速读以太坊基金会最新AMA精华内容
Compiled organized: Karen, Foresight News
Starting at 21:00 on January 10, the Ethereum Foundation research team held the 11th AMA on Reddit. Foresight News reviewed 313 comments, compiled and summarized the essence of Vitalik Buterin and members of the Ethereum Foundation. The main content of the discussion was Including the limitations of EIP-4844 in scaling Ethereum, liquidity fragmentation and composability challenges on Ethereum L2, Lido dominance thinking, Ethereum security budget, native Rollup, the intersection between AI and blockchain, Privacy, Rollup and more.
Vitalik highlights
Question: How much can we safely increase the Gas Limit now? What after Verkle?
Vitalik：Honestly, I think a modest increase in the gas limit is reasonable even today. Gas limits have not been increased in nearly three years. (Vitalik did some simple calculations and said this would mean network throughput would increase to about 40 million.)
Question: What are the mid- to long-term plans to bring privacy to Ethereum users? Is it possible that privacy will take a backseat in the future and be overtaken by other more pressing concerns like scaling?
Vitalik：There are definitely other privacy solutions, such as Railway, which Ive been using. I expect such a solution will eventually be available on top of existing L2. Because we are not close to reaching a single ideal technical path to achieve it, but there are more than a dozen methods, including (i) which ZK-SNARK scheme to use, (ii) how to do a privacy pool, (iii) what kind of UTXO to build systems, (iv) trade-offs between complexity and functionality.
Question: Can you name a specific thing that blockchain is better than existing non-blockchain technologies?
Vitalik：
Many people, especially in politically unstable countries, are using cryptocurrencies to perform basic business functions and save. In some cases, more than 10% of the population is affected.
ENS is the worlds largest and best-maintained domain name/username system that is not tied to a single company or organization and is censorship-resistant.
In many cases, multisig is a more convenient and easy-to-deploy way for groups to securely manage funds than anything traditional finance offers.
NFTs are being used as a way for artists to raise funds that wasn’t possible before. In my opinion, the average quality in the NFT space is improving.
Question: When will crList be released? Is it enough (together with PBS) to provide censorship resistance for the foreseeable future?
Vitalik：Probably around the same time as the single slot is finalized, or shortly after.
Question: Regarding how to solve the problem of Geth enforcing client preferences, is it possible to run other clients as backups, and will doing so increase the technical effort?
Vitalik：I know the infrastructure for running multiple clients as a staker is improving. I also expect upgrades like stateless to further improve things.
Question: Do you think there is security fragmentation and social fragmentation in the current Rollup Centric roadmap?
Vitalik：I agree this is a problem. Ultimately, I think this should be the responsibility of the wallet, not the individual user.
Question: What are the advantages of ZK Light Client over Helios, Kevlar or Ninbus?
Vitalik：ZK light clients can be lighter and potentially cover the entire state transition functionality, not just the synchronization committee or consensus.
Question: Are you still looking into the possibility of lowering the Ethereum threshold required to run a validator?
Vitalik：There are two points, namely reducing the client resource load and lowering the 32 ETH threshold.
Question: What are your thoughts on Vitaliks 8192 signature post-ssf proposal? If validators are reputation-limited and the barrier to entry is high, wouldnt Ethereum become a DPOS like Cosmos? Not allowing individual staking seems to be a big risk to Ethereum’s decentralization.
Vitalik：thisproposalOption 3 in is undoubtedly the most popular, largely for this reason.
Question: How do we responsibly abstract the complexity of modular blockchains from end users? Who owns it? Is this a public interest in this area? Is it someone at EF, or is it the various teams building consumer applications?
Vitalik：I feel like there are a lot of areas that could be improved at the wallet level. For cross-L2 transfers, I am more optimistic about open permissionless cross-chain transaction protocols like UniswapX. What remains is to present to users that existing wallets are definitely not doing a good job and there is room for improvement. Im already starting to see good progress, for example. Rabby does a great job of aggregating cross-chain views.
