foreign
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thanks for having me I'm working the EF
I work on the research team and name I
do a lot of things that aren't just that
but you know here we go so resilience I
want to talk about
what we might call the metagame of
ethereum L1 we're trying to ship a lot
of stuff there's a lot of things
underneath the hood that maybe aren't
quite clear that that are being worked
on and thought about kind of at all
times
I did ask the internet what should I
talk about Devcon got some answers
um L2 very important it's gonna be a lot
of stuff to talk about this week dig in
deep
um Hudson if you want to talk this
evening I got a lot we can we can
exchange some fun stories
Kevin
um I'm glad it's worked the pseudonym
has fooled everyone
um and and Johnny Ray I won't do a
handstand up here but I love handstands
and if you want to do handstands out
there uh we can we can join but that's
not what I'll talk about today
um so again
being listening to death but the merch
happened
finally
it did indeed took a village take a
village
a lot of those people are up here a lot
of people are out in the stage and
they're also distributed all across the
world thanks guys
quick quick just like perspective on on
what happened
um
it's been a bit of a non-event which is
good it's good that's how it's designed
we can kind of see
um in that little Spike towards there's
two little spikes at the end and it
looks like participation kind of fell
off a cliff real quick right around the
merge picked up went back down it's been
kind of leveling off and figuring out
um
I think it's worth zooming out because
like this this starts at 94 not at zero
this is actually what participation
looks like there's a gap because our
infra wasn't collecting at that point
but it's it's pretty damn good when the
system was designed years ago we we
didn't know what participation would
look like we'd think okay so normally
it's going to be above two-thirds
normally people are the incentives are
such that people are gonna turn their
machines on and make sure that we're
finalizing uh but we thought
70 80 85 would be like kind of normal
but really like people are turns out are
extremely obsessive about every last
attestation I got some laughs up here
because uh if you if you're on a client
Discord it's like somebody misses one
out of station in a month they're like
what's wrong with my machine
um but anyway shit's pretty good like
and and you know there's there's a
couple hiccups here and there with a
couple clients and and people are uh
resolving them moving forward and we
have a nice little nice little stable
graph
blocks turns out those are good too
they're coming out in a healthy clip
blue there's actually three colors on
this graph blue is uh is successful
blocks each day and almost all of them
are
let's see
but we do we do miss a few slots from
people being offline I was actually
talking to Terence and it turns out that
we miss fewer slots now
than before the merge so even though
there's more complexity in the system
um terence's hypothesis is that uh
there's a bit more money on the line you
really want those blocks now with those
fees uh so the the number of blocks is
even better than it was before
and then what about reorgs there's
another color on this graph presumably
it's orange
but I don't you know there weren't many
before the merge and there's not many
after uh in fact Michael Sproul dumped
from his note he's seen 26 reorgs
although some of those might be double
counted and 85 orphaned blocks all of
these generally show very late
properties so if something's reorged
generally we're seeing you know things
Landing towards like the last two-thirds
of a slot or even like right on that
boundary so the network gets a little
bit confused and then resolves it and I
should say all these reorges are depth
one
um
also from Terence check out his talk in
two days
um 50 of the orphans so these are the
blocks that tried to make it on chain
and didn't uh come from Mad boost relays
there's additional latency and
complexity that happens there people are
working through it but you know that's
that's uh an interesting component here
also it depends on your perspective you
know some nodes might see like a little
reorg and the other node always saw it
as solve the correct head so again these
numbers I mean that's like one a day so
things are pretty pretty smooth I think
the the like Uncle rate in proof of work
obviously because there's a lot of
redundant work happening because of the
way competitions uh improve of work
happen there's like a four percent or
eight percent
um uncle rate and you know we're at near
zero now so things are things are
generally working this is what it looks
like
it's plain and simply healthy again
finality step wise very nice almost the
entirety of the beacon chain since
Genesis has looked exactly like that
it's set for this one time
I was out to dinner on a Friday and I
got a text and it's not a text you want
to get on a Friday night there's
something up with mainnet from Paul uh
there was a little there was yeah the
network stayed live we lost some block
proposals and we didn't finalize
perfectly into epochs it looks like we
finalized a few in three epochs and it's
been resolved in very clean since
um I know Victory lap on the merge but
like Victory lap on the beacon chain
it's been an incredible two years
uh and ultrasound OnStar ultrasound
money ultrasound uh Justin Drake I'm
scar it's a nod to onskar convincing us
to merge like five or seven days earlier
uh to to save on issuance
um but Justin's given a great talk
tomorrow check it out
and
before I move on uh there is a merge
data challenge going on all of those are
like very simple metrics there might be
some more interesting stuff going on
underneath the hood check it out and
