:49:07.000 --> 00:49:12.000

In the office hours. You can see in the calendar, but those are Fridays at the same time.

00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:23.000

And it's, just a different, zoom. So they'll be in zoom.

00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:46.000

Opmi, Jenny, Elizabeth, seeing any questions come in in the, in the forum.

00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:47.000

Or that you disagree with.

00:49:47.000 --> 00:49:54.000

Or if there's anything that I said that was. Extremely convoluted. I can bring, yeah, or if you disagree.

00:49:54.000 --> 00:50:07.000

One of the things that's worth noting, just for the recording and for everyone in general is that like I said, the Ethereum Foundation runs a lot of incentive programs to do this kind of stuff and they run a lot of fellowships to do this stuff.

00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:08.000

Oh

00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:12.000

So becoming a chord dev in that sense is like, you know, they they offer tons of avenues to do so.

00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:23.000

Even if you, you know, can't dedicate the time for it to be your day job, for example, or if you want to work on something as a side product.

00:50:23.000 --> 00:50:29.000

First side project, excuse me, and are the instructors cordevs. I consider myself loosely associated.

00:50:29.000 --> 00:50:37.000

I manage a team of core developers. But I don't necessarily work on the protocol itself beyond. Some specification work and you know kind of trying to deeply understand the execution layer.

00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:52.000

But you know, even just kind of being on the, working within a team of core developers, you get to kind of coordinate some of that stuff as well.

00:50:52.000 --> 00:51:00.000

I think that's loosely a Cordev kind of. Framing? Yeah. I don't know if Greg, Greg Colton would call me a chordef, but we, we can try to reach out and see.

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:06.000

We'll try to get Greg on and see if he'll, to kill the player who's caught up.

00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:07.000

I

00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:15.000

The only question in the form so far is one that you already answered about. Fragmenting, right?

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:17.000

So, so far I think you've answered.

00:51:17.000 --> 00:51:29.000

Yeah, but it'd be interesting because Dustin who is who is the or the sorry I won't the asker of that question, I think has quite, quite a bit of knowledge one might say about how some of these processes work.

00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:34.000

So if, that individual vesta question does wanna come off mute and provide any context.

00:51:34.000 --> 00:51:48.000

I think their opinion is super valuable in relevant and maybe a good contrast to anything that Matt and I said.

00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:59.000

But no pressure.

00:51:59.000 --> 00:52:08.000

Basically what I would say is that. Because the Them Foundation, one of the, well, wasn't written in the goals.

00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:29.000

I'm sorry, the purpose is. 2 maintain. Credible neutrality, it becomes important to There is a natural push towards having more forums, I would say in order to prevent any sort of.

00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:40.000

Biases. That would be from slipping in that might be.

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:52.000

Considered. Detrimental to to the Ethereum ecosystem, but at the same time also encourage, sometimes we call it a, right?

00:52:52.000 --> 00:53:00.000

So like the rough consensus mechanism, we oftentimes call like, The way to participate is via a doocracy, right?

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:05.000

If you show up and you do things, that's why there isn't like a token based governance.

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:10.000

It isn't based on how much eath someone holds. It's do you show up? Do you do the work?

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:18.000

Do you participate? And that, Well, I'm not giving you like a formal definition of a democracy.

00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:44.000

It's one of those things that. When we see people participate in a in in an ecosystem and they might do that more heavily in sometimes and then like as they have less capacity do less, it does create this natural sort of self replenishing system of people moving in and out and giving different perspectives.

00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:48.000

Yeah, I think that here Dustin came off mute. Go ahead.

00:53:48.000 --> 00:54:10.000

Yeah, I think one of the reasons I was asking that question is because I can just foresee a lot more calls splitting up in that way, but I think part of what makes all codecs work really well is kind of like the moderation of you know the person running the call so it's Tim vehicle it's like you know previously Hudson Jamison you've got people like Danny Ryan so they

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:15.000

are a limited number of people that can run calls really well just because they can communicate well they can get the consensus of the room well and I feel like that's the limited resource and then.

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:29.000

As you start fragmenting the calls more, you might get calls run by people that may have a different control style, me route people the wrong way.

