my name is Paul DiMarzio I am the EEA
director of community and what that
means is this kind of stuff all right I
was hired by the EEA back in August to
start opening dialogues with all the
different communities that we represent
you guys being one of them yes and so I
started in August it means I'm a bit of
an ethereal rookie but not a rookie to
blockchain I spent a couple years at
digital asset working on their stuff
their demos smart programming language
and their platform and then prior to
that I was with IBM you know doing IBM
stuff and now I decided that it was time
to get where the action is right we're
all the good developers the best
developers are the etherium community so
I'm really glad to be joining you guys
and I hope to have a lot of dialogue
with you so the reason we're having this
session today is because you may have
heard over the summer you know this this
weird thing where the EF and the EEA
have joined forces together and I is on
our board and you know what what the
heck does all of that mean
so we're here to talk through that the
truth is we don't have all the answers
ourselves yet and that's why we're here
with you guys because we want to hear
what you have to say and how you'd like
to see this thing move forward it's very
important to us to get your feedback so
that's what we're gonna do today
and as my friend John walpert here likes
to call it we're going to talk about the
Magic Bus ethereum main that running
business let's see how that works out so
I'm really happy to be joined by all
these esteemed folks sitting in the
front here I'm Cole I'm joined by Ron
Resnick who's my executive director
there's me I just introduced myself you
know Hudson from the EF Jaime from The
Magicians Layne from the cat herders
we've all been working together a little
bit to figure out what this sessions
going to be and that's been helping
John's been helping Tim doesn't want to
sit up front but Tim's been helping a
lot back there as well I appreciate all
your efforts
[Laughter]
yeah we will just make Tim answer all
the questions so what we thought we'd
want to do is yo give first give you
guys some information so talk through
you know I'm gonna we're gonna have
introductions all my friends up here are
going to say who they are what they do
why they're here I'm gonna come back and
talk a little bit about the EEA to give
you a feel for what we're all about and
why we're interested in the main net
these days and how we're thinking about
going about that then the community is
going to give their views so we're going
to hear again from the EF The Magicians
and the cat herders to kind of you know
show us what they're thinking about this
stuff and then at least half the session
is open mic right so that's what we'll
you know express your concerns express
your input whatever it is you have to
have to say I mean you can shout out a
question or a comment any time will any
of us are talking but I just want to
make sure you hear what we have to say
first I think that's important to make
sure you got all the information then
you can tell it then you can call you
know or whatever you want to do
so let's start with the introductions
I'm going to pass the mic over first to
Ron have a mic okay hi everyone I'm
really happy that we're able to do this
I this is my second Def Con and the
purpose as Paul indicators that we have
this organization of enterprise folks
and we have the etherium community and
we really want to know what we can do
bilaterally
there is definitely actions that we can
take in the a and have them through our
members is we're a member driven
organization what can we do to help
facilitate the growth and the success of
if they remain that and that's primary
purpose is you know the a started out
more in private permissioned
specifications but you'll see an
announcement this week we're forming a
working at a group initiative to
collaborate with the etherium foundation
cat herders it theory magicians so we
really need a better direct line of
communication and that's why actually
how this all started we asked the
etherium foundation what can we do here
and this is what they recommended so
here we are so hopefully you this can
give us more of a direct line and the
main purpose is if you think about it is
that any one entity an organization
whether you decentralized or not it's
really hard to be successful if you do
it on your own and and so if you take a
look what's going on now with hyper
ledger and and Basu and everyone's still
trying to figure it out so this
hopefully will be the initial start of
direct line communications and we're an
open book so there's some folks think
we're close we're not we're an open book
anybody can join us and but we
definitely can get inputs and so this is
why we're here so thank you hey Hudson
you're up
hey what's up everyone I'm Hudson I am
with the etherium foundation
representing them today I think it's
really exciting that the EEA is getting
more involved in main net there's
definitely some business applications
things of that nature
you know whenever like you think about
the early internet there were you know
just kind of nerds on it mostly right
I'm actually not old enough to be with
the early internet I was in diapers but
from what I've heard the early internet
didn't have things like Amazon it didn't
have the Facebook it didn't have like
these really massive you know
infrastructure to handle all that stuff
and we're in the early days go copy sir
prodigy
so basically we're still in that really
early date we're still in that really
early days and because of that we'll
need all the support we can get from
every single corner of the use cases of
the businesses of the volunteers of the
crypto anarchist everybody to get
together and work on this stuff so that
we can all benefit from it in the end I
also think it's exciting that we have
our executive director I am EA Gucci
helping with the EA now that's a really
cool development
I believe she's on the board right yeah
she's on the board now the
and with that I think that's also
showing that the EF is willing to
partner with the likes of UNICEF parity
with the Grants Program the EI we're
really reaching out to everybody because
through this you know level of
subtraction that we're kind of pitching
here we want to help everyone else and
we're not in this to grow and be like a
drive like the driving force in the
ecosystem we want to help others be a
driving force in the ecosystem that's
all of y'all so and on the stream unless
you don't like us and then we don't want
you but if you like us and you want to
support us then that's great you know
what even if you don't like us we're
gonna make you like us and that's my
intro thanks that's so beautiful
alright Jamie I just keep playing
oh I'm sorry I'm in order we got kids in
stretching it's a little bit of you guys
messed up my order my name is Jamie
Pitts and I do work at the etherion
Foundation as DevOps but I also
volunteer with magicians and so I I
guess today you could say I'm
representing the operations group in the
magicians and to give you an
introduction to myself I'm I was
involved in the early web so I come from
the orientation where like things are
really messed up and it's okay if it's
like looks really janky and early what
was extraordinarily janky and so I look
at early aetherium and and it is
extraordinarily janky but actually I
think there's there's so much more there
than the early web in a way and so the
potential is amazing and so yeah I think
I've a theorem has radicalized me I'll
put it that way
I believe in it to a great extent I
believe in the philosophies that go into
it and all of us have different
philosophies but I think there's common
there's common philosophies and I'd have
to say the technology has affected the
way I look at the way a look at politics
the way look at how people organize and
so yeah it's really interesting how
just getting involved with technology
can change change you and in terms of
involving corporations I'm very
skeptical
I think corporations are out to exploit
and I think if there's a way that we can
show them a different a different path
otherwise we're going to destroy them we
have to because they're gonna they're
gonna eat us alive so I I think we can
show them a different way in aetherium
it's an opportunity to create a new kind
of corporation and it's up to us to make
that happen so that's the way I look at
it Thank You Jamie all right Lane
know you're up I'll stay sitting down
hey guys I'm Lane I'm here representing
the etherium cat herders today let me
get one thing out of the way up front
like as as jamie alluded to a moment to
go like all of us have multiple
affiliations and in fact when I walked
into the room a moment ago Hudson came
over to me and said Who am I
representing today because I think you
have you check three or four of the
boxes probably and the folks up here so
I think that actually speaks very
powerfully as well to like the degree of
collaboration that we have in this
community that we all kind of overlap in
our in our daily roles it's pretty
amazing to be sitting up here
representing the cat herders because
this initiative was actually born in a
room just like this exactly a year ago
in Prague in a sort of accidental
fashion where myself and a couple of
others just made an open call for folks
who wanted to contribute to a theorem in
general and kind of to coordinating the
upcoming maintenance network upgrades
specifically for anyone who wanted to
get involved and contribute to things
like project management and it's sort of
grown beyond our like wildest dreams
since then and then it's a big you know
big international group of folks who
have I think added a lot of value and
will continue to do so so again it's
really it sends shivers down my spine to
be sitting up here representing that
group now a year later and actually in
very similar fashion I think to the way
the magicians were born a year prior to
that as well so again just speaks very
powerfully to the power of what the
etherium community can do in an organic
way when we put our minds together
can I have a show of hands how many
people is the first Devcon okay that's a
lot of people so holy crap well welcome
to Def Con welcome to the community this
is a very very very special event this
is my third Def Con I'm sure you guys
have probably like fourth or fifth or
something by now
yeah so this is going to be a lot of fun
so yeah welcome hey you guys John and
that a few words sorry I didn't put
slides up for you but guys and I'm
helping I was basically with the
operations of magicians and I'm getting
involved a lot in a community working
around in Syria I'm trying to be like
the cute side of a cerium and like
meeting out everything was possible and
that's basically it I would say thank
you John hi I'm John walpert I guess I
could say I'm on team Internet I'm on
team consensus I'm on Team etherium I'm
one of the founders of team hyper ledger
for my sins and and in general I'm on
team working together and in fact for as
proof of that I would like to
demonstrate this is vitalik boot Erin's
t-shirt from consensus 2016 or 2015
where we were announcing hyper ledger
and I said you know I would love to have
a mouse hyper ledger with an aetherium
shirt on to make a statement that it's
about all of us not just groups of bands
of mostly humans and he pulled the
t-shirt straight off his body and gave
it to me and I went on stage with this
and I've had it in a treasured spot in
my house ever since and he's never
washed it I have definitely washed
and yeah so I think this is a tremendous
year this is the year of convergence or
this is about to be maybe 2020 well I
was I had a hand in the years of
divergence in 2015 and we've had we've
been all on different explorations we
needed to do that
and now it's time that we we have the
bandwidth we have worked out some key
problems that we needed to work out on
all sides and now it's time to yeah to
show I mean the corporations and
everybody else all groups of mostly
humans need to learn how to work
together better and we're going to show
how to do that thanks John
Tim you want to say anything or no yeah
he doesn't want to talk all right so let
me take about ten minutes and and tell
you what the EEA is all about you know
