actually a theorem for dummies wasn't my
original title the original titles there
so while I've been working on the
project my appreciation for precisely
what it is has changed somewhat evolved
let's say at the beginning
etherium was always kind of sold as this
notion as Bitcoin thing but Bitcoin with
maybe some features removed or some sort
of added extra thing of having a a
virtual machine or extended scripting
language let's say and that didn't
really it was a cool idea but it wasn't
really really get to the heart of what
it was that we were making and you know
that the idea of what a theorem was
going to do was was quite limited in
scope it was essentially going to be an
abstraction platform for mass of the
coin style financial contracts on a
blockchain as time went on especially I
remember in January 2014 when we all
gathered in Miami and I was kind of I'd
had very little sleep that week and I
was thinking what is there some better
way of thinking about this other than
you know Bitcoin but with some sort of
additional richness in the scripting
language my mind got to crypto finance
and I was thinking well if Bitcoin
scripted finance was aetherium and this
is where the notion of crypto law came
from it's actually well actually it's
like finance but it's it's fully general
and so finance is kind of a subset of
law in a way and so maybe a theory and
could be thought of as a cryptographic
version of them this evolved further and
basically this talk is about a later
sort of realization as it were of of
what aetherium is
so we can answer the how that was the
first thing we answered that was quite
quite reasonably presented in the
italics white paper back in November and
we've got a pretty good idea of why that
kind of stems from the Bitcoin space
decentralization why you know why it's a
good thing but the what like what
actually is it that's the harder
question and we get you know history
repeating itself people sort of they
know they want it but they don't don't
really know what it is so for this talk
I'm going to try and avoid using much of
the language that we see in this English
conference so far so I'm going to try
and avoid using these technical terms
because these technical terms help us
describe and how it works but they don't
really help us describe what it is so
what is it well for a long period we
just didn't know this has probably lost
on most you votes from a very good
comedy called look around you if you get
the opportunity to see it please do
well actually aetherium is a computer
it's computer a bit like this one this
is this is a computer this is I think it
was around the early 50s and this is
what they thought a home computer would
look like by 2004 this one runs Fortran
so it's easy to use a theorem is a
computer it's it's not a very good
computer it's really slow it's also
really really expensive as most of you
probably know by now that at least no
one has been developing on it and it's
got this odd property of not always
being exactly decisive about what has
happened in terms of its i/o although
you know after a minute it generally
gets a bit more a bit more certain about
things but it does take that extra time
so so far it's it's not seeming like
such a good invention it seems like
we're going backwards a little bit but
actually it's got some really
interesting properties and what I'm
going to try and show you is what these
properties are when we think
about etherium as just a computer so the
first thing to notice is that it's a
global singleton and it's one of
possibly the first global singleton
computer that's fundamentally not
localized right it's it's all other
computers are generally either physical
machines like my laptop here or virtual
machines that actually reside within a
physical physical machine whereas the
etherium computer doesn't reside in any
single machine it's not located
physically in any particular part of the
world yet there's only one of them and
that's a bit of an odd notion it's a
computer that in general you know
there's no reset button there's no power
button you can't turn it off and that
again is a bit of an odd sort of an odd
sort of thing to to think about is my
mic still working yeah and secondly it
yeah thirdly it's ubiquitous which is
all you know wherever's the internet
everyone everyone who can use the
Internet actually has free access you
know fair access to this resource to
this single to the single computer and
there's more there aren't that many
computers which in terms of the sort of
hardware are actually multi-user
they're fundamentally multi-user yeah so
every time someone uses the etherium
computer they're logged in and there are
as many user account as we need very
kind of odd notion as a computer is
natively object oriented object
orientation is built into the computer
itself encapsulation is built in code
has data and the to own deck strictly
linked and yet there's encapsulation
away from all the other code and data
pairings it's very accessible
there aren't many computers so
accessible this one we can we can
interact with it just using fairly
simple web primitives JavaScript and
it's inherently auditable verifiable and
auditable and there are not that many
computers which we can
replay everything of the past and always
be absolutely certain of getting the
same result so there's my rather dodgy
artist's impression of the ethereal
computer there's the world because
actually it's a it's a global singleton
as the globe and all these boxes are
accounts they're they're they're objects
right on the side there they're the
external accounts they're the ones that
the objects from which messages get
injected in from the outside and in the
middle there these are all the objects
that are executing in this
object-oriented execution environment or
the etherium world computer once you're
in there you can't get out so the only
way of getting stuff in is by these
external accounts and it's from this of
course that we get our our cryptographic
safety so we get guarantees on code
executing within this computer I mean we
get some really nice guarantees got
atomicity right so atomicity for those
who do database programming or those who
don't do theydo based programming I
guess our that basically we don't have
to think about whether a transaction
fails halfway through either the whole
thing executes as expected or it doesn't
right we don't have to bother sort of
setting a particular sort of safeguards
in order to rollback things we get
synchronous operation so objects are
guaranteed not to interfere with each
other we don't need to think about the