00:54:29.000 --> 00:54:39.000

So I think that The limited resource is actually people that are Good at running calls, good at talking to people as well as understanding what the code does.

00:54:39.000 --> 00:54:50.000

I would a hundred percent agree with you and I think with history as a precedent not necessarily a predictor but as a precedent I know that at certain points in time the Linux Foundation has run into this exact same issue.

00:54:50.000 --> 00:55:01.000

Where there were individuals who are very much able to push things forward and be big. Big presence in a very good way, in an inclusive and inviting way.

00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:19.000

And that becomes a limiting resource. And so, In addition to that being a challenge, there is an opportunity there as you have smaller calls to sort of build up capacity within individuals in a less high stakes environment.

The following transcript was auto-generated, and may content syntactical errors.

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All right, let's go ahead and get started. We are. Gonna. Forward.

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Hey, you're recording. Hello and open to the first. Week of office hours. Today we are just gonna go over some quick

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Extension materials. So this is like week one, the lecture covers sort of the core concepts that you have to know.

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We go over in office hours what they call like a little bit of bonus material. So things that are good to know but aren't required in order to participate in this course.

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They would be like the extra information that we think is useful and then we, the majority of the time we can kinda just open it up for discussion so it doesn't have to go for an hour but we can ask questions.

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So we have some already written discussion questions. We drop them into the. Chat into the discord as well, but let's just jump right in.

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Okay, so. On our week one lecture, we went over this graphic and we mainly talked about teams that fell within the purple side.

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Of the purple circle. So we talked about all the different groups that were in. Purple and intersected with some of the other ones, but we didn't really get into the client teams.

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The private companies in D and the individuals. So we're gonna do a quick Walk through for the next like 15 min about what those other groups are and because they're so overflowing with different groups coming in and out.

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We've only provided you with some illustrative examples. These are not comprehensive lists. Except for the client teams, the client teams, I believe this is the up to date currently maintained.

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Them clients both execution and consensus clients. So while this list may have been bigger at 1 point, it and it might grow again at this point in time, December first, 2023.

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These are the client teams. You can see that there are 5 execution clients. There are 5 consensus clients.

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You might assume that for every execution client, a team also manages a consensus client and that is not a good assumption.

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There are some teams where they do manage both in execution and consensus clients. And typically those teams are split amongst each other.

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And but do work in concert. But many teams just run either an execution or a consensus client.

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So I'll turn it over to Matt to give some context on just the execution client teams in the consensus client teams.

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Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is a funny chart because it really shows the differences of the individual teams.

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Cause we have on the execution client side. One client team that's run basically by the EF, one, you know, one that is an entirely open source community administered by the Linux Foundation, another mind as a private company, but they also have kind of an open source client team.

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And then Aragon is, is also kind of a, it's just basically a client team in isolation with some other, you know, things that they work on.

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And Brad is owned by, Well, not owned rather it's mainly built by folks that work for paradigm.

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So that's kind of a another unique group there. And on the consensus client side, it's a very similar mix, right?

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You have a mix of private companies, open source things, and Just general kind of. Oddities of these client teams.

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I think that that's part of the good part about client diversity, right, is that we have a mix of nonprofit interests.

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We have a mix of corporate interests. We have a mix of open source projects. And they really all kind of coalesce on the core development process.

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So since client teams have kind of an outsized voice in determining what is included in forks and what is discussed on kind of or not discussed but what is developed as far as the protocol spec on layer one.

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It's good that we have this kind of diversity of interests because we don't want capture by Any specific entity or any centralized entities in their entirety.

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So it's really kind of like we showed on the previous slide a tangled mess, but it's good for that reason because we have a lot of disentangled and incentives.

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If all of these incentives were skewed towards you know, centralization, for example, we might see layer one development look very different or if all these incentives were skewed directly towards monetary return for client teams, we might see different incentives.

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So it's really kind of a fine mix of groups and it's helpful to know the context that they operate in.

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Yeah, I mean, that's kind of an overview, Tom. Is there anything you'd want to set talk about in terms of like their interplay with core development that I didn't mention or kind of how we develop in the open.

