This is epicenter episode 397 with guests dank advised. Welcome to epicenter the podcast where we interview crypto, Founders, Builders and thought leaders. I'm Frederick a chance and I'm here with Brian Crane. And today, we're speaking with thank had faced, who is a researcher at the theorem foundation and heads the effort into sharding and statelessness updates for a theorem to.
But before we talk about the theorem to with anchored, we'd like to tell you about our our sponsors for this week para, swap just came out with a huge update. That's even faster and more liquid. It's cheaper than Yuna Swap and comes with a new, gastric band that can cut your gas fees by up to 50%. Para swap is now multi chain and has expanded to polygons and violence. Marching start trading at Paris
Opera dot IO / epicenter. And also, by Exodus Exodus is an easy-to-use wallet, which supports lots of assets and has native apps for all the platforms including IOS and Android, it's a pulley non-custodial. Your wallets, they believe in not your keys, not your coins. And so yeah go to Exodus.com and give it a try and with that. Yeah, let's let's head over to dunk rat. Thanks so much for coming on. Maybe you can start.
Before we dive into all of the technical topics you might need to do things have a little bit and telling us sort of how your journey has come to working on the theorem. Yeah. Hello. Thanks for having me. Yeah, my My journey to etherium is, yeah. A bit different from probably most people because I came to it quite late. I'd say. So I only started fully working in Ethiopia, research around 2019. And before that I work for all different tech companies.
I had a start-up and I was basically recruited into the ECM research team after I had saw after some research problems earlier for them and worked on them. And yeah. So basically, since early 2019, I'm working for the ATM research team, it has been like a very fun journey and I'm really enjoying doing research on the
future of is here. So we had an episode on ethereum to recently with Danny Ryan and we actually ended up talking about the merge and the switch to proof of stake for the entire episode. But there's a couple of more more updates that are coming with a theorem to. So can you give us a very brief overview over the potential protocol updates and where they are at right now before we Deep dive into them. Right. So yeah, I mean there, there there will be several more
updates. I think like the, the really, the biggest one that everyone is waiting for is the big promised upgrade of sharding and so probably like a while after the merge, I don't know, I would estimate between six and 12 months. We will activate data shots which essentially means we are adding this very large.
Age data, availability layer to a theorem, which means that you might have heard of Roll-Ups, which are basically a system where you only post transaction data to the train and you don't actually execute them. You either use fraud proofs or zero, knowledge proof in order to ensure that all this is actually valid and and the data shots actually allow us to instead of posting that data on the current very limited. He's one chain, that will be Merged into the beacon chain on
with emerge. Instead of posting it on there, you can post it to to these data shots and ensure like it's available in every one can very easily verify that it's available. But it will be much, much cheaper because you have so much more space available there. This further to this, there will be a lot of work on, on the security of this. So, we will, we have kind of opted for this gradual rollout, where we don't like Do everything in one big bang, which kind of started with
actually started. Last December with launching the beacon chain and we'll continue with the merge and then roll out of sharding. And they were basically after that, there will be many further upgrades, which are probably a bit less obviously visible to the user because they're more security upgrades. So, we cannot opt for this way of rolling out features. First, we start by like making
the big rolling. The big features and then we add everything that is required to get them to towards the highest security. And so they will basically be all the work around ensuring data availability and that's the the proof of custody and data availability checks which are basically further upgrades that are required to make it to make data availability. Basically fully incentive comp.
Compatible like to make sure that there are no incentive problems for validators before we go into, I think there's like so much already. I think that you should probably explore a bit more. So you mentioned that the first sort of charting is this data. So data really charts. Can you explain in? So, today, right, we have the existing assume that we know and, you know, it's very much a capacity and the transactions are too expensive and being too big. Pain for a lots of to the users.
So, when you have these data visibility charts, like, how will they help scale if you're a man? You know what kind of parts that gets executed today or any theorem will be moved there? Yeah, so and that's basically going to be the Roll-Ups. So when you're here already we already have several Roll-Ups active on ECM now, so for example, zks think and others. And basically right now the way
they work is they, they post. So for example, zika roll up works by posting this blob of data, on the chain that says like here, all the transactions he is. And then at the end there's a proof that says okay this is the new state route that comes out of it. So with data availability charts, you have only have to put this very last part on the execution chain.