submissions are due by the end of the
month so you still got plenty of time
certainly from the inside uh we feel the
pain but I know the pain is felt from
the outside as well the interest in fact
was one of the suggestions for my talk
how we quote ship faster I don't think
I'm going to talk about how we ship
faster but I want to talk about why it's
slow and it feels like this
both from the internal and the external
hopefully this is not a very busy road
so much of much of this is fundamental
much of like the complexity of shipping
here is fundamental it is fundamentally
new research fundamentally new
mechanisms fundamentally new networking
and new crop cryptography ethereum has
the luxury of uh having tons of
backwards compatibility
considerations at every moment of every
day and quite frankly distributed
systems are complicated it's much easier
to get a computer to do something than
to get a bunch of computers that you
don't control to do something together
and agree
always
and quite frankly much has improved a
lot of the conversation in the past
couple days with a lot of the L1 devs
and a lot of people involved in shipping
and improving ethereum
um has been like wow this this thing's
working well like this is a moderately
well-oiled machine like we're moving
faster we're getting more done than we
used to and some of that's because
more core questions of the research have
been answered so it is a lot of
engineering a lot of that is is
alignment and Ethos a lot of that is
sophistication and specialization of
client devs we have a lot more people on
testing we have devops wizards driving
our test Nets and helping us at every
step of the day dedicated security
analysts all sorts of academic
collaborations really fun development
Retreats
um and the process is just it's refined
it's really moving well so
things are slow things aren't going to
be fast
but they're moving pretty well right now
but
there are actually a number of
considerations that are at odds with
speed things that we're thinking about
things that we're optimizing at all
times that
if you looked at it from a naive
perspective you'd be like you're you're
shooting yourself in the foot you're
making this hard and there's but there's
good reason that we make things hard
and that's the the metagame of ethereum
resilience right
and I might touch on some of this in in
her talk but we're you know we're
optimizing for an infinite game we're
not optimizing for a pump and dump we're
not optimizing for an acquisition we're
not optimizing for uh you know people
being rich tomorrow you know we're
optimizing for ethereum existing and
running for 50 plus 100 plus years and
being a fundamentally uh foundational
protocol of the internet and for
Humanity so we're trying to we're trying
to continue to play the game
nothing
we're trying to have redundancy built
into the game we're trying to be able to
recover in the event that the game fails
when you're thinking about 50 plus years
like
shit's gonna happen and we need to be
able to pick up the pieces and keep
moving and in fact we need to be able to
harden under after this adversity you
know not only do you can you pick the
pieces back up but can you come back
stronger and tuning for ossification and
avoidance of capture you know the the
more valuable this thing is the more
it's valuable for people to kind of get
their hands in get their interests in
and this thing needs to be robust
against
anything that might happen in the next
50 years 100 years
and
one more thing when we're thinking about
ethereum resilience there's a number of
like ways that we might think about it
the the most obvious is probably the
first the protocol like we're trying to
make sure this is a resilient protocol
that this thing works next is is kind of
the instantiation of the protocol that's
the network that's like does this not
only fundamentally this abstract
protocol work but does it work live and
is it resilient in its instantiation of
tons of computers distributed across the
world doing their thing and then there's
the kind of the social layer on top is
the social layer resilient is the social
error can people come and go Can it can
we avoid capture can we deal with with
issues in that layer
and get I can get into each one of those
oh and shortcuts are obviously available
we could have a single client we could
have a single dictator we could have
truncated r d and just ship it we could
have easy centralizing solutions we
could have a willingness for downtime
and we could have processes that are
right for capture
that's not what we're doing and that's
why it's taking a long time and that's
why
that's how it is
so
protocol resilience
there's a lot of things that go into
this this is probably again one of the
more obvious things tons of research and
design tons of security and testing
nothing goes out lightly the the amount
of time and effort put on Simplicity in
ensuring that the system is generally
extensible over time is is profound if
you
there's a lot of hard jobs in ethereum
L1 but if you've done if you've worked
on research for any amount of time in
this space you've thrown out things that
you've worked on for easily a year
things you've spent countless amounts of
time and you just been like you know
what it's not right it's not simple
enough it's not right for ethereum and
and that that is a regular regular
component of this process being able to
operate under adverse conditions and be
able to recover under these failure
modes I think one thing that's a very
Guiding Light and I highly recommend
vitalik's piece on functional escape
velocity but we're we're looking for you
know you can throw everything out of
protocol you can you can try to build
everything into the protocol you can
just be like okay this is good let's
throw it in okay this is good let's
throw it in but instead we're looking