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I don't want to steal from our material going forward.

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I think we'll pause there week 6 so we get into Dev Nets I think really rips into that in a way that is.

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Super illustrative. So we'll kind of pause there, but Matt is cut it up.

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And if you attended yesterday's consensus call, that would give you a good sense of, you know, what kind of goes on.

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In you know how these teams interact with it within this sort of all core Devs ecosystem. So definitely gonna we're gonna drop that into the.

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Into the course. Stuff. So then there's private companies and Dows.

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There's literally too many to count. And oftentimes. There's some that are always kind of involved.

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You know, I, have seen certain companies and Dows always have like a representative because for various reasons but then I've also seen that some will actually sort of float in and out.

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Depending on the EIP that they might be supporting or advocating, right? That sort of matches their interests.

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So you'll see these these are maybe less like constant in terms of their participation, but I've just given some illustrative examples, consensus being one of them, chain safe, change safe, develops a load star.

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Move, start.

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If I'm the Let's start a lightout, Let's start. They also maintain many, Web 3 JS, which is the library.

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So they often have to weigh in when there's something related to changes in that would affect solidity, getting rid of the self-destruct opcode.

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That would be an example. Like getting rid of, the self-destruct opcode, that would be an example when she and SIP would come by.

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Easter is a forum. They are very involved with the with staking solo staking. So you'll see representatives way in particularly in the consensus calls they were super involved in the merge.

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Flashbots typically around like MEV related issues or, maximal extractable value is what it's called.

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Malik Dow was a big and is still a big funding arm. . Actually was funded initially, I think, by Malik.

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Dow historically and still has like a pretty strong link from their website and is some in some ways like

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In a sort of emerged out of Mallock Dow. Optimism, just one of the L two's you've seen them weigh in a couple times before because they settled to Ethereum.

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Particularly, you know, with like Testnet deprecation, I think optimism and arbitrary, we're both using girly.

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Testnet, so they had a way in. Uniswap, I think is, one of, a developer that used to be at Uniswap while they're at Uniswap was actually advocating for a certain DIP and you can actually see Uniswap in a blog.

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They actually talk about how an Uniswap P 4 they. Talk about these EIPs that they support EIP, 1153.

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It's being considered part of the theorem Cancun hard fork. Big improvement. So you kind of see how these different teams.

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Participate in the in that. Anything you want to add there, Matt.

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No, I mean, I think it's worth mentioning that these private companies Oftentimes are developing public goods and then it's not like the incentives that they are working with are kind of varied.

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Of course, a lot of them are driven by their own kind of revenue goals and business goals. But at the same time, you know, there in web 3 ecosystem especially, there's a kind of rising tide mentality where a lot of these companies you know consensus chain safe chain safe East-aker especially like these these groups optimism with their retroactive public goods funding a lot of these companies are actually contributing

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to you know, main net public goods in a very meaningful way. So they sometimes, you know, blur the lines a little bit on some of those other.

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Areas of the circles, but it's very important to I think call that out because it's not just you know, we talk about incentives a lot in Ethereum and it's not just that they these private companies are always out to.

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Work in a competitive environment but oftentimes it's very collaborative especially with regards to client Ethereum clients public goods.

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You know, protocol development. It's kind of a, it's not a winner takes all kind of scenario.

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Every improvement that we make to the protocol has the potential to benefit. Everyone. So I think that's really an interesting point to call out on the private companies.

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Point of view.

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Cool. So now we're gonna talk about individuals and this list is even more like. It's smaller specifically because one of the things that I wanted to do was not put anyone on blast that wasn't already sort of a public figure.

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So this is maybe a biased list and that the 3 people I picked are actually very, very vocal and already like out there individuals.

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So, There are many, many individuals who participate. Oftentimes they're part of organizations.

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But they are. Definitely. You know, sometimes operating, they've, some of these individuals have moved from org to org.

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So just cover 3 of them. We talked about this. Our last session, but Christine Kim was brought up as being writing great recap.

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So, you know, in the course we've published actually these slides already. So if you're following along.