threading or processes or shared memory
any of that nonsense but most
importantly we get provenance so this is
a very odd notion right all of the
messages in our computer have some
origin we can check to see who sent the
message to us and we can't normally do
that right there are not many object
oriented execution environments where we
can do that and so if you know of
another object oriented execution
environment where you can check always
which object sent you the message anyone
nope it's the first I guess and that
that allows us to build certain security
constraints into the operation of our
code furthermore there's permanence an
object's data is permanent is they did
it lasts it it cannot it doesn't change
when when the computer sort of goes off
alright there is no off for this and the
objects oddly enough are immortal so
there's no notion if the object doesn't
delete itself there's no notion that the
object is ever going to die there's no
system admin who can come along and
actually sort of delete the object they
can't log in as as root and just RM
doesn't work and if the object doesn't
have code that actually commits suicide
then no other object can force it ever
to die it's very very strange notion and
finally the code that executes is
immutable cannot be changed this wasn't
the case in some of the earlier versions
of etherium but in the version that we
have now the code is immutable so you
can be absolutely certain that if this
object's code is is X it isn't going to
be Y down the line so why what's the
point of having these particular
attributes what does it give us I'm
going to list a few things a few
thoughts on this and the first is while
aetherium is a commons for innovation
right it's a place where we can all
upload code upload ideas in terms of
human interaction and have it just work
with other things transparently we don't
need to think about you know the worst
signing partnership contracts with other
businesses in the same way that uber
would have to do if it wanted to
integrate its services with let's say
air B&B we don't need to consider that
because if we have a decentralized uber
operating on aetherium and the same for
a sort of version of air B&B then they
can operate with each other if if they
want to and they don't have to ask for
permission of the other
compared to servers this is this
unleashes massive amounts of potential
innovation for business servers provide
barriers servers are cumbersome and yeah
they make interoperability difficult and
these barriers basically make monopolies
and monopolies are generally bad for
innovation and of course we have
interesting repercussions for privacy
now of course the open chain doesn't
really get you much in terms of privacy
quite the opposite but what it does is
it makes you think it makes you think
about what data you actually want to
place in the wild and what data you want
to keep safely locked away on the user's
machine yeah what it doesn't do is it
doesn't give you this false security of
placing on a third party server where
only the the elite hackers and those who
want to pay them can get access to it
and that's kind of nice we also get this
NAT this nice
authenticity yeah so with server
interactions basically it's the server
that authenticates you or some
third-party service that you essentially
have to trust with etherium you
authenticate in and of being yourself
had enough having access to your private
key or if you've got to factor stuff
then your private keys if they're M is
the world's first decentralized computer
that's kind of an interesting thing in
and of itself because it's decentralized
there's no single point of control or
failure or any single bottleneck in
principle
in terms of where things have been going
if you look into history you find that
at the beginning that tends to be very
little floating around it's all very
dispersed and not much is actually
happening eventually you find there's a
strong player a strong player sort of
picks up all the dispersed they they add
rules and they rule they rule they they
they they place they place their own
laws of interaction with this structure
in place you generally find that there's
enough development such that these event
these initial structures are not
necessary anymore
if we look in software development we
find that originally there were sort of
individual coders eventually there was
this notion of coders getting together
into a strict hierarchy right this is
the sort of thing that originally the
good new project was like but also
obviously corporate software firms when
there was a sufficient amount of
development we ended up with having this
in this case the internet was mostly
mostly but obviously version control
systems really helped we ended up with
things like this bizarre model as Eric
Raymond mentioned in his in his in his
paper finally we're sort of evolving
further even more decentralized from the
bazaar model into this kind of github
style you know everyone clones everyone
Forks and there is sort of horizontal
gene transfer of all of the various
ideas going on in coding we see the same
thing happening with other aspects of
the world so in computing we began with
like the mainframe and then there was
kind of this server client architecture
and we are indeed getting into the
peer-to-peer thing now with you know
sort of Napster BitTorrent and Bitcoin
and obviously aetherium
same with kind of governments as well it
kind of began with Anka Aniki right and
then eventually there was some sort of
like king or Emperor that sort of
gathered enough strength to enforce the
rule of law over a particular you know a
sufficiently large amount of area and of
course eventually they had to cede power
because other structures were able to be
built once that rule of law was in place
we ended up with like an aristocracy or
a merchant class and eventually we sort
of we end up with with something that
approximates
ma cracy say with distant sails you know
the the examples continue and we end up
with you know originally there's sort of
back of the magazine and then we had the
internet with Amazon right but still
only one matchmaker one merchant and
then we got this marketplace idea why
they're still a single matchmaker but
there are lots of merchants all sort of
operating within the within the
framework and probably eventually we're
going to see a plurality of matchmakers
where matchmaking itself is a service
that can be provided by by a market same
with communication and that there is a
theme here we begin with nothing we
centralize in order to enforce these
