foreign
[Music]
welcome to Devcon again and welcome back
to Devcon for many people my name is I
am yaguchi from the theme foundation and
I'm here to talk about executing with
subtraction in the infinite Garden
so this Devcon feels very special for
everyone first it's been a long time
it's been three years since the last
step gone and the second
the marriage just happened like you saw
and merge is very special not only
because of the technical advancement
made to the protocol but also because of
how this giant project was executed by a
decentralized ecosystem
I share the vision of infinite Garden
last year the vision of ethium
to stay full of infinite players growing
as organically as possible
to maintain the soul of ethereum
the merge was a great example
those who walked on the merch are
definitely infinite players
they didn't do it for themselves to win
the world will let everyone to join at
different layers more easily
and the work is great a great example to
show how our game was played to continue
the play not for someone to win
so what has been the law of the ethereum
foundation in this Garden how have we
been making decisions and taking actions
to support people to play Infinite games
instead of fighting
to answer this question for you or to
for myself I go back to this word
subtraction
this is one of the three guiding
principles of the ethereum foundation we
share this in the EF report earlier this
year long-term thinking stewardship of
values and subtraction
and if you any of you remember I spoke
about subtraction at devcom plug four
years ago
time has passed and I've been frequently
asked about subtraction recently and I'm
never a fan of talking about ideas
before acting on it
um where I grew up in Japan we have this
word called
which literally means shut up and do the
work
so but today I feel ready to talk about
it a little bit more because we have
acted on it we have acted on since then
since the time that I spoke about it in
plug
it has become our key principle any in
fact it is also our underlying strategy
for us to make decisions and take
actions and the more I think about how
subtraction is important to the ethereum
foundation the more I feel that
subtraction is best for ethereum and
that this can be also applied by others
so today I'm here to reintroduce
subtraction with the story of how the
idea was born
and sharing some examples with the hope
for this to be your inspiration
so how it began when I joined acne
Foundation
to be honest EF was not really in an
organization or
okay Hudson is laughing
um
it was more like a collection of devs
and researchers doing different projects
there was not even a finance team uh nor
our grand team and there was no system
to collaborate with Indonesian
Foundation very well
and so however the decentralized
ecosystem was pretty already pretty big
already
so naturally waves of pleasure were
islam.ef when my participation to the
ethereum foundation as the executive
director was announced
during my early time people gave me
different ideas and requests one idea
that was suggested to hire the best all
the best talents in the world to the AF
another idea is to hire CTO officem or
chief strategy officer of ethereum
at the Italian Foundation
basically ideas for me to build the EF
Empire
and that wasn't technically impossible
because the place of ether was already
decent
and it is important to mention
these ideas were not seen as crazy ideas
if you are a tech startup
or an owner boxing it is pretty normal
to do this why is it normal
tendencies
it is because our glands are trained to
add
let me give you a test
when you're asked to fix this bubbly
unstable Lego bridge and I say I give
you five seconds what would you do
did you think of this
so there was an actual study about this
Lego place and I also tested with some
people this week
most people think about adding two
blocks in the bottom left
especially when you see more Lego blocks
in front of you so when you are giving
more resources it is more natural to add
and spend more
without thinking about the option to
subtract
another example our Defcon team has dip
process
where Community people can suggest
improvements for depcon and the team has
received about 50 requests so far among
all of those requests no one has
suggested to subtract something from
devcom
so going back to my everydays which with
this natural human tendency I can argue
that the impact almost no one gave me
the other options than adding more
it looked like there was only one path
to take
luckily my blank was less Engineers to
add because of my background and I was
able to see two paths to take one is to
road to add
to build the EF Empire
the other is to subtract
standing in front of the fork I
intuitively felt following the past two
hours long and decided to go to the
other way
from there subtraction became My
Philosophy to build our team and like I
said
it has also become our underlying
strategy to achieve our mission the
mission to support the ethereum
ecosystem
the infinite Garden to support the
extreme entire ethereum ecosystem as a
whole not just specific projects
with subtraction EF shifted its all to
support the entire ecosystem which led
to the ecosystem Support Program ESP
and the other Grant work we prioritize
boosting external groups as much as we
can
it's also led to third-party allocations
to empower other organizations to give