you guys if you want to turn your chairs
around for this because I feel really
weird talking at your backs you know you
can heckle me
so what's the EEA about yeah heck if I
knew when I was given the offer to join
I had no idea
I knew it etherium was obviously and I
was looking to get into this space but
you know when Ron offered me this
position with the EEA
I wasn't sure this was the one I wanted
to take so I did what I usually do I hit
Google and I start looking around for
research and exactly what do industry
organizations do you know what's their
value and is this the way I wanted to
spend you know the next couple years of
my career and as I was doing that I came
across a really interesting I can't call
it research you can't even call it a
study I think was just like some some
poll that was run by a travel company
about two years ago where they just you
know asked a random set of you know US
smartphone holders what would you give
up for a month
rather than lose your Wi-Fi access all
right so first one line I don't know how
white people are so willing to give up
one I mean it's my drink fast food
coffee self-explanatory friends your
partner a shower
listen this is some pretty serious stuff
you know we're talking about some
technology here and people are willing
to give up the best parts of life for it
you know for awhile I was doing these
full-body cleanses twice a year and and
for two weeks I would give up you know
the wine the junk food and the coffee
and it was a miserable experience I felt
good afterwards but man to give that
stuff up for a month I don't know how I
could do it right so what did this mean
how did this all change because I am old
enough and I know that this wasn't
always the case right I built a house in
2000 and I wanted my house to be modern
state-of-the-art and future proofed I
wanted to have data voice and video all
through the house every room in the
house wherever I decided I wanted to be
so you know I snuck into the house while
I was being built with a buddy of mine
and we ran to cat5 to rg6 cables to 20
locations in the house it was a
miserable cold day in the middle of
January but we got the work done you
know this is my wife after she saw what
I had done to the house but there was a
reason for it right in 2000 Wi-Fi was
not reliable you know I was doing a fair
amount of travel in those days and you
know whatever Wi-Fi was there was really
only intended for laptops and and it was
awful
you know you'd go somewhere and you'd
have to really open up your settings
fiddle with it make it work
there was no interoperability it was
really quite a mess and the reason is
that you know there was a great standard
in place right the I Triple E the first
802 standard was a great standard and
people were building products to that
standard but the I Triple E is not
assigned any resources to do any testing
or certification or to make sure
anything works with each other right so
you had basically a lot of vendors
coming out with products and saying you
know we're I Triple E 802 compliant and
of course the stuff wouldn't work right
so how did we get from this you know
where I'm wiring my house with a whole
bunch of cables to where people are
willing to give up the best parts of
life for Wi-Fi and it turns out it was
the formation of
industry organization it was called the
wire a wonderful term wireless Ethernet
compatibility alliance there's one that
rolls off the tongue Weka one of the
first things they did was they changed
it to the Wi-Fi Alliance probably the
smartest move they made but what was it
that they did to make the change in this
scenario well the first thing they did
is they understood that you know a
standard is good but you need to have
some market-driven specifications around
that so you need to understand what's
the market looking for what function is
functions and features do they want in
order to start buying product so they
started building market driven
specifications around the I Triple E
standard and other standards and we'll
explain what that means in a few minutes
but then they combined this most
importantly with certification testing
right so if you were a member of the
Wi-Fi Alliance you could go you could
put a product through a certification
suite and then look the the the the the
buyers of that product would be assured
that it was interoperable that it was it
would be able to work nice and play nice
with any other stuff out on the market
it's this combination of market driven
specifications and a certification
testing program that makes people want
to spend their money all right that's
what gets you to web-scale adoption
that's what gets you from you know a
geeky technical standard you know just a
few people know it and understand it to
something that's really going to drive
markets and that's what they did
Wi-Fi just works and the way that I term
it is technology stewardship and market
stewardship have to work one on one
right so you know the EF and a lot of
you guys are really great at focusing
the technology making the technology
move forward what we're trying to do at
the EEA is get that market perception in
here and start to build out what's
needed to make this thing web scalable
now what would you give up for a month
rather than lose the Ethernet all right
I'm not really asking you guys because I
know if I ask you I'm going to get all
the same answers I got upfront maybe
some even more startling one
but if you were to like go out of this
room go out of this hall you know and
start asking people around town here or
even your friends and family you know
they're gonna give you a blank stale and
say Ethernet no I said that on purpose
they're gonna hear aetherium they're
gonna go Ethernet they don't they don't
know all right you know I've got the
people ask me so you do you took a new
job what are you doing I work I work in
aetherium
Oh theoria it's a blockchain thing
blockchain did you ever hear a Bitcoin
oh yeah yeah I know but well it's
something kind of like that and that's
where we are today we know people aren't
going to give up anything so how do you
get from where we are today where the
average consumer is going to start to
recognize etherium well that's why the
EEA was formed we were formed by the
major industry players at the time but
now we're a very very diverse group
that's not just big people it's little
people in fact I'd say most of our
membership is under a like a handful of
handful of folks so we have a really
great selection of folks we've got
people from the private sector so the
big and the small companies we've got
tech producers we've got industry
verticals
we've got consumers as well so a lot of
a lot of the banks are their consumers a
lot of places that are going to use this
stuff and I know there's not a lot of
love for government here but you know
you still they still exist you still got
to coexist with them and they're
informing us here we've got academics
we've got civil society we were kind of
the way that these groups work everybody
in this organization has an equal voice
so you know John's from consensus one of
the bigger companies in the group if
you're a small ten person shop you've
got the same voices consensus in the EEA
and that's something pretty significant
and it really does work that way and our
goal is to develop a neutral competitive
incredible market view period there's
three things we do to make this happen
and very much it follows the same lines
as the Wi-Fi Alliance and other industry
alliances
I didn't mean to it you know into
intimate that the Wi-Fi Alliance is the
only one doing this Ron here my boss has
worked for what four or five others at
least there's a lot of them out there
and a lot of the technologies that you
know and love and accept have all been
pushed that way through some sort of an
industry organization and we're pretty
much the same so we do this by
publishing open standards-based
architecture and technical
specifications we do not write code all
right so we're not a code shop we're a
specification shop the next step of the
process is to build trust in that in
those products built to those
specifications by producing a
certification process our test net is
going to be up and running yet a couple
of weeks like almost any day now and the
certification tests and as a
certification process should be ready
sometime next year so we're ready to
start moving to that next step and then
we we do marketing all right we're not
going to talk about marketing here today
but you know we make sure that what's
going on you know with you guys that are
members what's going on in the community
is is well understood by those folks
that we're trying to reach so if we were
to look at our architectural stack and
Charles I did update it so we got the
the current one you should take some
comfort in that you know what we do is
we adopt and extend right so a lot of
what's already out there is the
formation and the basis of what we're
building in the EA so at the core you
know we have the core technologies that
were defined you know in the etherium
yellow paper and everything that's come
since and of course as we move forward
to eath 2.0 you know this is going to
you know build out and we're going to
start to pull all those other
technologies in as well so this stuff
forms the core what we do then is we
kind of fill the gaps what our
enterprise is looking for what is the
market asking for in order to run
products on aetherium a lot of it has to
do with the three P's all right privacy
performance and permissioning and the
stuff that sits around that so that's
where a lot of the focus has been to
date where it's going to go from here is
really depends on the members on
you know Ron and I don't dictate what
goes on the members drive the agenda for
this organization and then of course
sitting at the top you've got the
application layer I haven't seen that
we've done a lot there yet
but what we do at the moment in our
specs is we pick and choose you know
what what do you have to do what should
you do what's good for you to do and
that sort of thing all right so we build
out an architectural stack and then we
produce specifications based off that
stack currently we have two there is one
for the enterprise client and there's
one for off chain trusted compute we
release the latest versions of these
specs today so they're currently at four
nine oh there and 1.1 there so this is
this is what we do we build
specifications and then companies build
products based on those specifications
so for example Pantheon is a enterprise
client that conforms well right word
here is built off of this spec I can't
say it's certified because we don't have
a certification suite yet but eventually
when we do build one then the current
Pantheon product I'm sure will submit to
to the spec all right and there's going
to be some really good off chain compute
demos coming up later this week in fact
I really want to point a tension to this
session that's happening on Wednesday
what what went on is something that
really impressed me five of our member
organizations banded together and
produced a what's called a it's a
trusted token specification the demo is
something like a rewards token
environment and they use the client spec
they use the off trust off chain tries
to compute spec and they also use
something that the EA is also
responsible for called the token
taxonomy initiative I'm not really
talking much about that today because
that is blockchain neutral but of course
it does support aetherium tokens as well
so we write specs we don't write code
but what we're starting to see is a fare
up uptake of our specifications in hyper
ledger so hyper ledger as you know
received the panthéon code is open
source as project Bay
sooo right and now Pegasus I believe
just last week it was announced that
there's a Pantheon product that's coming
out based on that and even just last
week the Avalon project was announced by
hyper ledger which is open source code
that is based off of our trusted compute
spec all right so you're gonna at some
point be able to find that there are
products that are going to be built on
open source code that are going to
certify to the EEA specifications and
this is this we think is really going to
help drive the marketplace and produce
that web scale adoption that we're all