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You can see her right ups that she does on Galaxy, her Galaxy blog and her Twitter, but she used to be at, I believe, Coin Desk and used to host a podcast about the merge.

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So. A journalist and researcher who's been covering Ethereum and participates. Just really great recaps.

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I think everyone really appreciates it and I know that the, the the folks who run the Core Dev's call actually have become to come to rely on Christine's recaps as not just a from the journalistic standpoint, but also as being sort of a source of notes.

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Evan Vanessa is a creator and curator of Week and Ethereum News.

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That gives quite a few updates, attends most of the calls are watches them puts together it and then a super fizz is a member of in basically kind of like the they'll be evangelist of Eat Staker, huge advocate for solace taking in Ethereum client diversity.

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If you participate, if you were watching the merge live stream. That was Super Fizz hosting it.

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And was sort of going from person to person and and was running that that live stream so super fizz big advocate for client diversity.

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Manages I think client diversity.org. Basically with individuals. Any individual can participate.

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And they're often finding the easiest way to participate is via EIPs, right? So it's like proposing an EIP and helping bringing it through the process.

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Any anyone else you might wanna highlight or just as you're thinking about. Individuals and educators, evangelists that kinda like.

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We didn't put on here, but you think should be sort of mentioned. Matt.

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Hmm.

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I'm not, yeah, we could, I mean.

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We can leave it to this list not to put anyone on blast. I think these are known people. They their personalities are out there they wouldn't mind they don't mind being mentioned in this context.

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Yeah.

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Gotcha. Yeah, no, I mean, I think this is a, this is a pretty good.

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Lists because a lot of the other folks are, you know, people on Twitter that you see. People in various forums.

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Some of them like this is where it kind of crosses over with the Ethereum Foundation. Like little circle, but people like, you know, dank red and, you know, Tim Baker and Danny Ryan, they're also kind of like evangelists that work as individuals in the ecosystem and have like name recognition to talk about various topics and build awareness.

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So the Ethereum Foundation kind of fosters a lot of these folks, whether they are actively.

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At the Ethereum Foundation or, you know, coming at a later time. Yeah, Bankless is a good one.

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A lot of these big kind of organizations that do the work of breaking down. The complexities of Ethereum for anyone, you know, that's kind of where I put in this group.

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And this is a mix of you know, volunteers. Companies like you said the Ethereum Foundation individuals so it's a variety of interest to which is which is great because it gives a bunch of different perspectives there.

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So I think this will take us to our first sort of mention of the, you know, a big aspect.

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And this was mentioned in the orientation video that we were recorded. Is project based learning. So. We have 2 tracks in this course, one that is 4 developers and one is for researchers.

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Journalists, writers, anyone who's maybe not going to be deploying code. And so.

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You know, we're sort of asking those who are participating in this course to become one of those individuals.

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And so If you're a developer on the developer track. You will deploy, adapt to a Devnet depending on the timing.

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It might just be to a test net. But we want you to go through that process because it helps test, you know, upgrades as are happening.

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The if you're not on that track if you're on the sort of journalist researcher track we want you to actually add to the corpus of information out there and sort of find an underdeveloped bit of information that hasn't been written about or explored and either by yourself or with a group of people create some sort of new bit of information, add to the corpus, put it out there.

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And so These are good examples for you to look at from the journalist, educator, of Angela side of how to do that.

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But more to come on that.

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So now, you know, we sort of hit the 15 min mark that we wanted to. And so the rest of this time is yours, but we did.

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Come up with some just discussion questions that we have. That could be a jumping off point so i'm just gonna run through these really quick and then we'll open it up to questions from the group.

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But one of the things that we want you to think about is based on what you've heard, it's based on what you've heard, what are obstacles that you could see that would prevent Ethereum from being upgraded?

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Like what are the obstacles that, you know, if we wanted to upgrade a theory of today, say we wanted to add

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To every you know, block header a bit of information, what would prevent us from doing that? What would be obstacles you run into?

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Is it possible for any single individual to know completely how a theory works? If not, how are upgrades able to successfully occur without major bugs or issues?