You only have to put the part that says, this is the proof and this is the new state route on the on the actual execution chain and everything else just can just go on on the data availability shots. So you basically save like a huge amount of guests that you don't need anymore to post this data. But actually today, I guess you don't have roll ups taking up a big part of the block space.
I haven't looked at the stats in detail, but I would suspect that at least I mean, they're still, very, very new, right? Like we haven't had Roll-Ups for a very long time, but I, I would suspect that they would very quickly dominate. The Block space because essentially, they allow you to do things paying about 100 times less gas. So, why would you do transaction and pay a 100 times more.
If you can do it for 100 times less, And and, of course, since it's much cheaper, there will be a lot more transaction, right? I mean, it's a kind of an obvious like consequence from having some sort of demand curve for transactions. So I would say, the natural economic equilibrium should be that almost everything happens inside. Roll-Ups. Okay, so let's talk about the concept of a shot, right? So is the shot kind of like a second Block Chain that runs in parallel with the first one, or
how do I, how do I imagine this? So I will I will answer for this question from the perspective of data sharding, which is kind of this goal that we're currently working towards and there might be, or they will likely be in the further future execution charts, which will actually also be also an execute code. But that is currently like, that is several years in the future and and so, I, I will not take that many into account because data shots, already achieve a lot of what we want to do.
So from the perspective, Effective of the data shots that were rolling out. Now, you shouldn't see the shots really as, as different blockchains because they will not come, they will not kind of come with their own Fork, Choice Rule and build on each other. And so on, it's basically just you could say it's just additional blocks of data that you put on the Chain but with a special property and that
property is that full nodes. Do not need to download this flops in order to ensure that they are available. Like they it that we have a scalable solution that allows for nodes to know that they are available without downloading them. How does it work? So this is, this comes from a very interesting technique that is called Data availability sampling.
And the essential idea, is that you can you can sample your sample, small amounts, Randomly selected from the data and thus you know, that very, very likely very large parts of the data available. So this is obviously not enough because when you, if you do that then you notice that. Oh like but 99.9% of the data being available is not enough because that 0.1% could be exactly where an attacker hides
their malicious transaction. That prints one trillion ether, for example, we need 100% and the way you do that is by encoding the data in a special way. That makes sure that even if you only have fifty percent of it, you can always reconstruct 100%. And that is the key trick towards data available T that allows it to scale. And that means that basically with a very small constant amount. So it does not actually depend on the total amount of data that we ensure to be available of
these samples. You can ensure that the full data is always available for download. If you look at the theorem one, you have - and you will have validators after after the mud. So, how are the shots maintained are there? Also validators who maintain the shots? Yes. So validators will be randomly selected essentially, so that they are, there are committees. A comedy is is a random selection from the full validator set.
And these basically validate the shards, they They are kind of I guess the right thing to say with data shots, they are the first barrier. This is the first group of people who like are responsible for checking that the full data is available and they need to do nothing else because there is no execution so they do not need to do anything except for knowing that the data is available because that's all the data shots too. And the validators. They are, but they only validate on the Todd's.
They don't validate on the main chain. They do know know that it's invalid data. So this is It's only one set of valid data sits all the stuff, okay? And they both they both validate, the beacon chain and they validate the shots. And and this is, this is essentially like I mean this is one of the I mean this is why why sharding is so important in our terms, like it's this notion that we call shared security. So like the essential part is we don't want.
I mean, you could ask the question like well, Well, can't can't can't. You just have like many different blockchains communicating with each other and you get the same as child's problem is that you don't you don't get shared security. Like each of these blockchains only has its own smaller, valid data sets, and so has much less value securing it. Whereas like in and shouted system the essential thing is that it's always the full value that is securing the the whole system.
There's no like subset that is responsible for one child. Okay, so basically say I'm a validator now, on on the main chain and I also then have to validate the shots. Do I have to validate all of them or do I get a subset? Basically, you get randomly assigned every Epoch to one of them. So, basically, it's, you have like, a completely, a completely random one that you have to validate. So you don't have to validate all of them. You will be on your bill.
We will be validating all of them, but each Epoch, you only a Prague, you only validate one of them and That Is Random. So the you are, you're basically, you are you're only doing the work of validating. One of them. Okay, so does this also mean that proof of stake is a prerequisite for for sharding. So the answer was yes. And the reason is that - don't have any sort of identity.