initial rules and then we can
decentralize once that structures in
place we decentralized because it's more
efficient it's more scalable and it's
more resilient to attack a theorem
commoditize is trust this is something
that I think the Economist discovered
last week it's a it's a it's a bridge
you know to cross the sort of boundaries
of these these sways of land where
there's internal trust but they don't
really trust each other and that's why
we're going to find that the initial use
cases spawning from because that's where
it can really deliver value initially we
could call it indeed a platform for zero
trust computing and in a way a theorem
could be the court of the internet sort
of interesting notion where the Internet
can have its own its own sort of place
to determine what is what is right or
wrong or when two people over the
Internet have an issue with each other
there is a lack of consensus then
etherion could step in in principle if
there iam is a crypto law platform in
this sense right it's a decentralized
legal system native to the Internet we
can implement these arbitrary social
contracts and have people operate within
them with nothing more than access to
the Internet
it's also a pivotal part of the notion
of this serverless internet right the
notion of like whatever you want to call
it the post Snowden web right web 3 it
provides the zero trust computing part
it provides the part that actually
underpins all of the all the stuff that
we'd normally go to an authority to the
database sitting on a server somewhere
and with a bunch of other technologies
it can it can actually provide that that
that infrastructure for doing massively
multi-user applications in a in a you
know in a truly different manner so yeah
that's my thoughts on what aetherium is
over and above being a scriptable
blockchain environment any questions so
I wanted to ask if you are thinking
about because like basically a theorem
is a tool yeah so that's like one part
of the story but it's also important
that the people that using the tool are
also important so have you know did you
think about these things or is there
anything that could like go in parallel
with the development of the tools that
could help you know with that the
consciousness part of the problem so you
know to educate the people how to live
within a system that is facilitated by a
tool like this because that the people
could could either you know make it or
break it yep yeah I mean I think it's
not especially clear what that what that
system is going to be yeah I think we'll
sort of discover that in the coming in
the coming years when we see the
infrastructure that gets built I mean
this is this is very much the sort of
the core technology layer and just as
you know when the first computers came
out in their 40s and you know it's like
ah you know what what's this going to do
it might make a few people who are
sitting a hall doing abacus calculations
out of a job but basically is it going
to change the world well we can't really
see what the final applications are so
maybe not and of course yeah it turned
out rather differently so and it's
difficult to comment on precisely how we
might try to shape what the eventual
outcome is from this technology but yeah
I guess attempting to be useful and
inclusive is probably a reasonably good
way to to set about it one more question
do you have any thoughts on what some of
the like the things that are going to
take the longest or be the hardest to to
transition from the old model onto this
new model oh um I guess inevitably
there's with any new way of doing things
there are people who stand to benefit a
lot and there are people who stand to
benefit much much less and yeah
persuading them that actually there's no
option they should really you know I
don't know what what do they say you
should you know shoot yourself in the
foot I'll be shot in the head tomorrow
you know it's like well persuading them
to shoot themselves in the foot now is
going to be difficult so I would say
that it's the hardest things to me seem
to be the people who at the moment relat
have a relatively easy existence or
people I say people in organizations
because that's what that's what it is
isn't it and persuading these guys that
actually what you know they need to
start thinking about things in a in a
different manner a radically different
manner is is going to be the hardest
task and the only way we're going to be
able to do that is basically it's how
you convince and
better to invest right it's an MVP so
you show them look there you can see it
working it's this is how you know once
people realize this you're not going to
be competing with this that you can't
possibly compete with this technology so
just get real and start start thinking
in different ways but yeah I don't know
I guess that's probably why ting and we
just have one more quick question a lot
of us heard in this conference relative
to previously a lot about private chains
right and my question to you is as we
progress forward into the future how do
we ensure that sort of like the public
chain doesn't get starved while the sort
like the concept of a private chain sort
of flourishes naturally because of the
investment in in it yeah good question I
would say that the the first thing to do
is to make sure that all of the
technology that goes into private chains
is free and open the second thing to do
is as much as possible make sure that
resources are shared so any of the sort
of resources that go into private chains
necessarily go into public chains so one
way of doing this is by making avoiding
like forking code bases and trying to
integrate as much as possible into as
the same code base yeah so that IP
cannot be sort of torn out and kept
hidden in the dark and the the final
things that I think is is more strategic
and that's to try and make sure that
we're always looking forward to the
point where whatever it is that private
chains deliver the public chain can also
deliver so we should be looking forward
to a point where we're not there aren't
private chains and the open chain you
know where is a we should be looking to
a point where that's a false choice and
where there's actually the real choice
is a single sort of hybrid chain where
what what needs to be private for
particular applications is private what
does it need to be private isn't private
and actually all operates in essentially
the same environment so that's something
that I'd like to see and that's
something that I hope you know as a
community we can eventually develop an
and
and implement great thank you and good
for Gavin