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Another one is what basic skills are assumed for an individual participating in the Ethereum community. Drop the hint there.

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If you click on some of the links that we provided, that will kind of look, show you what are the platforms that the various notes and discussions are stored on.

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What obstacles might an individual encounter in the journey to becoming a core dev. How can these obstacles be removed or overcome either by groups?

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Collaboratively or from the individual themselves and then what part of this community is most confusing to you.

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So we're just gonna open it up. If you have questions, drop them in the chat. If you want to talk about any of these groups, this time is yours.

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And then once those kind of die out, we'll wrap up with kind of what's what's coming next.

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So the floor is to this group. Feel free to unmute as well if you'd like to.

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Well, let's start with, let's start with one of them.

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I really have too many questions. Hi. I am fascinated. Like I got a job at consensus.

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I used to be a Block Phi because I wanted to be closer to the metal like. I feel Ethereum is the future.

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And I want to learn as much as I can. I mean becoming a core dev I'd have to be a Dev first which I'm not I just would love, you know, a path to learn like.

00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:10.000

As much as I can. I mean. Yeah. I know if that's a question or not.

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I apologize.

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Well, you are on that path. So what do you what would you like to learn about? We can we can give you we can give you some insight.

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Yeah, I guess that's a great question. I mean, I, you know, I'm kind of curious just by your book.

00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:34.000

I see you've got a theorem blockchain on there. You know, How, you know.

00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:41.000

I guess I don't know where to start. So wherever the beginning is.

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How did you know that? How did you become again?

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Break. So that's a great question. Yeah, how do you how do you start? I think is it is that is a fantastic question.

00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:59.000

So a lot of times We push people when they're first getting into Ethereum, interestingly to the Bitcoin white paper.

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That's where we often have people start, even though there is an Ethereum white paper, we push into the Bitcoin white paper.

00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:15.000

And the reason for that is to show that 2 things I think from like a Introduction and pedagogy standpoint.

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:31.000

One is that Bitcoin, the Bitcoin white paper actually shows I think very simply how Bitcoin blockchain itself is a combination of like old technologies that were pulled together in a unique way.

00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:43.000

So consensus mechanisms that have existed for various reasons, whether that's. Routing of various, you know, IT.

00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:58.000

API requests or even going back further like how do you, achieve consensus on a certain network state right as in sort of like the seventies and the eighties.

00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:08.000

Also combined with sort of the modern emerging internet technologies of that era. So, you know.

00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:14.000

When the Bitcoin white paper came out and you're thinking about like, 2,008 and that in sort of what was going on.

00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:20.000

You know, those sort of combinations of technology. So take all technologies and making something new.

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:30.000

It's also really simply written. It's not overly technical. So we typically start people there and then move them to the Ethereum White paper, which is a bit more technical.

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:43.000

And you know has what I would say, you know, italic sort of tone of voice and how it's it's written it sort of does sort of capture how people generally do write in Ethereum which tends to be a little bit more technical.

00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:58.000

A little bit more assuming. An understanding or a desire to go down like a link rabbit hole to figure out what's being talked about.

00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:04.000

And so I think those are kind of like. When anyone sets on a journey, that's where you start.

00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:25.000

And then from there, depending if you want to go on that. Do I really want to become a dev journey, which I would argue that As long as you gain the requisite sort of vocabulary and knowledge, you can continue and actually be a core dev without being a true developer as long as you're willing to basically explain and demystify.

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:36.000

And for sort of the end user but if you do want to go down the depth journey there is a course that's being transferred over to education dial called.

00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:47.000

Basic training, which is like a self guided. It's, sort of written in the style of it takes a lot of inspiration from.

00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:55.000

Free code camp and it's like here is how you can basically become

00:21:55.000 --> 00:22:04.000

A core it sort of become a developer and sort of build those skills.

00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:15.000

Anything you want, else you want to add there, Matt. I think that's kind of like the good place to start and then that goes into developer boot camp and then obviously you could keep on keep on specializing.

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:25.000

You basically never, to bring it back to one of these discussion questions as well. It's not possible for any individual to know anything completely about how a theorem works.