So you cannot the notion of assigning like a minor to a random committee and telling them like you need to validate this chart. Now doesn't make any sense because they don't have any. The only thing that identifies them as how many how much hash power they have whereas validators improves take the I have to pay this deposit and after that, they have a public key and we can say like this is the public key that is now in this committee.
So in that way, it is essential to have proof of stake for shaving. Okay. And I am data shots created equal or are there different flavors and how many of them were there be? So they, they are, they are exactly equal. There's no difference between them. The only way is how applications use them. So, they could be Roll-Ups, which basically decide, I only accept blocks that are submitted on a certain shot number, which
makes sense for them. Because then they need to check less data for whether it's relevant for them. But but from the from the consensus layer, they are exactly equal. And how can I make sure that my transaction gets send to the right chart so this would this would only be relevant. So I mean this is an application specific detail but like but the and the answer will depend on
what kind of roll up your use. And it's I would say it's very likely that in most applications a user will not usually at least directly send their transaction to a heart or like to the validators even and they were rather send it to who Verb is responsible for creating blocks of the stroll up and they will then put it on on a chart. So if I understand correctly, the data shards, are mainly targeted at Roll-Ups, can I use this to store other kind of data?
So kind of say, for instance, Oracle data, that kind of clogs the blockchain currently Yes. I mean I don't see why it couldn't be used for oracle's. Yeah, I mean you have to think about basically the only thing is it would still be a kind of roll up Oracle, I guess. Like, so in a way in a way, it's all Roll-Ups. Yeah, but but I mean, you can, you can have many different kinds of Roll-Ups. Like, you could have like, a contract specific roll up.
Like, I mean, actually many Roll-Ups right now, are very application-specific. Right. For example, they only do transfers which is in essence one application. So, I think the roll-up notion is not is not restrictive. It can do everything. It's just, it's just an a way of implementing what you want to do, when you want to trade tokens on ethereum, make sure to
consider para swap. First drop is a decentralized exchange aggregator so that you can get the best price across multiple ethereum Texas. And now Paris Rob has just been integrated in Ledger life. This means you can swap tokens using your lecture directly from The Ledger Lite app.
No third parties involved. / strap is also multi chain and available on polygon and Vine and smart chain, give Paris Opera. Try at Paris, Rob dot IO, / epicenter, we'd like to thank Paris or up for their support of epicenter. Maybe we make sense to spend, like, a few minutes, if you could explain a little bit like, how you roll ups work, and what do you think the role of Roll-Ups is going to be in the future?
Yeah. Roll-Ups are essentially this notion that you use the chain, only to ensure that data is available without itself, Computing. The correct execution of the of the data. So most obvious way this is when you when you use. So there are two flavors of Roll-Ups, right says, they're optimistic Roll-Ups and ZK. Roll-Ups also do not roll ups so the way ZK Roll-Ups to do this as maybe the more obvious ones. Like you put all the transaction data on the chain and then you
have a zero. Knowledge proof that says, this is the result of the execution of that. And here is the new state route. Now you could ask the question why, why do I Neva need to put the data on the Chain? If I know that the computation was done correctly, right? What why does that matter? And the reason for that is that you need to be able to reconstruct the state as well as just the route. Like if you just have the root of the problem is that the root is not enough to Access your
account. You always also need a proof that shows that your balance in that account is X, right? You need this as well and you can only generate that if you have the stage. So that's why it's essential for preserving this. Trust listeners that you that you also get all the data that's required to reconstruct the state. This can actually be less than all the transactions so you can also in a 0, ZK, Roll-Ups for example, it can also just be a diff of the state.
It Just beat literally like the difference in the states that you need to put on chain. But that part is essentially an optimistic roll-up. Does it slightly differently? It's puts all a list of all the transactions. And in this case, it has to be all the transactions, even including signatures on the chain and also adds like the new statute says, like this is the result of executing this.
And then anyone can, if there was an incorrect one, if there was some incorrect execution and this is not the correct outcome. And then anyone can post the fraud proof that regards this block and and resets the chain to the previous state. So that ensures that and a fraudulent transaction can never be included in that roll up. To get some more background on, ZK, sink, and ZK Roll-Ups. Last week's episode was with Alex Kowski of matted apps. So you can also go back one
episode and check that out. So tancred can I ask about this switch from full charts or execution, charts. As you call it them earlier to date, availability charts because if I require it correctly, a while ago, with the idea was to actually have full execution charts, that would not just Data available but also be able to execute smart contracts and then loop back into the main chain.
