Interview with Vitalik: Watch him talk about Ethereum 3.0, Libra, central bank digital currency, and zero-knowledge proof
Editor's Note: This article comes fromUnitimes, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Recently, Unitimes interviewed Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and talked about the latest developments in the field of Ethereum, as well as things outside of Ethereum.
This big boy who is regarded as the "God of V" by Chinese Ethereum enthusiasts, whether it is the confidence and erudition conveyed on the stage, or the optimism and humility shown off the stage, can give people a deep impression , arousing a curiosity that never seems to be satisfied.
Technically, he is well versed in cryptography, computer science, mathematics, blockchain technology, etc.; in life, he treats people with sincerity, conveying correct values and humanistic care. This is what this interview gave me.
Vitalik：We started this interview with questions from members of the Unitimes community.
Unitimes: What excites you the most in the current Ethereum ecosystem?
In the past few months, a lot of progress has been made in the Ethereum ecosystem. For example, zero-knowledge proofs (zero-knowledge proofs), related technologies are developing rapidly, and some applications based on zero-knowledge proof technology are also under development.
Vitalik：The development of Ethereum 2.0 has also made very rapid progress, and the Ethereum 2.0 public test network will be launched soon; other scalability technologies have also been greatly improved, and many applications have also been built come out. Overall, a lot of great things have happened or are happening.
Unitimes: What is the latest progress of Eth2.0?
At the beginning of September, the seven client development teams of Ethereum 2.0 gathered in Toronto. They realized the mutual communication of these seven clients, enabling these clients to accept each other's blocks and achieve interoperability.
Vitalik：Currently we only have some work left on the peer to peer networking protocols before the multi-client public testnet is launched. The first work of Ethereum 2.0, the proof-of-stake mechanism (Casper FFG), can be launched soon.
Unitimes: At present, some projects have launched the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, such as Cosmos and Livepeer, etc., followed by some Staking pools (staking pools) and Staking-as-a-service platforms that replace users in staking (staking) Emerging, these infrastructures provide staking hosting services. What do you think of the Staking pools that may appear after the launch of Eth2.0? Will this affect the verification of Eth2.0?
Of course, someone will create Staking pools, because there are many people who want to participate in Staking, but it may be because they either hold less than 32 ETHs (note: users who participate in Ethereum 2.0 staking need to pledge at least 32 ETH), So that they can't run the validator client themselves, or they don't have the ability to run the node themselves and keep the node online. Therefore, the existence of Staking pools is reasonable.
Vitalik：But the main concern with staking pools is that they could make the staking market too centralized. But we have made some efforts in this area to reduce the possibility of this problem. For example, some features of the protocol will make it safer and easier to run small or multi-party staking pools, so that participants do not need to trust any single operator (thus reducing the risk of centralization).
Unitimes: You have previously expressed concern that there will not be enough validators participating in staking after the beacon chain is launched. Why do you have this concern?
I think people will be concerned when they first get involved in Ethereum 2.0 staking because it's an untested protocol and network (in a live network) and participants won't be able to stake ETH from trust at first. The standard chain is transferred back to the current Ethereum old chain.
Vitalik：So I would expect lower participation in staking initially than expected, but that's fine and I don't see a need to get everyone involved initially until the protocol is ready. Therefore, it is better to let some users participate in testing the new protocol first, and then increase the participation rate on this basis.
Unitimes: Eth2.0 will implement Sharding (sharding) as a scalability solution, so how will Sharding ensure the security of the network?
The main difference between ordinary blockchains and blockchains using Sharding is that in ordinary blockchain networks, all nodes need to verify each block; in blockchains using sharding, there is no need Instead of having all nodes verify each block, some nodes are randomly selected to verify each block.
Since the selection method is random, the attacker cannot launch an attack on a specific shard chain: from a statistical point of view, if the attacker pledges ETH tokens less than 1/3 of the total ETH pledged in the network (That is to say, the number of nodes controlled by the attacker is less than 1/3 of the total number of nodes in the network), then the probability of the attacker successfully launching an attack on a shard chain is very, very low. This is the first line of defense.
Vitalik：The second defense is that if there are invalid blocks in the network, there are mechanisms in the protocol such as fraud proofs and data validity checking, and some other techniques that we are working on, to detect Invalid block. Therefore, if an invalid block appears in the network, the proof (proof) proving that the block is invalid will be broadcast to the entire network, so that everyone in the network knows that the block is invalid.
Unitimes: In addition to the improvement of scalability and decentralization, what major improvements will Eth2.0 bring?