looking for right so this so this is
basically what we're all about so just
two points of history before I put the
mic down just so you know where we were
and where we are now and why we're
having this meeting today and this is
you know even before I joined when the
EEA was started you know there was this
uh you know this vision this perception
that the main that was not a safe place
to be it was run by a lot of partiers
they you know you're talking about you
know all the stuff that you would hear
in the press has to do with people you
know doing naughty things and nasty
things on the main net and no Enterprise
is really going to want to be there
because they're focused on privacy and
permissioning and performance and this
wasn't really working for them so the
members initially focused primarily on
private blockchains private
implementations of based off of
aetherium technology and that was a good
start and that's where the spec started
from but now we think of the main net as
the Magic Bus right this is a good place
or it's becoming a good place to run
business applications and this is why
the EA is starting to branch out and
focus on specifications that can run on
the main net of course we're still going
to focus on private permission chains
those will never go away we still have
intranets even though the internet has
proven itself but we can't have both and
they can both have the same sorts of
specifications and they can talk to each
other nice so to start to move this
process forward we formed the main
networking group in the EEA the interim
chair is going to be virgil griffith and
i think
you know the interim Vice Chair is John
sitting over there and you know they
don't know what they're gonna do yet
they just started getting together some
of the things that have thought about
are you know to start seeing what can we
do to bring a theory them up and use the
EIP process for that right that's one
option another option is to focus on
looking at the etherium documentation
and kind of raising it to an
enterprise-grade specification you know
be the voice of the EEA in public is a
theory 'm discussions like here but
really we kind of want you guys to have
a say as to how this group operates and
i'm about to shut up and we can start to
have that discussion but one thing i
want to point your attention to is there
is a working group planning meetup
happening on thursday damn that's right
around lunchtime but well buy your lunch
take it to the DEF CON Park amphitheater
and come and talk to Virgil and John and
decide how you want this thing to go
alright so that was a really a brief
introduction to the EEA I'm really not
from the government I was told that
might be funny ha ha but what I do have
is I have a love for programming I mean
like many of you I started programming
at a young age well you know for me a
young ages was my late teens because
there wasn't anything when I was growing
up but yeah that is me in front of my
Radio Shack trs-80 notice notice that
cassette tape recorder which which is
where I stored all my programs I only
bring this up because I want you to know
that I do understand you I am a
developer at heart even though I don't
write code anymore and definitely don't
have that box anymore I spent the good
part of my career you know writing
Enterprise projects for IBM I did that
for quite some time so so I know where
you're coming from I want to be your
conduit of information back and forth
through the EEA all right so I've set up
a couple of things you know you can
email me if any of you still use email
you can direct message me you can
telegram me
I've set up an open community on slack
and one on getter as well I don't know
where else you guys like to hang out if
there's some other place let me know I
see a lot of folks taking pictures I
actually have put all of these slides on
a shared Google Drive and we'll get the
will start to you know talk about we're
there as well so you don't have to you
know and I guess it's going to be on
video too but yeah that's it for me so I
hope that was helpful what I want to do
now is let each of the communities come
back up and just say if you know a few
parting words show a few slides and then
we're gonna go open mic so Hudson you're
gonna be up first
all right it's a great presentation
there was a lot of points I really liked
about that there were some that confused
me and I think is gonna confuse the rest
of you as we're just starting this
process so I'm gonna go through some of
the interesting stuff first some of the
stuff that might kind of confuse you at
one point they said the EEA right specs
but they don't write code right it was
something like that well I think when
you said that on the call with me a few
weeks ago that was kind of like I think
I said because I do the core developer
meetings every two weeks so I get
involved with doing aetherium 1.0 main
ed updates the organizer for aetherium
2.0 is Danny Ryan so basically I said
that's that might not work very well
because a lot of people who write e ip's
they're expected to build test cases
they're expected to come together and
help with the code on their client or on
someone else's client those are the ways
the IPS get in quickest but that doesn't
mean it can't change that means that
that's how it is right now and as we
grow there is going to be a need for
some of this testing and certification
and things like that it's gonna take
some time
there's definitely distrust with the EEA
right now some of their earlier efforts
were focused on and still I guess today
are focused on private blockchains
and a lot of people said those are
useless a lot of Chordettes said
those are useless he probably said those
are you know yeah you built what did he
say it's useless
John so basically what I said it first
and this might be the case today from
some just brief talking is they're gonna
hate you that's exactly what I
said the core developers are gonna
hate you because you're like we
want to build these specs and then you
all are gonna build it because you said
companies build this stuff because
that's how it's been traditionally well
and aetherium world companies don't
build this except for maybe basu which
they're doing a great job by the way
it's volunteers it's people who are
completely anonymous that aren't gonna
sign in das that aren't gonna sign these
like copyright agreements it's people
who come in who are working who are
donated by people like the etherium
foundation consensus protocol lapse all
kinds of people like that it's such a
mix and it's such so many different
differing views that coming together for
something like this is gonna be a real
challenge and I think the EEA
understands that which is really
promising to me because a lot of people
don't get it and I just feel like you
guys actually get it so that's that's
kind of a short of the point of view to
go into more detail how this EIP process
works if you were in the last session
you got like a deep dive into it I'm
sure but VIPs are protocol it's you know
there's different kinds of VIPs but the
ones were kind of referring to today are
quarry IPS so you go in and you say I
want to do something with ZK snarks on
aetherium and right now it's really
expensive because there's like this
thing called op codes that need to be
changed or added or adjusted and so you
go in and you write any IP and you say
for the purpose of doing ZK snarks on
aetherium I want this to happen here's a
sample code snippet and here's some
testing cases and then they go to the
core devs and they say alright this is
something the community wants there's
maybe multiple stakeholders we think
it's important so we're gonna build it
or if you want to build it that'll get
it in quicker generally so we've worked
with the Z cash Foundation and with the
Z cash community before to get ZK snarks
on it
areum years ago early on and we worked
with them recently to get another opcode
in or a few op codes that do a similar I
say opcode I meant pre-compile sorry
someone's gonna really mad at me for
like messing up these terms pre compiles
in the system so that we can do like
more efficient ZK snarks so they had
some developers develop a spec they have
some developers write code and it got in
and one of the hard Forks they there's
an upcoming hard Fork
Constantinople I hope I get that
confused because we've named so many but
Constantinople is coming up and as
simple crap
yes Thank You Constance couples happen
its sample oh my gosh I need to be
better at this yes yes Istanbul was once
available
so basically when that's coming up we're
gonna include more updates right now
there's a few processes from a core
developer perspective that are broken
the EIP system needs to be updated it's
very confusing if you've ever written an
EIP i think that's something that the
EEA can jump into and has experience in
writing these kind of you know
perspectives and these kind of
repositories of people's specifications
there's also just the core dev process
that and the hard fork process that
we're fixing right now normally we have
it actually if you want to attend my
talk on the mainstage tomorrow at 10:00
I'm gonna be talking more about this but
I'm actually right after Vitalik so
that's not nerve-wracking at all anyways
going forward we're gonna change from a
hard fork timing model where we go in
and we set up a time and we say we're
doing a hard fork on this date and then
we go in and we try to fit as many in as
we can and we rushed and we're figuring
out how to fit these II IPS and we're
not coding in time and the test cases
aren't built to an EIP centric model
where we knew hard Forks as a IPS are
done and if they have to happen to be
bundled together that's great if they
aren't bundled together then they go to
the next heart fork so they're gonna
happen more frequently the etherium cat
herders are going to be doing better
about reaching out to minors exchanges
and major corporations and
infrastructure projects like in fira to
make sure they're ready to upgrade
because it's no one's no it's no one's
job to tell these companies and
exchanges what to do but that's where
the cat herders come in so I think it's
really important that we have groups
like that yep we got we got a few cat
herders in the audience actually like
yeah and I'm a co-founder of the cat
herders along with Lane and offeree and
I'm missing someone
Piper Miriam Piper here no it's okay
he's in our hearts so basically to wrap
this up I see a lot of good things that
could happen with this collaboration
between the EEA but there are some
wounds that are gonna have to heal not
that anyone ever got into a fight but
like people are skeptical like why would
we help things were trying to destroy
Jaime kind of alluded to that what are
we gonna do what are we gonna do in
certain situations where the EEA and the
businesses that are related to it are
gonna panic when we get big enough that
there's a child abuse now are we gonna
whitelist things is there gonna be
clients that whitelist I don't know
there there's like things that were not
anticipating that are gonna happen that
are gonna be really big deals this is
supposed to be censorship resistant this
is supposed to be decentralized are we
really gonna stick to our ethos I don't
know so stuff like that or just remains
to be seen but I have a lot of hope that
we're going to have great collaborations
in the future there's going to be a lot
of resources probably donated and
helping out I know the Basu team I hope
I'm saying that right has been excellent
partners with these other clients
building on the main net there their
client is excellent whenever we have
test cases got yeah yeah seriously Dano
has been on like every port of call
every other call he's picking his kids
up from school and he's like alright I'm
picking my kids up but like if I don't
talk it's because they're getting in the
car and I'm just like damn that's
dedication so yeah they're a great
partner and I have a lot of hope for the
future on all this stuff so stay tuned I
think there's gonna be a lot more
information as we get our channels up
with the cat herders as we get more
stuff out maybe we'll do a newsletter
people love those right I don't know
anymore
so we'll be we'll do something to get
the word out for sure and that's all I