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:42.000

So specialization and becoming like knowledgeable about one part of Ethereum and adding your expertise there, whether that's the user experience, whether that's on maximal extractable value, whether that's on consensus mechanisms, whether that's on.

00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:48.000

Sort of just user.

00:22:48.000 --> 00:23:00.000

Like users gaining knowledge about the protocol and how it works. That is all, something that like, It's no longer possible for a single person to be that like mega.

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:06.000

Evangelist. So it's okay to specialize and eventually you do have to specialize to be able to participate.

00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:09.000

But yeah. Any other comments you wanna add, Matt?

00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:20.000

I mean, honestly, I think the great place to start is@the.org. The Ethereum Foundation has done a great job of Breaking down.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:32.000

All of the complex topics in Ethereum. From a top level top down point of view, which I think is really great because you go in and they say Here the basic concepts of Ethereum.

00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:36.000

If there's like actually the whole learning hub that they have, it's really great.

00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:42.000

It tells you about, again, here are the basic concepts. And then from there, there's places to drill down on individual perspectives.

00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:48.000

Which I think is awesome. It also allows you to get into the research if you really would like to.

00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:55.000

There's also a literal documentation page on there website that has overviews of what the Ethereum specifications mean.

00:23:55.000 --> 00:24:00.000

So I would just peruse that's usually where I tell people to start if they have no clue what Ethereum is. I say go to Ethereum.

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:07.000

Dot org. I think the, like I said, has done a great job of kind of turning around with this actually looks like.

00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:10.000

The meta mask learn page is also a great place to learn about what it actually means to do stuff in web 3.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:22.000

This is primarily for the recording for folks who are brand new, but if you're looking to understand like how interactions in web 3 work, I think that's a really interesting place.

00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:30.000

But if you're alert like if you want to become on that kind of core developer or at least a core understanding of the protocol perspective.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:40.000

I do, I recommend Ethereum's website. Cause there's tons of tons of stuff in there Learn Hub and it's pretty well laid out and they have some cool graphics.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000

Thank you both.

00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:51.000

Yeah, great questions. Thanks for jumping in. Any, I just wanna highlight that there is, in the chat.

00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:56.000

There were 2 recommendations of books that I would actually totally co-sign the first one. I don't know the second one, but I imagine based off of the recommendation of the first one, the second one is probably pretty good.

00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:07.000

Mastering Ethereum by Andres and Denopolis. Great book, very in depth.

00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:17.000

Goes from 0 to a hundred And then back and back again. Fantastic. Programming Bitcoin, I haven't heard of it.

00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:34.000

If the question ask or wants to come off mute and say who's by. Or give a little summary of it I chose your choice but sounds like that's a really good one too because it probably goes over I guess that the UTXO model which is like how.

00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:56.000

Bitcoin transactions work, which are. Not the same as how Ethereum transactions work.

00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:00.000

Programming Bitcoin is by an author called.

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:13.000

Oh, Jimmy Song, yes. A figure of great. Discussion with in this space.

00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:20.000

And an opinionated individual. Who has definitely brought a lot of good.

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:33.000

Focus into the space. And I'll just leave it at that.

00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:48.000

So we have a question. How big a theorem Dallas? So technically, and actually literally, Ethereum is not a decentralized autonomous organization, even though it operates like one.

00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:58.000

So maybe it kind of blends the you know, what actually a a Dow is.

00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:17.000

But if an EIP gets accepted, how does it go through? Without spoiling Nix Week's material, which is literally about this, this is a good Thank you for like queuing up next week's lecture.

00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:26.000

The EIP process. Is well sort of foreshadow.

00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:34.000

It is bureaucratic. Let's put it that way. So. Here I'm going to ask you to keep.

00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:53.000

Yeah. 2 concepts simultaneously in your head. And those concepts are that How that a organization could be decentralized and actually maybe have what seems Like.

00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:56.000

A.

00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:05.000

Confusing array of ways that things need to be. And at the same time, have quite a bit of bureaucracy.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:20.000

As well. And those seem like they're in conflict with each other. But from experience. They're not you can have quite a bit of bureaucracy and have systems and processes that folks have to navigate.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:27.000

That are documented. As well as having sort of these undocumented norms.