for that minimum functional escape
velocity and that's an art you know you
don't get that easily you get that
through years and years of thought and
iteration
and many protocols only try to avoid
failure whereas ethereum is borderline
obsessive with the fact that it likely
like something can fail and like all of
these protocols
essentially in a crypto economic
protocol it's you get X properties
unless this thing happens usually this
thing happening being some size attacker
someone willing to throw a bunch of
money or burn a bunch of money and you
know protocols work unless you hit those
thresholds but in 50 plus year time
Horizon we're going to hit like
not necessarily you I can't predict the
future but like happens and we need
to we're borderline obsessive with not
only trying to avoid these failures but
to be able to recover from them
which takes time
the next is Network resilience and
there's really a heterogeneous Network
and that provides resilience in so many
ways so we have multi-client
multi-layered Justin actually was
pointing out there's another layer we
think about the consensus layer the
execution layer there's actually this
other layer which is kind of the
cryptographic layer we rely on a
multitude of of black boxed crypto tools
which allow for expertise and and
separation of layers here we have
hobbyist stakers we have home nodes and
Regional diversity every single one of
these things makes it harder like every
arguably multi-layer doesn't but the
fact that we have like nine clients
working on this thing does not make
shipping easier but it makes the network
more resilient under failure modes it
makes users more resilient in that they
can pick different things in the case
that something fails hobbyist stakers
allow for Like A diversity or
participation they allow for fail like
backups in the event of failure modes
and I'll talk about that home modes
Regional diversity similar things
I think one thing that we don't think
about when we think about like this
heterogeneous Network and how it helps
us we really obsess over like we want
perfect distributions we want like 20 of
each client thus if one goes down then
like we're 100 good that's the ideal and
that actually optimizes for kind of the
continuity of the network like the the
network can be continuously resilient in
the event that you get these perfect
spreads so for example you know if we
have five clients uh they're perfectly
distributed across the network if one
goes down you might get a few uh fewer
block proposals until it comes up or
people switch their nodes but you get
finality you get like a really nice
quality of service it's great
we should move towards that direction
there's tons of reasons as a whole and
as individuals you know we should try to
optimize for this
but they all it also helps us even in
imperfect distributions and these are
more in the tailor scenarios so if that
big if if client diversity looks like
that on the network that large block
goes offline and it's chaos right like
we're not finalizing we're getting maybe
50 of the blocks that we're expecting
um and and shit's going down but
the network continues
blocks are built transactions are
processed and users have options so in
that event users over the course of a
day can dynamically you know either that
big block gets fixed the network stays
online or that big block has issues and
users have options to switch through and
they can recover and make sure the
network continues in the event that it's
just one block you don't have all of
that that you have zero ability to
recover
until
they turn that thing back on so this
goes this goes for some of the other
things here I think people sometimes say
why are we optimizing for home nodes why
are we optimizing for homesteakers you
know like if you look at staking
distribution you know homesteakers are a
third or less like it's clearly not
working but it's it does not it's not
giving us that kind of perfect
distribution that might help in in
continuity in the event of intermittent
failures but it does help with recovery
it's critical for Recovery it's critical
for these failure modes so in the event
that some of your mega pool and the mega
cartel of pools they finalize something
invalid they try to take the chain over
then you have a resilient the ability to
continue like that
that big block finalizes something crazy
and that small chunk of hobbies
validators become the backbone of
ethereum and continue forward and they
don't care
ethereum doesn't care you know and the
ability like if that was just three
large pools and they their cartel like
it's so much more difficult to recover
so we do think things are ourselves
for continuity and Recovery
we also have
it's kind of like these soft things that
we're optimizing all the time in the
social air you know multi-client is very
important for
um for Network resilience but it's also
very important for Like A diversity of
perspective it's very important for
ensuring that every stone is unturned
it's important for kind of the security
of this thing and how everything kind of
communicates and comes together
similarly a diverse staking set brings
more people to the table ensures there's
more diverse
perspective on the needs of stakers and
the desires of the network optimizing
for the global very similar we have this
incredibly like if you talk to academics
almost comically open research process
which brings in a multitude of
perspectives and helps Harden the social
air and ensure that the the social layer
is diverse similarly open processes Open
Door all around and
Albert neon said uh the ethereum is an
intellectual gravity well and he said
this five years ago and it was it felt
kind of true but it's just like
increasingly true like increasingly
every time I talk to new academics or
new people joining it's just like the