Why was this abandoned? Or at least, if not abandoned, then kind of split into two into a journey of two parts. Right, so to be actually clear here, I think doing this data shots. First has always been on the road map, but was probably less emphasized. I guess, several years ago, it was thought that this is like just a first step to kind of test the whole system out and test it under load and more and more it has become clear. I would say how awesome Roll-Ups are like how, what's because
they own their own? Own already provide, provide this 100x geylang essentially if they do, if you do them well. So in the end, you could ask the question. Like, why would you do? Why would you even do and like even on the execution trials? Why would you do anything other
than Roll-Ups? So this is I would say why it has more converge towards this notion of well actually like the main the main advantage like the the huge scaling comes when you have the roll-ups And, and maybe execution in the end, won't even be necessary. But the fact of 100, I mean
that's still not enough, right? I mean, basically, if you look at the adoption of a theorem right now and the potential adoption of a theorem and if you if you then also look at what the, what the gas prices currently are, it seems to me that a factor of 100. Yeah, it's something but it's not a lot. All right. Absolutely. Oh no. But I mean the the Roll-Ups can scale the current system as it is pre sharding by I 100 x. Now once we add sharding data
shots, just data shots. So that then you get another, like, 100x of the data availability roughly, like order of magnitude. So now, we had 10,000 x, so that is, that is a serious amount of scaling to start with. And that is not an absolute limit like we can add further shots. So the 64 shouts is, is according to that. Is that is just a constant and of course there are Trade-offs and like, it depends on how much value we have at stake and also importantly, how many users they
are? How many shots we can support securely but it can be scaled further from that point. So there's no dead that that 100x is not the limit that we are at. Let's go back to the execution charts. So I Now understand that the data availability shots were always part of the plan, but what do you gain from execution? Charts that currently data availability charts. I cannot give to a theorem.
So I guess this depends. So this basically, this depends on how far zero knowledge proof technology will develop in the future. So I think the main downside there are basically some downsides of optimistic Roll-Ups in terms of their finality interests while I mean. Yeah. So so basically, they need this very annoying to week withdrawal, delay that you can kind of work around. Small users like that. Don't have too much value but but it's always gonna be a
problem. Like the solution is great for many things but it's not perfect. So now if you if you have very good if we can get a very good zero-knowledge virtual machine basically complete virtual machine that you can run inside a zero knowledge proof within
the next few years. Then theoretically Akley, you can already with that, like build, essentially what I excuse and charts from from what we have now and then potentially at that point, getting execution charts might just mean nothing more than a training that that ZK roll up, that is doing that. So that might be like a very simple step, if we if we get there. Well, I mean, I'm very interested to see the progress on those. Like, there's your knowledge proof.
Space has like made Really amazing progress and almost every year, like delivered more than I would have expected. So I would I would not say it's impossible, but it is still a very, very difficult thing to, to deliver the full.
The full kind of everything that the ebm does now in a, in a Sleek a roll up. If we don't get that, then execution shots might basically special kinds of sharks, where you essentially get Much faster finality because the difference to like the problem with the with the optimistic Roll-Ups is that you have these kind of finality delays and and if we if we do make validators responsible again for taking execution which is essentially what an execution child would
mean. Then then you would basically get get this another settlement layer on top. I would say. Well that's super interesting. I actually I would love it if you can speculate a little bit on how you think to sort of supply of if you block space and through produce going to develop, you know in the next year or so and how much and when you think those different technologies will start to have an impact.
Right. I mean, I think my intuition, is that we can see the impact of Roll-Ups right now. Like we have seen this huge crash in gas prices, essentially, and I think that is probably partially because a lot of people have actually moved to roll ups. Now, for some simple applications, which is amazing, I don't think the gas reduction on the main chain is going to last, but the reduction on the roll-up is going to last. So, so That's pretty great. So there there's basically right
now at least for simple things. There is already. This pretty much 100 X increase in Supply as Longwood as what you want to do, is transfer some of the theory, ether or ESC, 20. And then, the next the next, very big thing from that will essentially be shouting. So, when we activate the data charts, then for everyone who uses Roll-Ups, there will be another 100x. Increase in Supply and block space. Let's get to our sponsor.