Question: Will Rollups be on Ethereum’s roadmap once the EVM is SNARKed? How will this affect scalability, and what does this mean for users running light clients?
Vitalik：If the synchronization committee is removed, it will be because the underlying consensus itself has become light enough for light clients to verify it directly (or light enough for dedicated nodes to SNARK it for light clients to verify). This is the main reason to consider the 8192 signatures per slot approach: it sets a fairly low bound on the complexity of verifying basic consensus.
Question: What are the chances that we will see Bitcoin implement ZKP verification opcodes or that Bitcoin Cash will try to become a better DA layer?
Vitalik：Bitcoin/Ethereum interoperability at this level is unlikely for technical reasons: Ethereum is moving towards fast finality, while Bitcoin is stuck with PoW, which simply does not provide this type of finality ( In fact, there may actually be a week to a month of factual certainty). Reorganizations longer than this time may be rejected in the community, but a week or a month is a long time.
Question: Are there really plans to increase the block time to 1 minute? Why?
Vitalik：Wont. Increasing the block time to 32 seconds or even 64 seconds was briefly considered to better support single-slot finality, but I think the 8192 signatures per single-slot strategy is more mainstream now.
EIP-4844 Limitations in scaling Ethereum
Problem: EIP-4844 introduced Blob transactions, but the capacity was limited to about 0.375 MB per block, which only corresponds to a simple transfer of 440 TPS on L2. To drive blockchain adoption, the Ethereum community hopes to reach VISA-level scale of 2,000 TPS. Besides waiting for complete danksharding (which seems very far away), what options do we have to get closer to this goal?
Dankrad Feist, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation:I agree that EIP-4844 is only the first step in providing data publication (formerly known as data availability). In fact, it itself just financially separates data publishing without scaling, but it does introduce the necessary encryption to allow full scaling. We do have some exciting research underway at the moment to achieve some level of scaling soon. It seemsPeerDASIt seems to be easy to implement and we can roll out a basic version in a relatively short period of time, providing some degree of scalability, hopefully within a year of 4844s release. While we wont see scaling to 256 blobs or 1.3 MB/s right away, we may initially scale to 32 blobs per block, which is 10x the current number and would be somewhere between 4844 and full danksharding . Expanding Ethereums data capacity is definitely the most important thing in 2024 or even 2025.
Note: PeerDAS is designed to reuse well-known, battle-tested p2p components already in production in Ethereum to bring additional DA scale above 4844 while keeping the workload of honest nodes at the same as 4844 Realms (download < 1 MB per slot).
Justin Drake, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation:There are several strategies to choose from to reduce the data consumed per transaction:
Contract Redesign: Gas golfing for L1 contracts will soon be replaced by Data golfing for Rollup contracts. Maybe Uniswap v 5 can be customized for Rollup and data efficiency will be significantly improved. The transaction amount can also be adjusted and compressed appropriately.
State differences: By using SNARKs, all witness data of a transaction can be removed: signatures, nonces, and gas limits can all be removed, while information like gas prices and tip amounts can be compressed to minimal differences. Only the minimum information required to reconstruct the state is necessary.
Batch compression: Transaction data in batches can be compressed. For example, if 10 transactions in a batch are minting the same NFT, a significant advantage can be gained. Think of it like gzip compression: having more uncompressed data results in better final compression.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake: Technically speaking, EIP-4844 itself is not a scaling solution at all. EIP-4844 lays the foundation for future expansion by separating rollup data from the main block. In the future, we could even move to smarter data availability checks based on a sampling method (Data Availability Sampling, or DAS) without an additional hard fork. Work in this area is already underway and can be explored by searching peerDAS.
Liquidity fragmentation and composability challenges on Ethereum L2
Question: How will Ethereum solve the liquidity fragmentation and composability issues on L2?