obsession and the fervor to be involved
in this this intellectual pursuit of uh
of ethereum the the ultimate nerd snipe
just increases more and more
similarly
um
Ben calls ethereum a bizarre in the
sense that you know it's not top down
controlled it's not top down organized
it's not it's not like a well-structured
thing and there's chaos but time and
time again because of this open nature
of this open market of ideas and
intellect and engagement and software
development like people just show up
they join they join the party at the
right time they help move things forward
and and and get things done and this
this is not
that this this open wild structure is
like not it's not how you optimize
things and move as quickly as possible
but is a way to be resilient
ethereum's L1 structures tend toward a
multitude and thus
I would say ethereum's L1 structures
tend to sword ossification like the more
people that are at the table the harder
the conversation becomes to change
things and
I won't get into it too deep but I
personally believe ethereum ossification
in the
not so distant future is incredibly
important incredibly valuable
um like I said earlier the ability to
modify change or manipulate this this uh
machine is very valuable to us because
quite frankly ethereum is not done you
know ethereum needs to reach that
functional escape velocity but it will
be increasingly valuable to others to
also potentially attempt to manipulate
for their own their own value so a lot
of what what's involved in kind of
bringing more people to table is to make
sure we have a more resilient protocol
while we still can manipulate it but
to ultimately
tie our feet down with bags and not be
able to move
where does the EF fit in
I think I will probably talk about this
a bit I think Josh is going to have some
interesting perspectives on this as well
but in general you know we're
we're here to help we're here to
coordinate we're here to help connect
the dots
um some of some very interesting work
and valuable work does come out of the
ethereum foundation but tons and tons
more you know this is increasingly just
a small piece of the puzzle
this is uh the last the last suggestion
reporting Back From The Trenches the art
of project managing the merge
um
one
Evan I'm not a project manager but you
know
um the uh
I think the the biggest thing is
if if someone were to attempt to do such
a process in the future is uh
know enough to connect the dots
contribute enough to uh gain the respect
needed of the group and and ultimately
get out of the way you know there's
there are incredible experts at every
layer of everything in the stack and in
creating the room for um
for people to do the hard work is is one
of the most important things here
I do want to flip this
l1's thinking about resilience all the
time like every piece of the puzzle is
all about resilience and all about
ethereum lasting and being a utility for
the future but I do turn this on the
application layer I think it's
definitely time to think long term
um you know
I see a lot of unnecessary debt taken
out in the application layer you know
whether that be complexity governance
where things maybe shouldn't be governed
upgradability
bad token distributions
these things they're liabilities in the
sense that
they can help you small bits of this it
can be very important to Applications
but I feel like uh naively if we take a
look at applications they they take out
quite a bit of this debt for very
unclear return
I would suggest the application layer
more Unix philosophy more of doing small
things more of little widgets on chain
rather than uh
Behemoth type contracts that try to do
it all when in doubt minimize or
eliminate governance and when you do
need governance make it small it governs
this one component that interacts with
all of these ungovernable components
this is very very important like
governance is a liability of being able
to manipulate and change things like
with L1 is going to bite you in the ass
if it's not done with Incredible care
I recommend to tend towards ossification
similarly if you need upgrade abilities
today have a path in which you don't
need it in the future
similarly
I think there must be more interesting
value generation models than the ones
currently being explored today I think
there are clearly some very interesting
things that are being done on ethereum
with
tokens governance
Etc
but I promise you on this new landscape
of coordinated games on top of ethereum
there are going to be interesting and
less
um
potentially risky value generation
models
check it out
explore the non-financial especially
with l2s opening up more scale for
ethereum there's much more room in this
stack to be doing things Beyond just
that defy Beyond just that speculative
cool little picture I I do think
especially in the identity space
especially in the Privacy space there is
a lot of incredible work to be done in
the next few years
oh and if you're riding l2s it's time
for fraud proofs it's time for
decentralized sequencers I think that
goes without being said but
if l2s are going to inherit the not only
the security but the legitimacy of
ethereum
we can't go without this stuff and I
think the former is is obvious the
latter is is not so obvious obviously
you can construct
secure l2s without a decentralized
sequencer but when you start thinking
about
regulatory risk and other types of
things at play here these are a must
um so I suggest playing the metagame
resilience across the stack not at all
not just at all one unify this whole
thing
um everything built on ethereum does
isn't going to necessarily last for 50
plus years but the the applications that
matter will
and uh quick Happy Birthday to someone
in the audience that I could not do any
of this without
thank you
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