Exodus Exodus is a fantastic crypto currency wallet, that strikes the right balance between ease-of-use security and great features. You can get Exodus on the iPhone desktop app. Web app, Android whatever platform you use. It's a noncustodial wallet. That is so critical. Because what's the point of crypto? If you don't control your own assets with Exodus, you always do Old school and they've been around since 2015 over 1.2 million users rely on Exodus.
So you know that they've stood the test of time, they have support for over 100 different crypto acids and remove in Exodus. You can easily change one different asset to the order. They also allow you to buy crypto with Fiat and they even have a great offer where you can buy up to $500 worth of crypto through the IOS app and pay just $1 in fee. So go to Exodus Dot. Cam epicenter and check out their wallet. We want to thank Exodus for their amazing support of
epicenter. One of the problems that you also get with execution charts, but if you were to introduce them, right? Is cross shot. Communication and composability and the consequences of this on finality. Do you think this is, this is such a hard problem. That it's it won't be solved or do you think if we need to we can solve this It's not so much that cross shots like cross track. Communication is not an unsolvable problem. It is just a difficult engineering problem to get all
the details, right? At least for a synchronous, communication for synchronous. Then then yes. The you have, you have a very difficult problem at hand. Not an unsolvable one again, but I think that that yes that is essentially my guess would be, that's not going to happen. That you will do synchronous Communications across shots or in data shots World used. You actually have the same problem. It's basically cross roll up core Communication in this case, Okay.
Can you just explain synchronous and asynchronous communication in this context? Yes. So asynchronous is basically without like without a certain delivery guarantee like you can't you can't so so so far as communication would be what enables composability directly linking charts which I think is is not is not a very realistic thing to expect in that in this sense because Because it would mean that anyone can lock up resources on the blockchain.
Like, I mean, essentially what compost ability means is that you have this lock on the on the whole chain in a way, right? Where only you get to determine what happens and I don't feel like this is likely to be a thing across Trout's although very theoretically possible. I mean, in Computing, we have
all the models to do that. Doesn't make that much sense to me. They are all kinds of ideas to get around this, but I think the more realistic thing of how that will work out is that that you have certain ecosystems interest certain shots or certain Roll-Ups that care about composability internally. But not but are a little more Loosely coupled to the other systems around them.
And our key was as synchronous communication, which is If you send a message and it will be delivered at some point, but you don't have any guarantee. When like any absolute guarantee and practice, it will always be very, very fast but you have to consider this very worst case that it could be delayed for a very long time. Okay, so let's talk about composability across data shot. So basically, if I have data within different, Roll-Ups are these still available after the
fact? Was that a problem? Can these be accessed by other applications at a lot later point in time? Yes, so that is basically the way we've designed it. It's instantly available to everyone. So, there is no delay in communication between between the different data shots, there is a limit in. I don't think the, I think it's theoretically possible to have some notion of composability between ZK Roll-Ups. I don't know if that will be built. It's T much impossible for
optimistic. Roll-Ups to do anything like that. However, I think maybe one notion we should we should correct you that many people have. So, one roll up, doesn't necessarily have to be only on one shot. So you could have a roll up that basically takes up 10 shot blocks like every in every cycle, right? And, and essentially, that roll up internally can provide full composability. So it is not like we are
limiting. Any sort of composability between the data shots, as long as there's one roll up. And at least for ZK Roll-Ups, we, we can and see where you build these big Roll-Ups. It's a matter of optimizing, everything enough that proved us can handle this and are not too crazy expensive, but you could, you could have these huge Roll-Ups that provide internal composability at least. Aqua that's that's super interesting to hear.
And I think this kind of clears up most of our questions around chatting so I'd kind of like to switch gears and move into the second topic for today which is statelessness. So say this is another big issue that the theorem Foundation research team is working on. So can you explain what the theorem state is? And how it's used? So the theorem State essentially, it consists on everything that is stored on the Athenian blockchain.
So it would be for example, for you as a user, it would be your the balances of your accounts. It would be the balances in. Yes. The 20 tokens that you have but also any other kind of data that is necessary for, for example, a smart contract to know whether something is valid, it's the code of the smart. Contracts and add. All of these things. Those are all part of the etherium state. And, and at the moment, every every node in the theme network has to store this.