have to say about that and here's the
world-famous Jaime Pitts right
apparently slides here yeah I mean we
earlier we introduced magicians I think
a lot of people in the audience are here
for that so I'm not going to get too
deep into it and we're basically an open
community of people who want to organize
around technology changes and so yes we
focus on a IPS and ER sees a lot of
times we want to facilitate creativity
and people that come together for new
initiatives and and so we're really down
for that and a key thing that we do key
infrastructure is communications
infrastructures so we have this this
forum at etherium - magicians org and
you can see if you go there immediately
get dumped into all these conversations
really specific conversations about AIPS
but sometimes people will try to gather
together some people of birds of a
feather kind of thing and say hey we got
a new initiative and so you'll see a lot
of those snowball on the forum and the
key is open process we don't we're not
exclusive and I think everyone could
call themselves a magician who is
interested and learning etherium any
kind of aspect of etherium because
there's so many aspects to get into an
individual representation is a key value
for us we don't want people representing
their organizations even though in this
panel
we're attempting to represent our
organizations and institutions when we
have conversations we want you to
represent your expertise not the
interest of your group of course your
boss is going to be telling you to to
represent them and that's fine and the
key is rough consensus and running code
and Hudson alluded to this is that it
when when there's an EIP we want to see
tests and we want to see prototypes that
kind of thing like you'll take death and
you'll implement what you're proposing
and then that's accepted and you can
talk about that and the rough consensus
part is let's say there's several people
coming to consensus that's the
conversation and you reach consensus as
opposed to some kind of vote the people
on in the group come together and work
out how to find achieve consensus on
that and that's a process it's very hard
to define you know we hear about voting
and we think that's a very solid way to
go but consensus enables you to really
in a subtle way
flying find a common ground and listen
to each other and sometimes you have to
make compromises and that's okay
and so those two rough consensus and
running code once very like it's kind of
a hard and soft aspect of it and so I
guess the opportunities here like some
of the opportunities with the EEA I
think the key is with the EEA community
it sounds like I mean from my impression
it's is there hundreds of corporations
who are members of this and government
institutions hundreds and every one of
these I mean many of these organizations
are vast like very vag organizations and
so basically that organization has
somebody who is designated to
participate in the EEA that means we
have people in corporations who are
interested in aetherium we're learning
about a theorem who are working with DEA
that is an opportunity for us to
influence what's happening at those
corporations and we can influence them
about the IP process community driven
software development and what maenette
is trying to do how its permission
all these different values
decentralization all these different
values and things that were working on
we can we can start to bring that and
educate them in the corporation's about
it and then start to change those
corporations hopefully not getting that
person fired but if they're fired
they'll come and work with us it's fine
educate and and we need to learn about
these corporations and what the process
is the key to the corporation's is their
efficiency they they have mandates and
their mandates are often I think very
simple they they need to return have
returns for the shareholders they're
very focused on that and you here are
some changes like they're oh yeah let's
let's worry about the environment a
little bit but primarily it's about
shareholding shareholder value we can
learn about what what's going on with
that how that works how corporations
work how how they're efficient we can
learn from that efficiency I think in
our community work we're inefficient
that's the cat herders are named cat
herders for a reason right
and it's it's an extraordinary process
to try to herd those cats we can learn
to be more efficient and I think the cat
herders emerging actually it's an ironic
thing because the cat herders is the
introduction of much more efficiency in
a process that was previously
inefficient so in a way we're going
corporate right we don't have to adopt
their culture but we can steal the way
they do things their ideas their
efficiencies and so I really commend the
characters for doing that magicians can
learn to do that too I think we're
actually much more disorganized than the
counters okay we're going to lay now
Thank You Jamie
thanks everyone for your awesome
presentations before I dive into talking
about the cat herders I just want to
share a couple quick thoughts on how we
call collaborate better I think if
there's kind of one theme I'm taking
away from this conversation it's about
breaking down walls I think that our
community is a community that we don't
believe in building walls we believe
that we what what unites us is much
greater than the things that separate us
and we can learn a lot from each other
and I'm really happy as well Hudson that
you touched upon things like trust I
just want to share that I was very
intimately involved in the core dev
calls and the EIP process for about 18
months and throughout this time I heard
ETA mentioned many times but had very
few touch points and very few chances to
kind of meet folks like Paul and Ron and
understand what you guys are doing and
where it comes from and definitely had
and still do to be honest like a healthy
degree of skepticism about you know I
mean as Hudson mentioned we have this
concept of like Oh permission blockchain
Lee that's not really a blockchain why
would we as core developers you know
care about that or want to support it or
contribute to it we see companies like
Microsoft launching products based on
aetherium open-source permissibly
license software and initially we have
naive thoughts like why aren't they
contributing more to core development
right why aren't they sort of paying for
core developers to kind of you know
contribute directly to the project so
the polling point I'm trying to make is
that it's very essential that we come
together in forums such as these to have
these conversations and I see a great
deal of potential as as wonderful and
wonderfully chaotic as like the etherium
main that core development process is
initiatives like the cat herders have
arisen for a reason as Jamie mentioned a
moment ago we can learn a great deal
from folks such as you guys you
gentlemen who have a lot of industry
expertise have had quote-unquote real
jobs at quote unquote real companies
like IBM before I'm a lot less anti
corporate than maybe Jamie are some
people in this room having worked in the
financial industry of myself in the past
and yet I do have that skepticism so
yeah so so again what unites us is is
much greater than the stuff that divides
us and I think that we all share common
goals in our vision
for what aetherium can be and can evolve
into and I think we all recognize as
well but if we don't come together and
work together as a community and
collaborate across the aisle so to speak
we won't reach those goals so I just
want to express my gratitude for for you
guys for organizing this and bringing us
together this is a very exciting
important forum I will say a couple more
words about the cat herders but did you
have something you wanted to add okay
cool
oh there are slides you made slides
didn't you no someone made slide Tim
thank you Tim I haven't seen these
slides yet which is my fault so we're
gonna explore these together the cat
herders came together in 2019 to help
with project management and ethereum so
yeah so so very very briefly the cat
herders as I mentioned in the beginning
of this panel were born in a very ad hoc
fashion just before Devcon last year at
Prague it was at a hackathon organized
by the fantastic status organization and
so what okay so here's how I'd like to
describe it I've been told that the
definition of innovation is when like a
need meets a solution and so I'd like to
think of the cat herders as as an
innovation in the etherium community
because there was sort of a supply side
issue and a demand side issue right so
the supply side issue is that there are
many incredible people in the etherium
community who for whatever reason don't
feel super comfortable rolling up their
sleeves and jumping into like like
technical governance right so that could
be the ethereal magicians it could be
the awkward deficit process or something
else but really capable fantastic people
who have time and a lot of value to add
so that's sort of the supply side and
the demand side is as we've heard a few
times today already there's a lot of
wonderful chaos and inefficiency in kind
of the etherium core development
research and development process and in
particular the number of stakeholders
has grown enormously if you rewind even
three four years if you look at all the
recordings of the core devs calls and
things like that you'll see you know
they were kind of 10 12 15 people and
these calls nearly everyone was either a
part of the etherium foundation or
consensus or piratey that's no longer
the case if you look at the calls today
especially like the e 2 calls there's
sometimes as many as 60 or 80 people
participating in these calls
representing dozens of or
around the world and so as the number of
stakeholders has grown and the diversity
of projects represented and contributing
to these initiatives has grown we've
realized that there's just more need for
coordination and it's kind of like a
Goldilocks thing like we don't want too
much because that starts to feel a
little corporate and that you know
people kind of get turned off but but we
don't want too little because that leads
to chaos and we struggle to efficiently
roll out you know network upgrades and
things so that was kind of the supply
and the demand that met in the creation
of the cat herders it was a very organic
thing there was a initially a group of
four people which quickly grew into kind
of ten or twelve people who came
together at DEFCON last year in ad-hoc
conversations is this the only slide
there's more right so what is the cat
herder what do the cat herders do as a
community so we're now somewhere in the
order of about 20 people so note-taking
was the very first thing the cat herders
did for so like I personally took notes
for the Corps Deb's calls for quite some
time and just realize it's not
sustainable for many reasons right I I
may not be able to make a call or just
didn't have time sometimes so this this
community of folks came together we
raised some funding super proud of the
fact that it was a hundred percent
crowdsource community funding for that
first year although recently now we I
believe the cat herders have just
received some grant funding from both
the etherium foundation from Aragon I
think those are the sources
Maalik Dow as well so thank you to all
of those organizations so right so we
have we have cow herd is joining all the
major community calls the court has
calls the eath to calls etc
communications is another big piece of
the Mandate of the cat herders there is
a medium blog communicating the progress
on audits like the prog cow on it as
well as the upgrade timelines for for
constantinople istanbul and fundraising
activities as well so the cat herders
and hudson led this initiative so Thank
You Hudson for all the hard work you did
on this raising funding for the prompt I
audit get coin grants etc and and really
it's it's an open platform right so as
the slide suggests you know and as Jamie
said a moment ago there there's no such
thing as like officially being a member
or not being a member of the cat herders
it's an open community that everyone is
welcome to join and contribute to the
things the cat herders work on are
exactly those things that the community
feels need to be done we have a p.m.