The adoption of the Casper FFG mechanism is a very important aspect. Through Casper FFG, the protocol of the Ethereum 2.0 network will become more efficient, consume less electricity, and the issuance rate of ETH tokens will also be lower. At the same time, we have used many methods to simplify the Ethereum 2.0 protocol and make it more efficient. One example is that we will use eWASM to replace the current Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
[Unitimes Note: The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) used by the current Ethereum network is essentially the underlying structure of Ethereum, responsible for running all smart contracts in the Ethereum network, and ensuring the accuracy of the following information: account information (such as account balance), current Gas price, address and block information, etc.
Since the EVM is responsible for many important functions on the Ethereum network, the speed at which it can run operations and process transactions affects the overall speed and performance of the entire network. Likewise, the efficiency with which the EVM executes code directly affects the efficiency of the network.
Vitalik：In recent years, the increase in the workload of the Ethereum network has caused the EVM itself to become a bottleneck, reducing the throughput of the network and increasing transaction times. One of the main reasons why Ethereum 2.0 plans to use eWASM (that is, Ethereum WebAssembly) instead of EVM for efficiency issues. ]
Unitimes: You said before that the gas fee in Eth2.0 will drop by more than 100 times. How is this achieved?
This is the result of supply and demand. Because Sharding will greatly increase the scalability of the Ethereum network, there will be less competition for block space.
Vitalik：As applications have less competition for block space, transaction fees are correspondingly lower. Of course, there may still be future increases in transaction fees due to increased (network) usage, but by then the Ethereum network will already be very successful.
Unitimes: What are you most looking forward to for the upcoming Istanbul upgrade?
I think the most important change is the change of Gas cost. The most important change is that the transaction data cost will drop from 68 Gas per byte to 16 Gas per byte.
The reason why the data cost can be reduced is because we have done a lot of tests and experiments, and found that the data size of the blockchain does not have that much influence on the probability of blockchain bifurcation, nor does it affect the blockchain itself too much. scalability. The competition for block space will make the blockchain network more unstable.
Basically, the current data cost is too high and the competition for block space, especially Disk I/O, is too high. Therefore, the data cost of the transaction will drop from 68 Gas per byte to 16 Gas per byte.
At the same time, this also means that with the help of scalability technologies such as Rollup, after the Istanbul upgrade, the transaction volume per second (TPS) that the Ethereum network can handle will be further increased from 700TPS to about 3,000TPS.
Vitalik：In addition, the gas cost of running the elliptic curve encryption algorithm will also be reduced by about 2-3 times, which will lower the cost of privacy protection applications.
Unitimes: What do you think of the digital currency issued by the central bank and the Libra stable currency?
Overall, I find central bank digital currency (CBDC) interesting, but there are many different ways to do it. The main challenge is that many related projects want to achieve many goals at the same time. I personally think the best way is to persuade governments around the world to allow more and different types of enterprises to deposit directly in the central bank.
Currently, in many countries, only banks are allowed to make deposits with the central bank, and everyone else must do so. Therefore, if the government allows businesses such as payment service processors or any business with a financial services license to deposit directly with the central bank and create a financial business on this basis, then the private sector can launch more trustworthy stablecoins, allowing more There are many different fiat currencies on the chain, and it can even be used on other platforms outside the blockchain.
The only thing the government has to do is to change the relevant regulations, and other things can be promoted by the community. This will not lead to the replacement of the current legal currency (cryptocurrency), and can expand the use of national legal currency in a more efficient and convenient way,
Libra is also quite interesting. A lot of technology companies want to enter the financial space in some way for two reasons: one is that people see companies such as WeChat (WeChat) being very successful in the financial field; two is that the current business model of many technology companies It's all data collection.
About 10 years ago, collecting data was very simple and faced no problems, but now people are more and more concerned about data privacy, so are regulators, many new regulations, such as GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation) Wait, it's almost released. As a result, the business model of collecting data and selling it is becoming increasingly difficult. Therefore, these technological attacks are looking for other business models.
I think part of the reason Facebook plans to launch Libra is that if Facebook launches Libra in a centralized way, it will be very difficult from a regulatory perspective, and it is basically unlikely that it will be accepted by the 150 countries it plans to launch. Especially users in regions such as the United States expressed dissatisfaction with Facebook in many ways, and many people did not trust Facebook. So for Facebook, launching Libra with a lot of other companies will make it more acceptable, because people will feel that Facebook does not have much control over Libra, and there are other companies involved.
Vitalik：But Facebook's strategy has not been successful, because whether it is the public or the government, when they discuss Libra, they tie it to Facebook. And as of now, no other Libra Association members have paid the $10 million fee, which also shows that other member companies are not as involved as Facebook.