00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:33.000

That folks have to navigate to get things done. That feel a little bit more like how do I do that?

00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:40.000

I don't know where it's written down. I'll pause there if anything you want to add.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:41.000

On that.

00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:43.000

Yeah, I mean, it's again, it's a bureaucratic process, but anybody can.

00:28:43.000 --> 00:29:01.000

Anybody can push EIPs. They're accepted via a consensus of core developers. And as I mentioned, core developers are primarily comprised of client teams and researchers and other individuals.

00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:06.000

However, basically any individual can champion the IP and what that means is you can go on the Cordevs call.

00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:20.000

You can say, hey, I want to talk about the merits of what I've written. You talk about the merits of what you've written if you make a compelling enough case oftentimes your EIP will be accepted, especially if you've done the legwork of coding.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:30.000

Groups of concept for your EIP. So if you have a reference implementation and code. You might have pseudo code, you might have a PR to some Ethereum clients.

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:36.000

Those are oftentimes how things get progressed is if someone's willing to do the work and willing to make.

00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:48.000

A compelling case, then barring other priorities they can be included I don't wanna spoil too too much, but that's basically the short version of it.

00:29:48.000 --> 00:30:01.000

And the long version will get into next week on Wednesday.

00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:10.000

Good questions. Any other questions or comments? For discussion questions that. Books want to throw to the group.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:18.000

Yeah, kind of off topic a bit, but I'm kind of curious, you know, you mentioned start the Bitcoin white paper, the Ethereum white paper.

00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:27.000

If someone looking to the future. And we're in a company in 10 years on based on some sort of layer one, what would that company be based on?

00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:32.000

Like I believe it begins, it ends with Ethereum or it ends with Ethereum, but I'm sure I'm wrong.

00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:37.000

I'm just kinda curious what else is there.

00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:44.000

It's a great question. I think that the best talk that I've seen and if. Matt, you can maybe pull this up.

00:30:44.000 --> 00:31:00.000

I think it was, at community conference, alik gave a talk that's like Ethereum's future roadmap, which actually expands out like 5.

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.000

Years at least and

00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:14.000

I think the vision of that is of this. Sort of, hey, Ethereum is part of an ecosystem.

00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:40.000

That is. Allowing for cross chain communication that's allowing for sharding of data to sort of reduce the amount of state that has to be on any given node that's embracing the idea of like clients so that you can eventually move, you know, it I think arguably today there's some folks who say that on a Samsung Galaxy 9, I could be wrong on this.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:59.000

You technically. Have the capabilities to run like a. Not a light client, but like a mid, like a sort of stripped down aetherium execution layer client on that that tech stack of phone.

00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:08.000

Do not quote me on that, but if someone wants to try it, I have. Heard from a very credible source that they were able to make it work.

00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:14.000

But you could sort of see a feature where the convergence of Database technologies.

00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:21.000

Old database technologies and ones that are being put forward. So like, you know, sharding and things like that.

00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:43.000

A lot of work that's happening on what we'd call near and far edge computing. So by near edge, I mean like data centers or data storage spots that are close proximity to you and far edge that being like mobile devices that you're taking around with you that have computing power but won't have necessarily.

00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:55.000

Always be in high connectivity environments. It this talk sort of outlines like what does it look like to build a global settlement layer?

00:32:55.000 --> 00:33:08.000

That involves sort of a lighter version of Ethereum. And leverages these technologies to sort of take sort of the transaction through put volume off of the shoulders.

00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:17.000

Of a theorem and puts it more on the L two's or L three's which are sometimes being called app chains.

00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:24.000

And sort of this creating like a chain of chain worlds where anyone can sort of spin up something, settle to it.

00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:29.000

Do governance on chain.

00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:46.000

Use the sort of economic security that's provided by different blockchains to empower new sort of models of governance but also just like applications.

00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:58.000

So I think in 10 years alongside question is like if that sort of thesis holds true and I think that's sort of like the cleanest articulation that I've seen of like what the future state would be.