Vitalik：Im personally excited about things like https://uniswap.org/whitepaper-uniswapx.pdf. We need to accomplish cross-L2 transfers through permissionless open protocols, rather than using proprietary cross-chain bridges such as own tokens and on-chain governance.
Justin Drake：I acknowledge that fragmentation of liquidity and composability across Rollup (and more generally across L2, including validation) is a problem. This is just a temporary transition, though, and were in the adolescence phase of a Rollup-centric roadmap to regain universal synchronous composability across Rollup. It is expected that Ethereum will be able to fix itself through organic consolidation through natural market forces. The future of Ethereum is seamless and we will not need asynchronous cross-chains.
There are two elements to regaining universal synchronous composability:
Shared ordering: In any given slot, multiple Rollup options share the same orderer, but there are three non-negotiable requirements, namely trusted neutrality, security and pre-confirmation, as well as the optional requirement of L1 compatibility .
Real-time proof: SNARK can be used in real-time to prove that transaction execution is valid.
It is difficult for Espresso to meet economic security with their token, nor is it possible to meet the optional requirements for L1 compatibility. The only sequencer that meets the optional requirements for L1 compatibility is Ethereum L1 itself. Few people realize that Ethereum can also be used as a shared sequencer.
My personal opinion is that in a few years, the native Ethereum sorter will become the Rollup shared sorter. Rollup using the native sorter will be merged with L1. But the biggest obstacle is pre-confirmation, and Ethereum’s 12-second block time is too long. The good news is that pre-confirmation provided by L1 is possible, the most efficient way is to use execution tickets, which requires a hard fork and requires patience.
My best guess regarding the overall roadmap for Rollup sequencing is that we will gradually decentralize sequencing: from centralized sequencing (status quo) to federated sequencing by a trusted committee elected by governance (such as the Arbitrum project), Then to decentralized sorting (such as Espresso), and finally back to pre-confirmation based sorting. It takes time, but its worth it.
Is Lido dominance a cause for concern?
Question: If Lido gets 40% validator share, will actions to reduce validator share through social means be supported (e.g. discouraging attacks, block building censorship of stETH transactions)?
Barnabé Monnot：not support. If we want Lido, or any large enough player, to become smaller, we should focus on lowering the barriers to entry in this market, including by stipulating certain features in the agreement.
Justin Drake：I personally dont support it, but that will be decided by the community. I dont believe in Hasus LST maximalism and that almost all staked ETH will eventually converge to a single LST. Im not too worried about Lido dominance. Its even possible that Lido dominance will decline in the coming months and years. One reason is that ETF issuers may choose not to put their ETH into Lidos.
Ethereum Security Budget
Question: How much security budget does Ethereum need? How did you get this number?
Justin Drake：Lets first distinguish between the two concepts of security budget and economic budget.
Security Budget: The income earned by consensus participants (stakers in PoS, miners in PoW) over a period of time (usually one year). For most chains, the security budget is issuance plus MEV. Transaction fees are a subset of MEV. For example, in Ethereum, the security budget is approximately: $2 billion/year (issuance) + $500 million/year (MEV) = $2.5 billion/year. Bitcoins security budget is approximately $10 billion per year, the vast majority of which is used for issuance.
Economic Security: This is the value of assets deployed by consensus participants to secure a chain, itself incentivized by the security budget. In PoS, it is the amount staked multiplied by the value of each staked unit. For example, in Ethereum it is: 28.7 million ETH * 2, 370/ETH = $68 billion. In PoW, economic security is computing power multiplied by the value of each unit of computing power deployed (ASIC cost plus all fixed data center costs: land, power infrastructure, cooling infrastructure). For example, Bitcoin is 550 M TH/s * $18/(TH/s) = 10 billion USD.