grants like us
Bitcoin CLR fund political political
monologue for example
and it is always important to go back to
why why do we subtract
the ultimate reason is like I said
because subtraction is best for ethereum
subtraction is best for ethereum and in
fact I believe it is critical for
ethernet decentralization
best part of ethereum is that it is
decentralized
and because of this the ecosystem has
unique challenges and I see subtraction
as a strategy to achieve two main goals
the goals that are important to tackle
the unique challenges of this
decentralized ecosystem and here are two
goals
the first goal is to subtract to seek
the right balance
building an EF Empire
and solving all the problems ourselves
might have made ourselves look good for
the short run
but that would have discouraged others
to feel that this ecosystem is for
everyone to build and the EF could also
have become one single point of failure
if we kept adding the ecosystem rely on
their forever and it is not just about
also EF uh gaps and imbalances happen
naturally in the decentralized ecosystem
and especially when everyone is trying
to add
second goal is to subtract to focus on
what is most important
ethereum has become the largest
community in the blockchain industry and
it is becoming one of the largest open
source communities there are just too
many things and improvements to make
we need to focus on things that only EF
can do and the things that others
wouldn't do and that are also important
and I like keep asking whys and why do
we think subtraction is best for
ethereum
at the end of the day we believe in
ethereum We Believe ethereum can change
the world we believe ethereum's
potential is too great
to be predicted we believe ethereum's
potential is too great
for any single organization to own
so there are many examples but I'd like
to share a few of how EF executed with
subtraction today and keep in mind the
whys that I just explained balance and
focus
um does anyone remember either in the
old website in 2018 or are you not that
um I got this thanks to internet archive
so the website used to be about the
project within the year for example it
suggested you to download a wallet that
A Team India was building
and all the guidance and instructions
were made by the EF people
in the bottom it also showed how EF is
the main team
so restructuring and redesigning this
website ethernet.org started in 2018 it
took a while to prepare but the idea is
to separate ethereum.org as public good
of e3m and it is about ethereum in the
community is and not about the ethernet
Foundation
now you have still support the server
and the team who are building it but the
content and process is all open source
and made by Community people's proposals
they are roughly about 950 active
contributors for the content I hope they
are here today
thank you
and another example of balance is
regional diversity
ethereum is still Western oriented
unfortunately and the more important
information is out there in English
English and more communities have
developed in English-speaking countries
despite the fact that there are a lot of
opportunities in places like Latin
America or Asia for example this is why
we chose bhagra
and Latin America for Devcon and have
been supporting teams and individuals in
the in the region for them to build
their own communities through education
and events and other activities
the next billion initiative is also for
the balance seeking two-thirds of the
baby is born today are from developing
or emerging economies
there are the next billion users or the
Builders of ethereum we must include
them and we have to start now
we also invited 50 Scholars to depcon to
have potential to be the next change
makers they're also here today
laughs
and going back to ethereum.org the
website now has 48 languages that are
supported by 5 000 volunteer community
members all over the world they are
translating the content every day thank
you to those people
so when we are supporting the project
run by a team we're not really looking
at the gloss of that single team we are
looking at what the glows can do to the
entire ecosystem in the long run we want
to increase open participation and open
competition because that would benefit
the entire ecosystem for the long run
for example the client Community has not
been Diversified enough and even though
gas is from the yeah the team gets
themselves see that is a problem client
incentive program was announced at the
end of last year
as an effort to incentivize and
diversify clients each client received
4608 ether to operate on the mainnet
there are many things that have been
born from the year
um
the team in ens was the project Nick
Jensen studied at the ethereum
foundation
we suggested that they graduate from the
Year back in 2018 and with the help with
Virgil who is not here today but they
understood the importance of this
project becoming independent
for the long long run
we supported initial costs and some
legal work and now I don't even have to
say they are one of the most successful
applications as you all know
heart yes yes
and
you may know heart heart from nomik
they're from Argentina was one of the
major things that you have supported for
the focus on the developer experience
which back then was something that only
F could do and as you know it has become
also very successful project from there