00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:15.000

It would probably be a company that's able to live in this multi-chain world, allow individuals to spin up and spin down resources as they need them and settle to a certain layer and basically build the tooling around that.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:35.000

And what you might imagine is that that company might not look like. You know, if that company actually might be like a consortium or DOW of companies and individuals that are working together to build that sort of future because similar to what Ethereum as a technology is proven.

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:57.000

It's like at this point it's impossible for any single individual to know completely how it works, I think the same thing will be true is that the space will be big enough that Web 3 as we're sort of terming it, would be able to support multiple sort of businesses and individuals who are specializing in key functions.

00:34:57.000 --> 00:35:21.000

But then they collaborate together to actually build a full service model. And I think you're starting to actually see these behaviors emerge amongst companies in the space as they're choosing to move towards if not a decentralized version, but like more federated models of working instead of trying to take the approach of like building impenetrable moats.

00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:26.000

Around their technology stack. They're trying to open up their technology. Stacks to allow others. To build and modify them.

00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:35.000

So that's what I would, you know, that's sort of the utopian view in 10 years for me.

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:38.000

Amazing. Thank you so much.

00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:44.000

Now we just have to build it though. That's the the challenge.

00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:47.000

If you build it, they will come.

00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:57.000

It's true. Or if you allow them to all build it together, will argue about a bunch of stuff, but eventually we'll get 80% of the way there.

00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:04.000

That might that might actually be the biggest takeaway from this course if you allow everyone to build it together.

00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:18.000

And we all argue about it. We'll probably get 80% of the way there and that's pretty dang good.

00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:30.000

Any other questions, comments, discussion? Thank you for everything that everyone's. Shared thus far.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:37.000

Matt found the video so it shared that in the chat.

00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:43.000

Alright, well, if there aren't anymore, well, I'll just kinda go through kind of the closing slides for today.

00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:49.000

We can we can wrap up a bit early. I know it's it's a Friday. So a couple of things.

00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:55.000

One thing to just think about.

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:57.000

How do I become a core dev?

00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:03.000

We need a consensus of the core devs to do that. I'll do it. I mean you're not a core dev.

00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:08.000

I'd be a cordev. No, you're not the core desk. How do I become a Cordov?

00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.000

We'll talk about that offline.

00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:13.000

We need a consensus.

00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:18.000

So just keep thinking about, you know, how do I want to become a core dev and what journey you might go on to do that.

00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:24.000

We've arranged a guest speaker for you. It's Pooja Rajan from, he's a, from Ethereum cat herders.

00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:31.000

That's gonna be on Monday, December, the fourth from 11 a. M. To noon Pacific time on eastern time that would be 2 to 3 p.

00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:39.000

M. And I can't do any of the other conversions because My brain is mush.

00:37:39.000 --> 00:37:49.000

So here's the zoom link. We're adding it into the course. You'll start getting email updates about when things are happening.

00:37:49.000 --> 00:38:02.000

And we're really excited at Pooja. Please come bring your questions. She's gonna be talking about like why does Ethereum cat her seem to exist and what was sort of like the genesis that left to that.

00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:08.000

Where she's very gracious, give us an hour of her time. So, really take advantage of it.

00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:27.000

She is, has a wealth of information. Is one of the few people who well not everyone can know everything she's one of the few people who literally talks to everyone in this space and so has an unprecedented wealth of knowledge with regards to the individuals that she has talked to, interviewed, gotten on camera, talking about EIPs, talking about innovations that they're building.

00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:44.000

Just a super knowledgeable individual. Did we just have some overview so some background reading that we suggest beforehand is to go check out this slide that was in the lecture deck.

00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:48.000

It's also we put in the office hour stick as well.

00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:56.000

So on that note, we'll have that on the fourth and then we'll be back with, lecture 2 starting off on Wednesday of next week.

00:38:56.000 --> 00:39:07.000

So that'll be December sixth. We'll kinda follow that flow, for the next 2 weeks before we have our first break.

00:39:07.000 --> 00:39:10.000

So, thank you all. I hope you enjoyed this office hours. Thanks you for the discussion.

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:18.000

Think about those discussion