repository of project management
repository on github where anyone is
free to throw issues into it and
sometimes these involve like even like
the etherium do org website has a DNS
issue or something that ultimately will
be handled by by one of you guys you
know it's sort of an ethereal foundation
thing but the cat herders are meant to
be like the customer service desk for
aetherium right so anything anyone in
the community thinks needs to be done
like cat herders is a good place to
start
cool collaboration ideas this is my last
slide promote relevant EEO activities
and maintenance but stakeholders from
different parts of etherium and touch
the mood project forward so yeah I think
that's it in a nutshell right what the
cat herders is really really good at is
coordination as the name suggests and
communication something that engineers
are not always so great at on the EI
side bring non blockchain enterprises
into the Athiya sorry I'm reading the
slides and we'll kind of analyze this
together
thank you I just wanted to say no to
this it's not like the reason why Elaine
is so confused right now about those
sites it's not because we are completely
disorganized but it's because we was um
just ignoring our emails and calls when
you put up the slide with with the seven
different communication channels and the
first one was email and you said it does
anyone still use this I shook my head
I'm kind of like I live in a post email
world so I'm sorry so I agree with
everything on this slide I think that
there's an enormous amount that we can
accomplish together
I would like to shut up and listen cuz I
think we have open questions coming up
but just going back to this one there's
a link I just want to highlight this
link if you want to get involved just a
quick pitch please please please
everyone in this room there's an
enormous amount to be done there's an
enormous amount that everyone here can
can add to the conversation and
contribute to the characters so start in
the skater channel it's open to the
community and join the calls and jump in
and help
do all the things that need to be done
thank you so just one quick shout out
while you guys turn your chairs back
around a lot of thanks to John and that
and Tim for helping me put this together
they helped me figure out you know what
the agenda would be what the messaging
should be got all these brilliant
panelists here for me to you know to
ignore my emails and stuff like that but
really thanks guys great job so we have
half an hour for open forum open mic
make sure that you grab a mic when you
talk I'm gonna sit down I'm going to
disconnect so I could take some notes
I've also got EEA members in the
audience please answer anything if I bar
they're all going up so I'm gonna shut
up and sit down I make a comment on hi
I'm Jeremy I have some responsibility
for the EEA being a thing actually
probably the most but I wanted to make a
comment on the the concerns of corporate
sources aetherium right and so first
when we really started the ei the
reference document for how the EI should
work was the Dow of the IETF going way
back when ii was like there were two
there were three concerns we were so the
EI was sort of also came into being at a
def con thing in shanghai in 2016 and
and there were two concerns i saw 3 one
was whether private permission blockades
were a good thing or a bad thing they
were happening and the dominant way they
were happening was taking in a open
source etherion codebase and changing it
and the problem was those code bases
were incompatible so you couldn't reach
consensus between two different private
implementations of aetherium which if
you have believed in a future state
where you had an internet a blockchain
world was a bad thing right so guarding
against the bad outcome of incompatible
versions of the theory right
particularly if you believe that there
are probably some things that are gonna
sit on a block chain network
that you are gonna want to be private or
permissioned or what-have-you
right the second thing the second
element of it was our three and hyper
ledger we're doing we're starting to
enter the business of aetherium bashing
and there wasn't really a entity other
you know there were some private
companies but there wasn't really a
trade organization that had a point of
view and a permission and a voice to to
enter that conversation and have a stake
at the table I and we thought that was
really important to have right and then
the third thing is I'm an ex-banker -
yeah yeah and and and I do I do believe
so on that comment I have two beliefs
one is if you really want to change the
world you sort of need to try and change
all of it right and so if we end up
decentralizing the core financial system
20% the positive externalities even if
we don't achieve full decentralization
the positive externalities of even
decentralizing the core financial system
20 or 30% are almost innumerous right
like the benefits of what you can do for
open access to financial services what
you can do for greater equality right so
even if we can't achieve the overall
goal there's a big benefit there right
so if you want to change the ball you
have to change all that then the second
part of that being is there are
businesses and companies growing up
around decentralized technology and and
and ethereal right and so where is the
right community so for example the speed
of main net increases price volatility
right right the Cumberland team was here
and they left that's because what
happens is liquidity tries to move
between the exchanges people try to move
their assets you get price dislocations
by the time the assets get to the
exchange as the price dislocation the
dissipations move they all move back and
you get greater vol right that's bad for
the etherion community overall right so
where is the the right community forum
for those type of discussions to take
place I would argue it's inside of a
trade organization which is why you know
we at consensus working with wrong have
been really trying to push
in addressing the business issues of
running valuable transactions on the
maintenance so I just wanted to share
those three points of three points of
view right the the need to have if we
are gonna have subnets that are private
in permission the need for them to be
inter interoperable and compatible right
the need to have a voice that - to be
the voice of a more decentralized
enterprise the need to try and change
all the world at the same time and the
need to have a community where
businesses that build their businesses
running on a theory of can explain what
the business impact is of some of the
technical decisions and architectures
hey guys
so thanks of course for organizing this
I'd like to make a few things on a a
correct so EE was launched let's yes
sure so Sam Farha I work on quorum I
lead the quorum engineering team I've
been engaged with the community since
DEFCON 1 since DEFCON 1 and I've been
working on quorum let's say for the last
four years four years the engagement
through EA maybe started recently but
we've been working with the core
engineering team at the foundation and
the core authority for all of the
clients in general over the last four
years so it's not something we started
recently EA was meant just for a way for
us to organize that effort and bring it
together whether it's with the community
or with enterprises in general to get
them to adopt aetherium the way started
maybe as Jeremy was explaining that it
was other companies trying to sell their
own version of blockchain and that's
where we saw a limitation we did in
water so what we did we took a public
mean aetherium client which is the go
ATM client in me we make we build the
tools available for it or we made tools
available for it to be able to run in an
enterprise environment what does that
mean if you do continuous integration we
give you all the tools and all the
scripts and all of the code yeah that
you need to be able to run it there so
Hudson I think worked at USSA for a bit
your SSA runs quorum and the only way
they were able to run it because we
customized it with some tools for them
to be able to deploy it into their own
data centers we made the salt available
for them so they can learn how
evm works and how to actually build
smart contracts and how to audit and
formally review those smart contracts
you cannot do that an enterprise without
having all of these tools available for
you
same thing for zero knowledge proves you
cannot run it in an actual private sorry
in a public network correct the gas
force is too expensive maybe now with
Istanbul is going to decrease but we
were able to customize the gas price to
be able to run the contracts in an
environment where you can build a
permission network and ultimately over
time we see a lot of these features
feeding into maintenance so now we
understand that there is a demand for
you to be able to do privacy better
scalability we saw that actual blog
Gaza's limit recently increasing and the
reason that's been done we've been
working on that for a long time correct
in a permissioned environment you have
more control so you can't decide how
many transactions go in a plot and based
on that those learnings feed into
maintenance one question I have is kind
of I'd be interested to know is how is
governance how is this community
communicating like do they have a core
depth they have sub organizations groups
that like how where's this happening
like where's the forum where's the
where's the phone calls I just want to
second those sentiments like I think
having more open active lines of
communication would go a long way
towards addressing some of the like
skepticism that a lot of folks feel and
I'm not the blame is on both sides but I
don't want to put the blame specifically
like on the EA side or whatever but
there are there's a lot that we can
learn from each other and yet I don't
think we've had very active lines of
communication like again from my naive
core dev perspective it's like why isn't
IEA joining the core dev calls I'm sure
you guys have your versions of this like
why aren't we joining your calls right
so and and more to the point like whose
job is it to coordinate that I think one
of the benefits and hopefully you guys
all agree there's no point in
reinventing the wheel and if you believe
that then we absolutely need to learn
what you guys have spent on
theoria maenette the community and also
share what we'll share what we know is
that better we'll share what we know
based on again our corporate background
spent 12 years in Intel doing telecom so
I have some understanding about how you
get interoperability so your phone works
wherever you go and and so it's it's
really challenging to figure out how we
work so I was very happy that we have
this session but this is just a
launchpad for the session so I think I
think some of the ways that you asked
about governance it's real easy for us
if we can set some follow-up sessions to
share with you okay what's the best
practices how is it normally done and
then you can figure out what you want to
use and that's partly what you brought
up I mean there's best from all the
worlds and I think it's not a
black-and-white world so as much as we
all like this decentralization the other
side of it exists and I think what
you're seeing is that a lot of
cooperation for us to figure out how we
impart the information bilaterally so
I'm Charles I'm like the flunky behind
the technical work who actually puts
these things together so some of the
answers to your questions are the phone
calls happen inside EA member space it's
like and that's above my pay grade
so but what happens when you clarify
what you just said there what so what
that means in help us understand if you
are a member of a EA then it looks the
same to a member as all core devs and
the magician's looks to anyone who wants
to be there okay and and it actually
works the same
it's like rough consensus and running
code is what drives it it's about the
people who and and they're not like your
corporate monsters and corporate
warriors driving stuff it's use case
driven it's by you know people saying
look this is it is enterprises doing it
it's like we have things that we want
like permission networks that we don't
get off main net here are a use cases
here is what we're trying to achieve
here is how we do the technical or here
suggestions for the technical stuff
let's get to consensus which as you say
is is really valuable and really hard
you have oh do you have a forum and do
you have phone calls that are like among
your members you have like yeah every
members every week I turn up to a phone
they get together and you can see so the
