V God Shen Daxing, personally complaining about the new development of Ethereum
Editor's Note: This article comes fromUnitimes（ID：Uni-times）Editor's Note: This article comes from
, Author: ETHPLANET, published with permission.
On September 23, 2019, ETHPLANET (Ether Planet) and Shenzhen University Blockchain Technology Research Center held an on-site exchange event with the theme of "Ethereum Blockchain Ecological Development" at Shenzhen University!
The activity started with Jason, the representative of ETHPLANET, introducing the dynamics of the Ethereum community. He introduced it from three perspectives: the current status of Ethereum, the Ethereum community, and related learning materials.
Next, Professor Zhang Shengli, executive deputy director of the Shenzhen University Blockchain Technology Research Center, introduced the situation of the Shenzhen University Blockchain Technology Research Center. He said that the main directions of the research center include: research and development of open source shared chain system, research and development of blockchain application system, theoretical research of blockchain, blockchain policy, teaching and other service projects.
What exactly did V god talk about? Let's look down! Enjoy~
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The origin of Ethereum
Vitalik first introduced the origin of blockchain and Ethereum. He said that the blockchain is a distributed network composed of different computers. The computers in the network can store data and run calculations in a fault-tolerant way, that is, let many, many different computers compare data (that is, " transaction") reached a consensus.
These "transactions" can be money transactions sent to others, or interactions with smart contracts, and so on. These transactions will be published to the blockchain network, and then all computers in the network will reach a consensus on these transactions.
This characteristic of the blockchain makes it very suitable for building applications, because the fault tolerance of the blockchain network makes it impossible for any single computer to stop the calculation in the network or cause the entire network to stop running, thus ensuring that the application will run for a long time and can resist attack. Bitcoin, born in 2009, is the earliest blockchain.
From 2009 to 2011, the blockchain field was dominated by single-function blockchains (such as Bitcoin, Namecoin, etc.); from 2012 to 2013, multi-functional blockchain networks (such as Mastercoin , XCP, etc.).
Although Mastercoin can support many different types of "transactions" (such as transferring cryptocurrencies, financial contracts, crowdfunding, etc.), the supported applications are still limited. When Vitalik joined the Mastercoin team in 2013, he realized this and had the idea of building a "universal blockchain". Vitalik compares it to a smartphone that can install many different applications (APP), and anyone can run any type of application on it by writing code.
Vitalik said that the idea of Ethereum is to serve as a universal blockchain platform that can run any application like a smartphone. Users upload the code/program to the Ethereum network, and then anyone in the network can complete a specific "transaction" (such as issuing tokens, financial contracts, etc.) by executing the code/program. This is Ethereum The idea behind it.
In 2014, Vitalik officially released the Ethereum white paper: "Ethereum: The Next Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform" on the "Bitcoin Magazine" he founded, laying the foundation for the vision of "universal computer" for Ethereum!
Since the birth of Ethereum, although the technology has been improved, such as the network capacity has been tripled compared to before, it can support more complex applications, the network has become more secure, and the code has become more efficient, etc. , but the current Ethereum network still uses the original PoW method to operate.
Next, Vitalik talked about the new developments and trends of Ethereum and the Ethereum ecosystem.
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The transition from PoW to PoS
In the blockchain network, there are a large number of computers, and these computers (nodes) will try to reach a consensus on "transactions". This consensus process is like a voting process: which "transactions" should be packaged into blocks , which should not be included; if the majority of computers in the network agree on a "transaction", it will be included in a block.
If there are many computers (nodes) in the blockchain network, who should create the blocks? Vitalik said that in blockchain networks using the PoW (Proof of Work) mechanism such as Bitcoin and the current Ethereum, this consensus mechanism will choose who will create a new block (also That is, mining), miners who successfully create new blocks will receive mining rewards.
Vitalik said that in the early days of Bitcoin in 2009, ordinary computers could participate in the block creation (mining) of the Bitcoin network, but as the value of Bitcoin increased, the rewards for creating new blocks and processing transactions The value is getting higher and higher, and more and more people are starting to build large mines to get mining rewards.
In 2014, dedicated mining chips (ASICs) for specific currencies such as Bitcoin appeared, which made the mining of currencies based on the PoW mechanism more centralized, resulting in ordinary mining groups using CPU mining Even less advantageous.
Completely different from the PoW mechanism, the PoS (Proof of Equity) mechanism adopts a completely different "mining" method, that is, this mechanism will require participants to pledge a certain amount of tokens, and then randomly select who will create the block And get rewarded.
The Ethereum network is committed to converting from the PoW mechanism to the PoS mechanism, which is also one of the most important goals in the grand Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, so as to get rid of the various disadvantages brought about by the current PoW mechanism (mining centralization, high energy consumption, etc.) question).
In terms of the research and progress of Ethereum PoS, Vitalik talked about Casper FFG based on the concept of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), which is the PoS mechanism that Ethereum will implement. He said that in this PoS consensus mechanism, in addition to creating blocks, validators (participants) in the system often need to vote on "checkpoints" to quickly verify the blocks in the network. finalized.
Vitalik said that PoS is a change to the Ethereum protocol that will change the way the Ethereum blockchain reaches consensus. Next, he talked about a very important technology for the blockchain - universal zero-knowledge proof.
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Universal zero-knowledge proof technology
Vitalik said that zero-knowledge proof technology has been around for nearly 20 years, but in the past six years, this field has received very significant development.
He said that the universal zero-knowledge proof technology will enable the prover to prove to the verifier that a certain assertion is correct without providing any useful information to the verifier, which is very useful for improving the privacy protection of applications .