Because the only way to know from whether one block is valid is to have the state and execute the the all the transactions in that block and update that state and and know that this was all done correctly. What's the current state of the theorem? As though the size of the state and is that in itself? The problem I don't have the very best idea of the numbers here, because they also depend on on implementation details. It's somewhere in the tens of
gigabytes. As far as I'm aware, I've been quoted numbers between 10 and 100 here, but I believe it really depends on what exactly how exactly you store it. And you can do that more or less optimized.
It is a l'm in the sense that already that makes it necessary because each block does a lot of State accesses right, like each block, each single transaction already access like at the very least two accounts like the sender and the receiver and and and so you have this hundreds of transactions and potentially like thousands of State accesses in them and if you if you know anything about this guy, oh then like you know that For example, in moment, hard disk, like can't really handle that.
Like, each access costs already like on the order of 10 or more milliseconds. So, like that. That is a very long time to wait. And that is why right now. If them notes basically need ssds, there's no way around that. So it is a problem right now. It is also a much bigger problem is that you can do a Dos attack against this and blow the state up relatively cheaply to and even much larger size.
And so like a lot of our gas costs, our have to be structured around this, making this so expensive that it won't happen. So, basically, the goal for statelessness is to kind of go to a version of etherium, that doesn't have this humongous state, right? So, how would that look like? Yes. So to be clear, the state will still be implicit and some people, and this is something to
be discussed further. Some people will still store that full State and the question of statelessness around who needs to store that state and And so one thing that you can do basically with statelessness is to structure everything so that you can you can validate a block without needing the state like you can like just if I just send you that one block in isolation without anything else, you can just from that information decide whether it is a valid issue in block or not, you do
not need any other context and that that is what statelessness does. So, how does this work? Technically wouldn't I have to have like some sort of representation of the entire state for that to actually work? So it works because we have cryptographic techniques that allow us to commit to two states and various extinct forms. And like basically everyone knows about these are called Merkle trees. As, for example, one of these
that. So basically, it gives us this just 32 byte what we call state route. That, that is a commitment to the state in the sense that You cannot find any other state that would would allow you to compute this commitment. And and what statelessness does is that, it gives you all the data that has been read by the transaction, including so-called Witnesses.
And the witness is a proof that this is the correct data given the state route and you have the state route, like, you know, that because it's only very short, so, you can just have that. So, that's the only thing you need to store as the current state and the witness Tells you yes, this this is the, this is the correct data given that state route. Okay, I see you said earlier that some people are some valid data, still have to have the entire State. Why is that?
Well, I mean, this is a design choice and there are different
potential designs here. But the design that we are aiming for now is, is what we call week statelessness and week statelessness means that you do need the state in order to produce blocks but you don't need it in order to validate blocks and that is a very good trade off in our opinion because it's okay to limit somewhat more The number of people who are able to produce blocks and that is in practice, unfortunately, in some ways going to happen anyway, because of the whole Mev
thing. But as long as you have the ability to very easily, verify it by everyone, that is okay, that has that has some very nice implication in terms of the design space. Like, it means that as a user for example, you don't like, if you don't have this week's ageless if you want like Wrong statelessness, and in quotation marks, then then what you would need is that every user always keeps the witnesses for their accounts around and I don't think that is a very practical design.
I think like from the ux point of view the the week list statelessness is really like a sweet spot that is a very like can I spot to live in? Okay, so this would then not reduce the size of the state. But basically, you reduce the number of people who require to actually keep that state. That's correct. Another idea that's been thrown around us statement, right? So basically, so you don't actually pay to store some sort of data on the blockchain.
Once when you, when you send it in your transaction, but you actually pay continuously until until you need it. No longer store. All your money runs out and it gets deleted automatically. Where's that had? Do you think that's going to happen that do these ideas work together as to something else entirely?
We have these discussions around State rent and in a way so statelessness alleviates this problem a lot because suddenly instead of like, I mean, we want a very large number of full nodes, right in the ideal World. Everyone who works in any way with the theme blockchain would run their own full note for several reasons, that's not really completely realistic. Ignou at. This is the future that we are working towards that in some notion that this is possible.
And and therefore like statelessness really like reduces this problem of like having the state a lot because from like tens or hundreds of thousands of parties or Millions who need to have all the state around all the time on their own SSD. You suddenly reduce it to like Say, hundreds of parties who are actually producing blocks on easy? Are you who have very large incentives, any way to keep the state around? I mean, they, yes, they will needed to produce the block, so
it alleviate this problem. A lot, it is a debate, I would say whether that whether with that state rent is still necessary, I would say if it comes it will come in a very in a slightly different form or from what People consider stage right now so it won't really be an ocean of you continuously pay in order to have your state alive.