visibility you get is if you have a look
at the the specifications look for the
editor version of the spec that that's
it comes off github it's updated every
week you can see exactly what's there in
any given week so you can watch it
developing what you can't see into is
the discussion of issues the issues that
are raised I think there was a mailing
list that got abandoned Bob built right
okay yeah so there was that for a little
bit Google Groups okay you probably
should have a mic for the video yeah I
think I think this is appointed this is
a point of debate at the board level of
the EA right now right which is do you
want to have a member driven
organization for things like antitrust
confidentiality and some of the things
that big companies need how do we get
the level of openness required in the
technical discussion resin I think there
is a I think views on this are mixed my
personal view is the EEA is too closed
that we need to change our IP policy a
little bit and we need to open up the
calls much more broadly that's my
personal opinion
that may or may not be the opinion of
consensus but that's my personal opinion
but you're describing constraint that
there's a legal there's a legal
requirement yeah check the IP well so
here's that here's the thing what we
actually do is we protect the ecosystem
in in the AAA we protect the ecosystem
against patent trolls right which which
outside the world of aetherium doesn't
do the rest of aetherium is like yeah
nobody should come along and be a patent
troll whereas the EA has actual legal
procedures in place to screw them over
and say no you can't do that it won't
work we will block that behavior and and
so that's some of the motivation behind
why we actually have the set up we have
and one quick add-on the reason why we
do it is so that there's no royalty for
everyone and that's so it's not because
we want to encourage it we tried to do
things so the corporate side who may
want to try to get a royalty payment out
of this we try to protect it I just
wanted to add something that all members
everybody who works for EF has access to
a so hi everyone my name is Jodi rich I
joined the EA today
thank you very much fun and I'd like to
introduce Cameron Belle where are you
Cameron Cameron and I co-founded
NFT dot NYC which is an event all about
NF TS every February we also run a
company called NFD cred which is trying
to consumer eyes NF TS the creation and
distribution and the reason we joined
the EA is because we see we have an
opportunity to contribute to the
standards the TTI and my question for
you Ron is can you tell us a little bit
more about what the EA is doing with NF
TS and I just want to say to Hudson
about 20 years before you were in
diapers I was writing code on punch
cards well yes we have a winner
alright so I was doing assembly code on
a pdp-11 computer so and so I was
telling these guys the like the two
languages I learnt knew back when school
is assembly and then the other one was
Fortran alright I'll tell you a sad
Woodstock story I had this very cute
girl I was dating at college and no no
no no no no I got to tell you
and she invited me to go to Wittstock
this is the sad part and it was raining
shitty weather and I'm going
nobody knew back then I was in New
Jersey what the heck it was gonna be
I actually didn't go and I could have so
that really sucks and but you're at
DEFCON which is just this is a lot
better everyone's really bummed anyway
so now I forgot the question is our n F
cheese okay so it's a bottom line and
this is this is important for you guys
to know we're just like the ethereum
foundation right the cat herders we are
we're just the all we do is try to
formalize like everyone else does the
group of members who want to do
something so we have a few initiatives
and you're going to see an announcement
very soon and Jared that was Jeremy's
idea of wait about a month or two ago we
have an initiative that actually there's
Marly from Microsoft and he helped and
you're talking about what corporate does
this could have been a Microsoft
initiative but Microsoft approached us
and said look we need to token eyes the
whole ecosystem for interoperability and
we should make it neutral so everybody
wants to jump in so you have a the
common language like the language of
music you have notes and you have rules
but you can then everybody can share and
participate we're doing that in the EA
so the EA gets rep we're hosting this
initiative and so there we invite
everybody to participate so friend of
tees but then we still want to push it
on to the EA's main net and and figure
out how we tokenize in the right way for
NF tees tied to the theory and
maintenance so we'll be watching about
another month another initiative a token
working group that's focused on the
etherium maintenance so the bottom line
is aetherium as you mentioned aetherium
foundation members can participate we
publish all our specs publicly so you
don't have to be a member and to do it
and and and and see everything that
we're doing and you can communicate with
us and that's why paul joint
okay
so oh I guess this is more of a comment
from Tim I work on hyper nature base you
which is like in the interesting
position of we have both a main net
client and we do all this permission
network stuff so we kind of get to be on
both of those calls and and the
discussion earlier around like you know
the EA does work on and on live
initiatives that provide value but the
core etherium community is kind of
obscure and hard to see
and I totally get that because I think
people complain discectomy about core
devs they're like you know we just have
a session earlier people were like oh
what's like the meta EEP or a I P one
and and people just don't know and and
and it's it's not more like people don't
have a time to find out those things but
one thing I think we do well on core
devs that perhaps the EAA could could
consider is the meetings they're kind of
semi open so the meetings encore des
gets shared and zoom there's no password
or anything but if you kind of don't
really belong there or contribute to the
meeting Hudson will kick you out very
politely I saw it once but letting
anyone else can just join on YouTube and
watch the livestream or read the
transcript and I can see a kind of model
like that working for the EA maybe
because of big company policies you want
to introduce some delay or something
like that you know the specifics might
be harder but where you have the members
you know on the call being able to speak
but everybody else is able to listen or
to get a transcript or notes I think
that helps a lot with transparency and
it would just like trust and the
community that's like there's not
something shady happening in the meeting
that you're not seeing yeah actually a
year ago in Prague we had a controversy
because we had these ad hoc meetings
where some of the core devs got together
and they were talking about eath 1x and
that's where the term was was came from
was a year ago eath 1x and there was a
bunch of people in a room and we were
just talking about it and then someone
wrote notes and
it was and then those notes got leaked
and it was like whoa there were these
secret meetings and so we got nervous
and so coin desk and coin Telegraph and
the others sometimes they've been doing
a really great job lately of getting it
right and we have direct connections
with them but back then sometimes it was
harder to get like the updates because
they'd listen to the cord to have calls
that immediately put something out and
so we felt like pressure to have this
look we had this live YouTube call
people are watching us so you can't say
things like yeah a theory it's not going
to be around in two years because of
state blow like literally state law it's
gonna take it so you came and have it on
an SSD like you can't say that because
coin desk is gonna be like aetherium
stuned so what we did was we had for one
time we had Chatham House rule chap
Chatham House Rules
Hall that the transcript was completely
there no one was attributed and the call
was not recorded we tried that one time
and we got enough community backlash
we've never done it again so that's
something where you can't even go that
far you need to be completely open or
else you won't get accepted in my
opinion so so I wanted to look at some
of the other ways that we do have a
communication and why are we not on all
core Dave's calls because all court
Dave's is on that as Paul showed we
built on top of the stack we don't want
to interfere with the stack we don't
want to change the stack and as it
develops we want to make sure we're
still compatible so we'll chop stuff out
of our stuff it will change to fit with
the overall a theorem stack because
that's critical we also have a policy if
we you know for example want a new
opcode if we want a new pre-compiled
that we will publish that stuff and make
sure that you know and get to see it and
review it and we will feed that in as a
IPS before we do it
so far we haven't actually gone that
yeah we we've set this up and said that
is how we will do anything that might
come and touch you know deeper into main
net that might need feedback from core
devs we'll take it there and make sure
we get that before we go there
there are a couple of things happening
where we might be doing that over the
next you know six months or so so there
are mechanisms which we have put in
place but not used because we haven't
had a use case for them yet
there's been nothing to say beyond look
he's a speck here's what we're doing
just to reimburse us a couple of the
things Hudson said you know that this
question of openness and transparency
has been a contentious topic in the core
deaf community for it since I joined so
a couple years ago and we've landed in a
place which i think is a very good place
which is as Hudson said kind of complete
openness and complete transparency if
there's one value that I think the the
participants and contributors in this
process share it is the value of
openness and transparency and I think
that's a cultural difference between
this community and kind of the more
corporate side of the world and so like
again having worked for a corporation
before like I understand that there are
sometimes legal reasons or other reasons
why not everything can be totally open
and participatory to everyone but I do
think that we need to do a much better
job of communicating what those reasons
are and I would like just again
representing myself and no one else I
would like to see like way more openness
and transparency on the part of EI and
other folks because I think that would
again go a long way towards removing
some of the skepticism that we feel all
right so my name is Michael and I I do a
lot of consulting and block team but I
was president of the block chain Club at
UT Dallas and a UT Dallas we've had a
lot of blotching stuff recently there's
like professors are starting do more
research the University starting to
recognize it is this is something want
to train students for we we're currently
under a lot of pressure to focus on the
right things we're like I've tried to
make it clear like I think aetherium is
where we should be focusing whether it's
permissioned or public etherium and in
the local the local corporations you
have in Dallas right now are like IBM
and had their a hash graph so so we're
currently in a situation where we're
trying to educate university faculty on
like this is where you should be
focusing your efforts so as well as
trying to tell students this is also
where you should be trying to like at
least first start learning about
blockchain before maybe you pick your
stack of choice so my question is what
kind of educational resources or order
what are ways to reach out where we can
say hey here's a here's where you should
look and see how you can start maybe
contribute to your community
it's in the EEA or in the etherium
foundation all I wanted to say was you
TD is like University of Texas Dallas
they're one of the leaders in education
blockchain stuff I visited it's
excellent secondly as far as educational
resources go that is a big gap we have I
feel like the EF needs to do a better
job of that we have documentation
efforts that are getting spun up a
little bit but I do want to hear other
perspectives and maybe the EEA if
there's there's things that are in the
works for that so yeah it's a great
question yeah I'm reminded that in 1997
I was part of two thousand people at the
company I worked for that we're getting
behind Java this radical new technology
that we were working on though and it
was beautiful it was open source well
kind of open source and well we all got
involved in somebody else's thing which