The role of general zero-knowledge proof technology is also very powerful for blockchains. Vitalik took the blockchain platform Zcash as an example. The platform has been in operation for 3 years. Zcash has become a privacy-protecting blockchain platform by using zero-knowledge proof technology.
At the same time, this technology is also very useful for improving the scalability problem, because this technology makes the blockchain network unnecessary for all computers to run all the calculations, so the verifier can verify the proof at a faster speed.
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Ethereum-based applications
Next, Vitalik talked about the application of Ethereum. He first introduced some simple applications based on Ethereum, including the use of digital currency for payment, Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and the use of digital tokens to represent various assets (such as medals, conference tickets, etc.). These applications are already in use by the Ethereum Foundation.
Vitalik said that BTC and ETH are very good international payment methods, because anyone in the world can create an account and send/receive these encrypted assets. The Ethereum Foundation uses cryptocurrencies to pay developers, contractors, etc. ENS is another Ethereum application. Users can use the ENS domain name to represent a website, represent their own Ethereum address, and so on.
In addition, we can also use the blockchain to digitally represent various non-monetary assets. For example, conference tickets can be sold on the blockchain, and the payment process is very convenient, because the blockchain uses smart contracts. Once You pay and the contract automatically sends you the ticket.
Currently, some DAO organizations have developed well in providing sponsorship, charitable fundraising, funding open source projects, decentralized application governance, and creating profitable projects. There are many DAO organizations based on Ethereum.
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blockchain of the future
Next, Vitalik talked about the Layer1 expansion technology Sharding (sharding) of the blockchain, and the Layer2 scalability technology (including Plasma, Rollup, Channels, etc.).
Ethereum 2.0 will be a major upgrade for the current Ethereum network. Part of the upgrade is the transformation to the PoS mechanism (Casper); the other part is the adoption of Sharding (sharding) technology, which is the scalability solution that Ethereum 2.0 will adopt .
Vitalik said that the way Sharding expands is by distributing transactions in the Ethereum network to all shard chains in the network for processing. The way the current Ethereum network handles transactions is that all computers (nodes) in the network must verify each transaction. This method makes the network very secure, because having all computers verify all transactions can guarantee that no Confirm invalid transactions; but this method is not efficient because each transaction may need to be verified more than 100,000 times, thus causing scalability problems in the network.
Sharding can solve the scalability problem of the Ethereum network, that is, by randomly dividing the verifiers (nodes) in the Ethereum 2.0 network into groups, and let these verifier groups verify different blocks. At the same time, the network is still very secure.
In addition, there are Layer 2 scaling schemes to improve the scalability of the blockchain network. The Layer 2 expansion scheme refers to enabling these applications to use the blockchain network more effectively by changing the way the applications operate (rather than changing the way the blockchain itself operates). Vitalik mentioned three Layer2 extension technologies: Plasma, Rollup and Channels (channel technology).
Vitalik said that the way Plasma and Channels technology works is that by moving transactions from the main chain to off-chain, the transaction will only be blocked if one of the parties to the transaction tries to cheat, or some participants are offline or malicious, etc. transferred to the chain. These two Layer 2 solutions can still enjoy the security of the chain, because in the event of malicious transactions, users will be able to transfer assets to the chain. However, since most of the time, the transaction data under the chain will not be published on the chain, the scalability improvement brought about by this method is only about 100-1000 times.
Another Layer 2 expansion technology is Rollup, which calculates off-chain and stores data on-chain. These three Layer 2 expansion technologies can be used in the Ethereum 2.0 network at the same time as the Sharding technology to further enhance the scalability of the Ethereum network, such as processing 50,000 transactions per second, but the technology in this area needs further development.
Ethereum 2.0 Development Roadmap
Finally, Vitalik talked about the four stages of the development of Ethereum 2.0, including:
Phase 0 (beacon chain phase) using the Casper FFG mechanism, which is currently the most exciting thing in the Ethereum community. The public testnet code at this stage is almost complete, but smart contracts and account functions are not yet supported at this stage;
Phase 1 of sharding data, which will implement the basic sharding structure;
And the stage 3+ of subsequent optimization, including the implementation of Casper CBC and other technical optimizations.
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free question session
Question 1: How did you come into contact with and learn about blockchain?
Vitalik: I heard about Bitcoin from my father in 2011 and learned about it through the Internet at the same time. I think Bitcoin is very interesting. It is very similar to the things I am concerned about. For example, I have always liked the concept of open source and decentralization. I think that because it combines mathematics and computer science, Bitcoin quickly attracted attention interested me.
I have been active in the Bitcoin community as an author since I first published articles on Bitcoin Weekly and then on Bitcoin Magazine for 2 years. Only I have traveled the world and visited every bitcoin community like the US, Spain and Israel. Then I came up with the idea of creating a "universal Ethereum blockchain".
Question 2: Zero-knowledge proof technology may bring some sensitive information to the Ethereum blockchain. This information may violate local policies and regulations in some countries. How do you view this issue? How will Ethereum respond to this problem?
Vitalik: That's a good question. In my opinion, the Ethereum platform itself is neutral, so both good and bad things can happen on the network. The way it can be improved is by increasing communication between businesses, intermediaries, and the global community, which are often regulators. Regulators themselves can improve the transparency of the industry, so the regulation of some blockchain service providers can improve such problems, but the current regulation in this area needs to be improved. Of course, it can be improved through some technical means. Community is also important in passing on the right values.
The editor only selected two of them :)
group discussion
Next came the expert forum session, where the topic of discussion was "The Development of the Alliance Chain". Vitalik said that the alliance chain is a very popular form of blockchain in the commercial field, and more and more alliance chains have appeared in the past few years. What the public chain needs to solve is the problem of trust. Vitalik believes that an important development in the future is to combine the alliance chain with the public chain.