It's more that your state will be will be will after some period say one year if you didn't do anything with it it will become part of offer kind of Old State where it can be reactivated at any time for like maybe paying slightly more gas, it's not you you can't. Work with it anymore. So basically, there's, there's no continuous payment.
There's just like, probably this at least the most likely where version of stay Trend that I see would be that if you don't use your state for a very long time, you will pay slightly more because you have to pay for a slightly larger Witness. Okay, so I see how the size of the theorem state is a problem for some users, and that it requires ssds and so on. But, in some sense, an even larger problem with aetherium is the fact that the evm doesn't allow for parallelization of
computation, right? So, basically, you have to do everything in a certain order and always look at the entire state where some other Like chains have taken a more advanced approach and I mean, they were also later to the party. So, basically, for them, it was easy to see what the problems are. So I'm not taking sides here, but how do you feel about this inherent inability of the evm to allow for parallelization?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's a good point and that, this, that that's why interesting. I honestly I'm not an evm engineer, so I cannot say in detail. If they, if it's impossible to change this, I can I I think like one large part of that is actually related in some way to statelessness in that one thing you would need in order to paralyze, things is to know what state each transaction axis. Right. And in a way we are starting to do that.
Now I don't want to say we have a complete way to paralyze things, but yeah, I mean I can see that that is that is definitely like a very, very important part and that that would allow for a certain amount of scaling.
If you, if you, if you paralyzed things and I would say like it's certainly a very good decision to that to design around that and I would encourage people who design work Claps to do exactly that to think about that as well and and maximize the parallelism, they can get out in order to be faster. Well let's zoom out a little bit and talk a bit about you know aetherium and where this project is going, I'd what makes you excited and what you think is the impact that it will have on
the world. Wow, I think like that is it's still I mean, it's very, very hard in our time to make predictions about things further than five to ten years out. I would say because there's just too many things that are on on exponential trajectories, I'd settle for five to ten years out there. I think if they are young can provide many, many different things for different. This, it's essentially this coordination layer that allows you to make certain certain parts.
Of course, it doesn't replace a community in any way, right? Like it's only a technical layer but allows you to solve some of the problems of getting communities aligned on certain goals and turning things into positive, some games. I think that is the amazing thing that this technology allows and we have seen that around This Resurgence.
Now after I guess the initial shock of daoist like, where many, many people have started creating dowels and and they seem to work in some ways at least for now, which is great.
Like this is amazing, communities are found together and have found a way to coordinate around certain goals without having to go through the traditional way of doing this by a corporation, for example, which would have been the old way which has like other costs associated with it is essentially You said that it turns things into positive, some games. So let me ask you for the metric. So basically, what's the metric that you think is going to improve for the average Joe
using blockchain technology? I mean, the average Joe right now doesn't use blockchain technology, right? Basically, nobody does that and I think the question can be on many, many different levels and I think we are already seeing it. Surprisingly, like, it, it essentially, it changes the game of Finance at the moment. Mainly because Financial applications are what comes first just because they had just have the most money, the most
willingness to pay. But but this permission is ecosystem that allows anyone to just go there and create like create something and deploy it without having to ask anyone for permission allows people to just play with it a lot. And I think we are right now we're already seeing the effect of that in terms of all the the fintechs.
Like I mean my Barton my online banking apps have improved like tons over the last year's and I think this is obviously not based on blockchain technology but it's based on the pressure that these Companies now see where the compute competition will come from like you don't have to be a blockchain user in order to see the Improvement, it will come to you anyway because the others have to keep up. Otherwise we're coming for them. So you mentioned finances, this kind of first area that's
getting a lot of traction. And then you also talked about how, you know, on a high level you see if there are more block changes this, like coordination layer that allows, you know, allows people to accomplish things more efficiently together to what extent do you also think that blockchains will kind of financial eyes? A lot of things around coordination that are today don't Rely on financial incentives, directly. Oh this is a difficult question.
I'm not sure what you mean like do you mean your local sports club is going to become a dowel and suddenly everyone has a token or something. I'm not sure what that question refers to. Well I guess it sort of ties into like it. I think knows especially is done, like some work around ideas like this to right? Where you'd use that prediction markets to have make decisions as organizations. And I think I mean, I can see the sphere but I think Mainly it provides new options.