was kind of openness before open source
and part of the thing I was involved
with was getting the educational
community involved in in Java what was
interesting was where those 2,000 people
had no organ there was no organization
at my company called the Java
organization at the time there were
2,000 people that were self-organizing
when I think of corporations I've spent
half of my career starting stuff and the
other half working in large groups of
mostly humans that we call corporations
and to me from my perspective they're
really not a lot different you've got
people that need to work together and
they need to work under some kind of
operating principle and that gets
ossified over time and we call that a
corporation you know uber was the
radical and now they're the bad guys
right I guess we're always bad guys but
that's so so the point is that it it's
it there's lots of educational resources
but the most important educational
resources the resource is the one that
shows the front door to people with
initiative to say I'm gonna I see a spot
with our two thousand people with Java
we knew that we needed to make it work
for I'll call it serious business I mean
it's not you know Enterprise is a
terrible word really I almost I'm glad
that it's EEA and not Enterprise
aetherium Alliance anymore you know it's
kinda like KFC
because if you're a four person startup
that's working in in that has its
handling grandma's pension you have the
same problems as any Enterprise does if
you're dealing with PII or HIPPA you
have the same problems dealing with
those things and now doing it with them
the main net as the center point as the
met is the bus that's that's gonna
require a lot of serious work by people
in corporations who understand that not
because they're part of that corporation
but because they're a person that
understands how to do that kind of work
so we got to find this the front door
and show it really clearly and say this
is you you want to set something up this
is how you set it up just sorry I just
need to talk about the academic we have
a we we get approached by universities
schools all the time so we have an
academic partnership agreement and that
will engage with the universities but I
can share with you what I usually look
at or what we look at is are they're
doing true researcher that really have
something to contribute and then we can
actually give them and so you know that
already happens rice we have we have
University pan USC and we'll even hold
events at the schools so if you haven't
you're from all over the world if you
have a university that's why I'm
bringing this up that is doing research
the professors and then folks working on
stuff they can approach us and join me I
actually have complete visibility into
everything that we do and we'll look at
some of the ideas you have I think if we
had a way where folks can see what we do
we are completely transparent and maybe
there's a way I don't know the best way
but we we're open to talking about how
we could do that when one thing I one
theme I keep seeing here is that I
believe that that the EEA like a big
component of the EEA
it has to do with the legalities because
your this it's this notion about
protecting from patent trolls but also I
think in order to engage with
corporations in order to engage with the
corporate process you have to comply
it's sort of conform to the legal
frameworks that make the corporation
possible we say corporations are people
corporations corporation is a person it
is it is a person in the eyes of the law
and it has this incredible huge amount
of legal code protecting it and it's
incorporated into the government's
incorporate it has relationships with
other corporations and all of it is
legal and the EEA is a way to enable
them to collectively work together on on
technology and not kill each other
because they want to kill like that's
the way I see the corporation it's out
to get profit and will do anything for
that so they have all this legal
framework to control to control and
coordinate their behavior and so when
when you like for example you're working
with the etherion foundation I don't
know if most of the people work at the
theorem foundation know this but the
members the people who are contractors
that the theorem foundation have an
etherium Foundation email address can
now are now covered in this legal
framework and so they can have access to
this information to these communications
that lead to the the output that is
public anyone can get that right what
I'm interested in is this NFT the NFT
group that I was talking to you about
earlier how many members is your group
and how did you become a member can
community organizations join and cover
their people with this legal protection
I guess you'd call it and then they can
get access to this stuff because I call
this the secret EIP like to me behind
the legal veil of this of the the
shielding is I called secret e IPS you
guys have access to the secret aps how
did you how did you do it
like how how is your could you tell us I
think you mean how many people are a
member of an ft NYC
Communications yeah you better have to
bounce one us helen-alice want to
cushion which is last year we had 120
speaker applications for a nifty NYC so
a lot of the influences came to us and
this year we've only had speaker
applications open for two weeks and
we've already had 60 so we're getting a
lot of the leaders and developers in the
space coming to us because they want to
be part of the event in February yeah
just a quick answer any any entity
whether its incorporate anyone anyone
anyone can join but if it's like your
organization the the management if as
long as it's the email address it's just
like if they're in foundation because
that means they can form like as you
mentioned and so so that's how we do it
but if all the 200 member companies they
would they would have to look at joining
the EA but his organization did he have
a pay
did they pay if we do it depends you had
to pay something but if we so you pale
it pay up the money and you it's like
face it's like really Facebook that you
pay for you have the email address and
now you're now you can get access to the
secret e IP well yeah so it's I don't
know what secret e appease but maybe
they're there hiding it from me can I
make myself
III um foundation email and join you
guys absolutely if you can because then
you're represented by the third
foundation just just just circling back
to the question like I this is also
interesting and important I just think
like education is something we can do so
so so much better it's like arguably the
most important thing we should be doing
and I want to propose that this is like
a low-hanging fruit obvious place where
we can collaborate because like it's in
everyone's interest that like people you
know like students who want to like roll
up their sleeves and learn about how to
contribute to a dream and build on it
can do that and access those resources
like I've spent hours writing
curriculums and giving lectures at
various universities including my alma
mater it's like in a permissionless
fashion so like let's collaborate on
this
just a comment here sorry so there is no
secret deities correct if there is an AI
be the AVM the current implementation of
what the enterprise theorem clients use
there based on the main net clients and
the theorem EVM there is the same via
and if there's any modification to it
would be through the public
implementation it wouldn't be through
like a custom AIP or secret EIP
the main thing of EA I think you
explained the earlier very well which is
basically a way for all of these
enterprises to work together but as soon
as it's going to modify or enhance or
update if they're in public that's when
it goes through the public key idea I
had a kind of a comment so is IB am a
member of the EEA oh thank god I was
about to go into yeah good there were
some strongly worded discussions around
we had this challenge when we do I mean
Marly might want to talk about how to
make that token taxonomy initiative open
across industry but not have but have
membership in the EA mean that you're
endorsing it meaning that you're part of
the Ethier's yeah and that's the thing
cuz like there's so many there's
hundreds of organizations and if one of
them's a bad apple or multiple of them's
about Apple then what happens like what
what happens with them figuring out Oh a
theory and main that's not for me or
what happens with their influence
because there's a lot of fear about
corporate takeover amongst Americans and
out of community so like what would be
done in that situation or how is that
being prevented right so so we have a
corporate structure that like binds them
to behave in certain ways as guaranteed
so there's a membership agreement and
it's like they would and they have to
sign they can't come in and if one
company was doing something that was a
bad actor there's we it would go to the
board but if we could show evidence of
it so for example we've had some we had
one member who it was an ICO and they
were not they were the shade a shady
member so we went ahead we took it to
the board and we kicked them out because
we don't want this on
entities to be in the org so there
that's some of the benefits you have
with through an association in industry
or sure audience questions please does
the etherium Foundation or the EAA have
American tax status as a nonprofit
organization as far as the etherium
foundation goes we do not have an
American entity we have a Swiss Senate
II okay it's very complicated but we
basically have a Swiss entity a German
entity and Singapore entity yeah is a
501 C 6 or a non-profit right so you you
actually do you as a trade organization
you have a common purpose and then you
can't self deal no we can't we get asked
by even folks joining can we do have any
affiliates or political and we have to
sign off that we cannot and we don't
yeah so no we're safe okay and do you do
you have an educational component as
part of that trade organization I mean
usually usually there's one of the
things the IRS looks at is are you doing
enough from an education standpoint as a
trade organization to achieve your
common mission this is important for the
crypto anarchists because one of the
release valves you have just like you
can fork an open-source project is you
can challenge under US tax law and go to
the IRS and call them out for bad
behavior if you think they're not
achieving their intended goals yeah
we're not in the US I feel like we're
safe but I am NOT a lawyer oh yeah you
actually so I think we're a little past
time so you might be the last question
is that accurate
are we a little oh it's okay to keep it
going right I'm not familiar with this
perform at 12 so we can go okay now that
he knows that I am a lawyer he only
wants to have one question left my
question is so since you're having a
paid membership how is the structure
looking like it's easy that each member
gets a voting right so it's one member
won't go or do you have a pondering
system or how is the governance looking
like governance
as equal opportunities you can get
whether you pay our least expensive
membership is $3,000 we can put it on
payments because we want the smaller
companies to participate or members
could be so one cut one membership one
vote regardless of the size of the
company so everyone gets an equal say
when we look at the pages of tech group
on our website the ID is the first item
the ID the centralized identity is the
first item on it this is also our
interest interest related topic so I
have some questions on the ID so from e
EA a side in enterprise proxy and
scenario what is a benefit the ID can
provide can I can I explain my question
clearly yes please
so my first question is what the ID can
provide what benefit can the ID system
provide in advice brockton scenario and
what is the D ID the ID standardpen I
think I can answer some of that do you
want me to do you have more or do you it
was that your question
so so there are a couple interesting
pieces into in your question one is what
is what is from the EEA or from a
business perspective what is identity
all about you know how is that going to
go forward and gosh I sure wish it would
go forward faster that's all I'd like
but the the important thing is that I
was sitting next to by chance the the
secretary of state for the state of
Delaware a few years ago at a dinner and
I leaned over and I asked him I said how
many companies are registered in
who are controlled by say one person but
you don't know and he said I don't know
but it's a lot so there's a you know
there's an individual self sovereign
identity question and then there's how