The economic efficiency of PoS is approximately 30 times that of PoW. I personally believe that the security budget should be large enough so that the amount of ETH staked accounts for a quarter of the total amount. Why a quarter? Because its a power of 2, and half may be too high, and one-eighth may be too low. Ethereums minimum feasible issuance concept recommends issuing the minimum amount so that the amount of pledged ETH reaches one-quarter of the total amount. Somewhat coincidentally, the current issuance plan results in staked ETH accounting for 24%, although considering that the amount of staked ETH is still growing and MEV distorts the incentive mechanism, this ratio may need to be treated with caution.
To ensure that we dont pay too much for economic security (especially with the advent of heavy collateralization), there is a potential upgrade called stake capping that reduces issuance when total stake approaches the cap ( may even become negative). Ethereum researchers have reached a rough consensus that staking caps are desirable, with an EIP and more discussions expected soon.
Is native Rollup the future of Ethereum?
Question: Are enshrined rollups the future of Ethereum? When will we see them on mainnet?
Justin Drake：Many people, including myself, are trying to rename enshrined rollups to native rollups because the word enshrined causes confusion. A native rollup is a rollup that natively uses the L1 EVM for transaction execution, rather than a custom rollup that deploys a non-native failure-proof or validity-proof validator. As it stands, it is not possible to build native Rollups on Ethereum, every existing Rollup is custom, including the EVM equivalent Rollup. However, I believe native Rollup is the future of Ethereum. My prediction is that every successful EVM equivalent rollup will eventually be upgraded to a native rollup. It will take several years (3+ years?) to see native Rollup on the mainnet. The reason is that implementing EVM precompilation on the mainnet requires type 0 zkEVM to be mature in terms of security, performance and diversity.
The intersection between AI and blockchain
Question: What are some potential applications/incentives/intersections between AI and blockchain that are not obvious?
s 0 isp 0 ke：We recently wrote an articlepaper, focusing on: 1. Blockchain as an infrastructure to ensure artificial intelligence security and cooperation through trusted commitments; 2. In existing blockchain games and with real-world incentive mechanisms (such as MEV), Some concrete and feasible ways to research and implement collaborative artificial intelligence.
Justin Drake：An important intersection is “AI currency.” We are building programmable digital currencies that AI can host and trade permissionlessly. Advanced AIs will pay each other in cryptocurrencies and keep their savings in cryptocurrencies, and eventually the AIs will become the richest entities in the world, thanks in part to cryptocurrencies. As with artificial intelligence, this is bullish in the medium term but implausible in the long term. Another intersection with AI is security, where AI is much better than humans at identifying vulnerabilities.
privacy
Question: What are your thoughts on privacy implementation on Ethereum? Vitalik previously mentioned Railway and Nocturne. What are your thoughts on the long-term viability of Ethereum privacy given the government’s suppression?
Nerolation：There are currently more sophisticated privacy tools that do not simply mix assets, but also provide compliance tools. Ameen’s Privacy Pool project is a good example of striking a good balance between providing privacy for everyday Ethereum users while making it difficult to attack by black hats and the like. Here is an article on the topicpaper. The only drawback is cost, as on-chain zero-knowledge proof verification is very expensive.
Another option is a stealth address. They offer a weaker form of privacy—only unlinkability, not untraceability—but are easier to implement and much cheaper to use. Stealth addresses have huge potential for donations, paychecks, or everyday grocery shopping.
other
Question: What do you think about VanEck’s promise to provide 5% of BTC ETF profits to core developers? Is this a potential risk? If a lot of cash starts flowing from TradFi to the ETH core team and becomes the majority of their revenue, how will you reduce the risk of centralization?
Justin Drake：I personally think this is a good idea. A ten-year commitment may be a bit long if there is corruption in the particular institution receiving the donation. VanEck is advised to make shorter-term commitments that are reviewed and revised periodically to keep incentives consistent.
Question: What is your view on Eigenlayers rehypothecation risk?
Barnabé Monnot：The risk to Ethereum is a large EigenLayer slash event, but if the slash is legitimate, the Ethereum protocol will repair itself. Higher rewards due to lower stake value will attract new stakers. EigenLayer plans to put in place safeguards against illegal cuts, such as smart contract risks.