I don't, I don't think nobody is going to force you to use Financial eyes. Prediction Market. It is still like, it is still your choice. So I don't see why it would would become like a forcing function for average people to just financialized everything. I'm you can, but this is your choice. And I think, like, many men, blockchains will provide things that are not Financial in nature. Like Systems can be built on top of them.
Who says, we can't now already, for example, build a Twitter, a decentralized Twitter. For example, I think that would absolutely be possible. People are already beat building decentralized messaging apps, that doesn't have to be dfb financialized, so I don't see that automatically everything
has to be financialized. So you think the fact that open finance has moved in fast is just because of ideological proximity or, you know, being Tech adjacent and the more social apps are going to come at a later point in time, but they are come. I think right now, I think it's just that the more social for example apps as you call them are just priced out of it and that is a natural consequence of Finance. Just always liked being there and and being just a very valuable application.
Like let's be honest about it, Finance is a very valuable application, but it means that it prices a lot of things, which is kind of a shame from the development perspective. Because obviously, We are losing kind of important time where these other systems could bootstrap themselves and could start providing valuable things. But but I mean, we are now building the rails that will allow those in my opinion.
I think like, when we have sharding, when we have those people will build all these other systems on them and they become I think and I think I'll end on a divisive question here. Do you think the applications that Eat less economic security because they will not be securing the values that
Financial applications. Inherently do will actually needy theorem as a base layer, I mean quote, they quit, they run on any number of other particles that don't have the economic guarantees that a theorem currently has. I think we're there are different questions. The and I mean, I would say probably yes if you if you expect that the decentralized Twitter will just put its data. On the shards. I don't expect that that will be
the case. I think what it will do, what many applications might do is use some blockchain and maybe if they're young because it is the settlement layer, but who knows? Whether that is nestled the case in the future will use this. For example, any of these applications they can right now let's talk about two or for example, which is concrete, decentralized applications, there's out there now. But it has huge problems. Getting people to actually run
notes, right? We do need some sort of payment for this, like we knew do need some way of getting people to, like, run the infrastructure and so on. And I think that is more important like, that, that, that is where blockchains like etherium coming. Probably not for the data itself. You don't, you don't need to, but, but it could be for some sort of commitment to the data that makes a lot of sense, but not for the data itself, I would I would predict in the long run.
But the economic incentive, they are surely, the, The Economic Securities that should require depend on how large the incentives are, right? So basically if the intent of miniscule compared to the security that if you affords, you then using a theorem as based am a be over care. Right. I expect that ethereum with Roll-Ups and charts will be will be quite cheap.
So I Not think that you expect to pay wiii, I would say it's in the send or substandard range, what you would expect for normal transactions in in that future in Ethiopia - I think a lot of applications will be able to pay that. I think this is actually a super nice closing statement. So subsequent transaction fees. You heard it here first. Thank rat. Thank you so much for coming on. It was a pretty technical but I think there was a lot there.
So If people want to dig into this somewhat, where should where can they go? And find more information on these topics. The, the depends, obviously, on the technical level that they want to get into. There are a lot of people trying to write blog posts about about these things. I can certainly collect some resources and we can add them to the description of the podcast. Honestly, we could do better in that respect.
I don't think we're like, we're and I would encourage if anyone's to come forward and is good at it's digesting. The information writing it up. We need more of that. It's way too little and the whole space and I know many people have trouble catching up. If you really want to get into the tech, then I think III search. The Forum is an amazing like resource that has a lot of stuff and it's usually not super difficult to understand people try to make it somewhat understandable.
The main problem is just a huge amount of information to digest, that most people probably can't completely catch up with. Okay, we're linked to these. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find And subscribe to the show on iTunes Spotify, YouTube SoundCloud or wherever
you listen to podcast. And if you have a Google home or Alexa device, you can tell it to listen to the latest episode of the epicenter podcast, go to epicenter dot TV /, subscribe for a full list of places where you can watch and listen, while you're there, be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you get new episodes in your inbox as they're released.
If you want to interact with us guests or other podcast listeners, you can follow Oh us on Twitter and please leave us a review on iTunes helps people find the show and we're always happy to read them. Well thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week. Oh us on Twitter and please leave us a review on iTunes helps people find the show and we're always happy to read them. Well thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week.