nomik decided to become a foundation to
be able to support things in the develop
devx domain
and Derek spark who is uh the team that
we also support is been doing the
research and uh sorry research of
general knowledge Booth
um and also like support the
applications of ZK
to also made the decision to become a
foundation so these are a great example
of how our subtraction is creating more
space for others
to participate and then they also
subtract for others
so EF may be in a unique position in a
system and an EF could not have been
able to start with subtraction if there
were there's nothing to subtract from
but I do not think subtraction only
matters for EF or only for non-profit
organizations since I believe infinite
Garden is for Everyone by everyone there
is always a chance for everyone to use
this philosophy
for your guidance I will share the myth
and about subtraction and key things to
remember
first subtraction requires high standard
and real execution so the biggest myth
about subtraction
is that you should do less you know it
aims to subtract power but not the
amount of work or amount of effort in
fact it certainly requires more work to
do when I subtract my power I can't just
make people do do things and I I have to
explain and convince others to feel that
they should act in one way
that requires education communication
and more research
if you have been any part of the merge
you understand better than others how it
requires more work
to do a project doing in a decentralized
way subtracting your power not being a
boss then doing it in in in a
centralized way using centroids power
I also mentioned how human Blazer used
to adding
that means also the subtraction is
harder to be recognized there has been
study to prove people tend to fail to
recognize when something is subtracted
compared to when something is added
so if the purpose of your work is to be
recognized choosing subtraction makes it
harder to achieve that
your motivation needs to be something
else other than being recognized
subtraction also does not fulfill the
best interest of just one person or a
team for example your team may have
investors who's interested in the goals
of your team or the profit they can make
out of it
or even without that people tend to want
to please those who are in front of them
for the short term so when you subtract
you are doing it for the whole ecosystem
which would benefit to
yourself in the long term
subtraction always comes with with
long-term thinking
so now you might think
oh subtraction sounds very hard
it is hard I like to take this an
opportunity to say thank you to the
people at the ethereum foundation
working with me with this principle
because their work is very hard and
often thankless
foreign
but I also want to share the positive
size of this to clarify first you should
know that you can add with the
subtraction philosophy EF did add things
for example we added ESP and when we
think about you know how to like who to
give guns and how to do that we first
think about what problems ethereum has
today
and after that instead of thinking about
how can we solve those problems
we asked how can communities solve these
problems and how can we help them
so yes we can add but the important
things is for us to ask this question
before adding
and subtraction can be actually exciting
subtraction makes space for others
making an open space for others to join
is truly one of the main reasons that
ethereum attracts so many people yes it
helps to have more people to secure the
network but isn't it just fun to work
with more people
Nami and Derek spark I mentioned decided
to when they decided to create a
foundation they didn't just
um do it to be nice they are nice but
that's not the only reason but they both
of them told me that you know it is just
fun to be able to work with others uh
Empower others toward the same goal so
there's just this undeniable excitement
to be able to empower and to see others
grow
and we tend to think if we subtract
power and Empower others the same amount
of power will be split into the number
of people you empowered that is not true
games in the infinite Garden is not a
deal some game
EF subtracts so you can add and when you
grow and learn the Mastery will let
others other new players to add and glow
there with this Mastery and growth the
energy in total is exponentially glowing
this means there is no limit of energy
we can have in this growing Garden
EF used to be equal to almost equal to
the entire ethereum ecosystem but not
only EF has become just a small part of
it
the entire size of the ecosystem has
grown so much
the ethereum is lucky now that this
Garden keeps growing with diverse teams
and projects driving and coexisting just
like Nature has potential for infinite
growth
to conclude my talk if you feel a little
bit inspired ask those questions do I
need better balance do I need better
focus
and if the answer is yes maybe you can
look for things to support in your work
or in even in your life
you may have to wait for the best timing
or also think about other trade-offs but
the important thing is to know
subtraction is an option for everyone
and you might be surprised how that
would expand your opportunities
thank you for listening
if you want to learn more about
subtraction or infinite Garden you can
go to ethereum.foundation thank you very
much
[Applause]