Unitimes: During the recent Shenzhen University conference, you said that the public chain and the consortium chain can be combined in some way. Can you explain in detail?
The reason why some people pay attention to the alliance chain is that they think there is a compromise between centralization and decentralization: they like decentralization because it means more open and easier to achieve trust, not subject to any single central authority. control; but they also need to be centralized, whether it’s for technical scalability, regulatory compliance, etc.
I agree that a trade-off between centralization and decentralization is a good thing, but I don't think consortium chains are the best way to achieve this trade-off. For example, another way to achieve this compromise is the Plasma chain. For example, in the cryptocurrency space there are a lot of exchanges, and exchanges are often hacked and lose, say, 200 million dollars of funds, and we have become accustomed to this, it is a big problem.
Many felt that this issue needed to be addressed. One way to solve this problem is to reduce centralization. There is a blockchain company in Israel called StarkWare that is using STARKs, a zero-knowledge proof technology.
StarkWar is cooperating with Coinbase Exchange, the goal is to transfer the cryptocurrency managed by the centralized exchange to smart contracts, and transfer transactions to off-chain, so transactions still occur in a centralized system (used to ensure Transaction speed and privacy, etc.), but all operations will be submitted to Ethereum and verified using STARKs.
Vitalik：This design prevents Coinbase from stealing users' funds, even though it operates the exchange. This is also a compromise between centralization and decentralization, but the compromise is different from the alliance chain. I feel that for many applications this design will be more successful.
Unitimes: How do you think that many people now regard cryptocurrency as an unreliable thing? Even regard blockchain as an unreliable technology?
There are indeed a lot of untrustworthy and unreliable things in the blockchain space, and this is a field that is still in its infancy, and there are a lot of not-so-good things going on.
The reason for this problem is that firstly this is a very new field, people don't know what will work and what will not succeed, and secondly, many people enter this field without much experience , they don't know who to trust and who not to trust.
But I think the situation will improve over time. In fact, this problem has been improved. For example, the development of technologies such as smart contracts makes it unnecessary for people to trust centralized institutions (such as exchanges); the ICO model can also be realized through other mechanisms. For example, the developer team will not raise all the funds at the beginning, but Funding is obtained over time, which is less risky for investors.
At the same time, regulation in this area has also increased, and the government will also be involved in tracking offenders. Additionally, blockchain and cryptocurrency communities also play a role in cultural transmission in this space, such as in setting expectations about good/bad projects. The Ethereum community has made great efforts in this regard, but further work is still needed.
Vitalik：In general, I think the problems in this area will gradually improve, but this problem does not change the fact that there are currently many communities using the blockchain to do very good and meaningful things, and have already Bring a lot of value to people.
Unitimes: I believe you have visited China many times. What is your favorite Chinese food?
Vitalik：Leek buns, haha.
Unitimes: If one day, Ethereum can run autonomously and stably, what would you choose to do?
I'm not sure, I think there is still a lot to improve in the current Ethereum ecosystem. For example, on the Ethereum platform, after the implementation of Ethereum 2.0, there are other upgrades to be completed, such as Casper CBC, and in the subsequent stage of Ethereum 3.0, we want to implement zero-knowledge proofs to make the protocol more secure. At the same time, there are other things to be done, such as the funding of public projects, decentralized governance, economic incentives for blockchain applications, and so on.
Vitalik：If there weren't as many jobs in the ethereum space, I'd probably focus more on blogging, getting back to being a writer, writing more educational articles, things like that.
Unitimes: It is said that you care about Africa very much and have donated many times. What prompted you to donate?
I think Africa is a place where there are still many problems, but there are also many opportunities. Africa currently has a population of about 1 billion, but it is projected that by the end of this century, Africa's population will reach 5 billion, more than even Asia.
At present, some economies in Africa are beginning to develop rapidly, but at the same time many places are very poor. There are many ways to help these places, and they can be helped at a relatively low cost. For example, it has been calculated that if you choose to donate to a charity that fights malaria, you only need to donate about $4,000 to save a life.
Vitalik：To me this statistic means that $4,000 could be used to buy a first class ticket, or to buy an expensive bag, or to save a life, so why not save a life Woolen cloth? This is very meaningful.
Unitimes: You were in 1994, but you have 18 years of coding experience. How did you do it?
Vitalik：My parents have given me great support. When I was young, they taught me to code, bought me books about programming, introduced me to programming languages, let me take courses that interested me to learn programming, and I often participated in programming competitions, so this It's something I've been actively doing. I think programming is fun.
Unitimes: Our Chinese parents are very concerned about their children's education. They definitely want their children to be as good as you. What do you think your parents do best in your education?