do I know that the company I'm dealing
with on a blockchain and an open
especially main that how do I know that
that's not all that's not only the bona
fide company but it's the only bona fide
company and that I'm not accidentally
dealing with some other company or some
other entity this is a deep problem and
it's one that I think the EA is equipped
to deal with as identity amateurs
identity has not matured along any lines
as fast as I sure would like to see and
I see some friends in the audience would
agree but there are a lot of people
diligently working on it and I think
that corporate identity and individual
identity have a relationship that are is
good it could be radical how we how we
how we approach that if we do it right
and and I think we have to we'll have a
lot of work to do on that
so I identify as probably the most
complicated challenge because it's
subjective as well as objective and if
you look at what companies want and then
for and others who are involved in
social impact there are apples and
oranges it's very challenging our view
what I'm seeing is there there's enough
organizations out there focused on
identity di F I was at the ID 2020 event
so I think that the only way anyone
organization is going to to drive
identity isn't going to happen and so I
think our our objective is to really
track what goes on and then come up with
a way hopefully in the future I at the
same way we're looking at tokens which
we believe this is where we're focused
on we're doing a good job on unifying
the language of tokens
I think the identity signs is going to
be far more challenging so we don't
really know yet so to answer your
question it's up to what our members
would
like to see us do so so I want to try
and distill John's answer the use of
identifiers in enterprise blockchains is
because you want to know who else is on
the chain right we we need to have ways
of saying I've set up a consortium I
want to know what these consortiums
members are it's tied up with
permissioning in terms of the what is
the standards path for decentralized
identifiers
dan Burnett who's sitting over there
chairs w3 C's distributed I did
decentralized identify as working group
which is a standards path for building a
proper infrastructure to do them so he's
probably a good person to ask
yeah so I'm happy to talk about that I
didn't know what decentralized identity
meant for the EEA I would like to
understand that actually but the w3c has
recently formed decentralized
identifiers working group and that is
that is a technology piece which can be
used for a variety of of purposes one of
which could be building an identity
system but it was very very very very
very specifically created as an
identifier only so that it can be used
in systems where you do not have to
define identity and I'm happy to talk
with anyone who would like to understand
what some of those alternatives might be
any other questions from the audience
cuz come over here ok great hello
everybody my name is Jose I feel part of
the team community since 2016 and I
wanted to I wanted to ask you if you are
thinking about some kind of credential
that maybe people from the community can
have in order to do yeah you do not just
feel part of the Tyrian community but
actually be part of the community maybe
and NFT or something I read that in the
DEF CON they will give a 9 ft of an
attendance but maybe for the people that
couldn't come that they can also be like
a certified didn't
community person that can maybe
represent time directly or please
nobody can listen to just if you will
hold a mic please hold it tight to your
mouth so people can hear you
so just for everyone's benefit does
someone have the Pope sticker the POA P
sticker I see some people like snot -
you're here can you stand up and model
it this the sticker you have right here
P oh the Pope sticker yeah so so this is
a sticker that everyone should have
gotten a check in if you didn't like go
there and ask for it and it's actually
attached to an NF t token this is maybe
what you were referring to and there's a
couple of folks who developed this Pope
protocol Pope stands for proof of
attendance protocol and I've been
handing them out at etherium events
around the world for the past couple of
years so it's really cool if you have
wallets software you can sort of collect
these tokens - the second piece of your
question my feeling personally is no we
don't want credentials because we want
this to be an open community that like
actually the way you began your question
you said if I if I heard you correctly
you said I feel that I've been a member
of the etherium community since 2016 is
that that's sort of what you said right
that's how it should be from my
perspective you shouldn't need a
credential or or or a badge or something
to prove that you're part of this
community it should be a community that
anybody who feels a strong affiliation
with or an affinity with and wants to
assert the membership kind of stand up
and say I'm an etherion I'm a member of
the community that's that's my feeling I
feel like you may have a thought on this
yeah it's interesting because I want to
preserve privacy so there can I would
say that there should be people who can
generate an identity if they want to but
I think identity is really important I
think it's I think it's a key otherwise
it's gonna be monopolized an identity is
on its way to being monopolized and I
think the EEA actually has a big
opportunity here to coordinate with all
the corporations who have users who have
people that can be identified for very
good reasons
and then to create this open standard
the idea is a great open standard and
what you're describing D ID is actually
a really good way way to go
and I what implementations on aetherium
are there for did I don't know
I believe you Joe music Hut
okay smart contract-based accounts VIP I
don't remember the number I think Fabien
foolish teller was the author of it
seven five seven 725 725 so look into e
IP 725 as well my identity is is is a
thing for the age of convergence it was
not something that the age of divergence
was gonna work Jim you got one I say
because I come from Columbia and we have
made several meetups there but we always
say that we feel part of the community
but maybe if there were some kind of
Prudential maybe we could gather more
people because they can see some kind of
legitimacy behind it and he just not
people that feel community and want to
thank you Jim's and co-founder of
Collider which is active member of EA
the Technical Working Group I'd like to
address the question about the IDs and
corporate identities so I think there's
there's the ideas and technology came
out I got three years ago
the first time I heard of that term was
when Chris cam remembers his last name
was working with 2020 the UN project
where you can trust any centralized
identity to be the the only source of
truth for your personal identity that's
not going to work in many of world's
situations so that's where the di de
idea came out of that you you the only
way to preserve your identity is to make
it not a thing that a single
organization holds but I think in the
corporate world it's quite different
because corporate identities as a legal
thing does not exist unless it's been
what's the right word stamped by
government right I'm not a lawyer so but
I think it's generally the case that you
have to be recognized under certain
legal system which means if you want to
find out who is responsibility whose
responsibility
of certain corporate actions lice you
need a go to registry and find out right
which means by nature this is a
centralized thing so with Clara what
we're taking is a a practical approach
where what are the problems we can solve
today the enterprises that are joining
together to a consortium are facing and
they need to solve it today versus the
idea it is it's a very exciting idea but
it takes it's gonna take some time to to
actually be useful and be be realized
right so today there is a very good
system very robust that everybody is
relying on that's PKI if you talk to any
enterprise in any form of shape right
you log on to Facebook or you go to Bank
of America to try to log on to your
banking system you are dealing with that
system you're trusting that and that is
what's making the world war today so why
don't we take advantage of that system
and solve the the identity problem today
and then have an view on the future with
the IDS it soon as the approach weren't
taken and we're making proposals to the
spec technical spec to make this be part
of the the next version it's not Jim and
would you would you guys say that
there's a stackability
opportunity here a little bit longer
term than immediately today but as an
individual I should have my own self
sovereign identity but then when I join
a company if I do that but you know of
course we're gonna kill all those pretty
soon but but while they're still exist
or you know some group of humans I
should be able to stack like like ENS
could write I can say now I'm going to
attach an identity on top of that and
when I get fired which never will happen
you know
I'll snap off the top but I still have
my core identity underneath that I don't
lose is that is that sort of where the
architecture is going to go so that you
have both individual identity and yeah
yes there's definitely individual
identities and corporate identities so
again the ID came out of the idea that
individual identity should be protected
in the decentralized system which i
think is again quite different from the
corporate side question last question
I'm so actually I was just gonna respond
to it to where you said so identity
identity means very different things to
different people and that is the problem
I hate the word identity I absolutely
despise it because when you say identity
you know what you mean but it is I can
guarantee you it's not what I mean one
of the most influential papers I read
was from a workshop called rebooting the
web of trust on the five mental models
of identity because it was just an
attempt to point out there are more
models than that but but it was an
attempt to point out that what you mean
by identity when you're talking about
allowing someone on a plane is different
from what you mean by identity if you're
just talking about whether an individual
or whether an entity making use of
services online is permitted to do that
okay they may be completely different in
the first case you have a physical
security issue and you need to know that
that physical person is not getting on
the plane in the second case maybe you
don't need any of that and in fact maybe
it's way better for no identifying
information to be made available okay
and the problem with the word identity
is that it leads people to think there
is one notion of identity and even if
you say no you can have multiple
identities then there's still the
question of who defines what that
identity is and I think there's a
there's a mental mistake in that so
you're right that the the decent the
verifiable credentials and decentralized
identify our based approach those two
can work together
we'll take a while to to get out there
and so what people should do in the
meantime there are a variety of identity
based approaches today use whatever
works for you I'm not going to take time
right now to go into the reasons why
verifiable credentials in decentralized
identifies were created it's because of
failures that we saw with other
approaches that all try to define
identity as a unified thing so obviously
it's a big conversation no one knows
exactly what it what it means or what it
should mean and going forward we'll just
have to see where things go but you know
I have my own opinions like others just
a pragmatic a point about that for sorry
or Croats Microsoft and we were involved
in co-founding the decentralized
identity Foundation which is a associate
member of the enterprise of theorem
Alliance specifically because we can see
the collaborations between those
organizations the pragmatic approach is
and this is I think where John was going
is that if an enterprise is to do
business with another enterprise on the
main net it has to somehow be able to
verify that that digital thing at the
other end is actually that enterprise
and so this methodology around DIDS and
verifiable claims is actually a really
good way to do that in a way that
doesn't rely on the trust of a single
organization and so that is in a
pragmatic way something that in the
short-term we actually are you know we
need to look at that and it's something
that's solvable today with the
technology that exists so great thank
you thank you everybody for attending
this session
[Applause]
you