Justin Drake：At this stage, I dont see a practical or meaningful way to ensure restaking. The closest thing could be to limit the staking by lowering the issuance amount (perhaps even negative), i.e. reducing the issuance amount when the staking is close to the cap. In fact, the staking cap can be regarded as a re-staking and burning mechanism.
Question: Are one-shot signatures the end game for blockchain?
Justin Drake：Yes, I believe that a one-time signature can fundamentally change the outcome of the consensus. Of course, we are still decades (perhaps more than 30 years) away from this goal.
Question: What impact will having most or all L2 switch from Ethereum to DA have on L1?
mikeneuder：There are two scenarios, the first is that the new L2 gains mass adoption, however, assuming that L2 has its own native asset, uses it as Gas, and users on L2 do not have to touch Ethereum (they can join L2 directly) . Right now, L2s only contribution to Ethereum is to pay for data published in the form of blobs.
The second scenario is that a different L2 still uses Ethereum as the settlement layer, but publishes blobs to celestia. This is often called validium. Therefore, this L2 no longer pays for L1 data blobs. This is unlikely to change its settlement layer, as ETH, as a gas token on L2, has a cross-chain bridge with Ethereum L1.
Justin Drake：There are powerful network effects surrounding DAs shared security. If Rollups stop consuming Ethereum DA, it will be a sign that Ethereum is losing out to some competitors in the settlement game. In this way, Ethereum will lose fee income, currency premium will be reduced, and economic security and economic bandwidth will shrink. I predict It will slowly but surely die.
Question: What is the structure of the Ethereum Foundation’s research team? Is there a team responsible for specific risks (such as re-staking or liquid staking centralization)? How many researchers are there?
Barnabé Monnot：There are multiple groups within the research team. For example, our team is Robust Incentives Group (RIG). The topics are very diverse and many teams may be interested in the same topic, you will see many teams discussing LST or re-staking, so the focus is more on the default scope and approach of each team. There are about 35 of us in total, and the RIG has 7 members.
Question: Should Ethereum strive to maintain the ability to join the validator set without permission?
Francesco：The validator set will certainly never be permissioned, in the sense that if the current validator set cannot handle the activation of validators that meet all requirements, it should be considered a sub-censorship attack. The tricky part is meeting all the requirements to join as this could change from 32 ETH to something else depending on the choices made. Personally, I think keeping solo staking accessible, or even increasing its accessibility, would be very valuable for Ethereum.
Question: What ideas from other blockchain networks are interesting and might be implemented in Ethereum in the future?
Barnabé Monnot：I dont know if they will be implemented, but Im interested in a few ideas:
Multiplicity was introduced in the context of the Cosmos chain as a censorship-resistant tool.
Batch block space from Polkadot can provide long-term supply guarantees for projects such as Rollup of payment blobs, and is provided at a fixed cost.
Question: If Ethereum continues on its current path, do you think other blockchains will be needed in 20 years?
Barnabé Monnot：Rollups are other blockchains. I believe in heterogeneity, Ethereum is a model but not a single model, there are many other ways to build blockchains that make sense for a variety of use cases, and I hope their design choices are validated as well.
Question: Will it reduce the amount of ETH required to run a staking node? If so, when will it decrease? What about transaction fees?
Barnabé Monnot：We have no active control over transaction fees, and fees are determined by the market. The best we can do is scale Ethereum as much as possible through L2 or improvements to L1, which should allow us to increase L1s Gas limit and provide more capacity.
Question: The current consensus is that since the merge and EIP-1559, Ethereum monetary policy no longer needs to be modified? If not, how will the distribution be adjusted? Increase or decrease?
Domothy：Regarding monetary policy, there will still be some changes, but they wont be as drastic as EIP 1559 and the merger. Most of the changes will be consensus-related, which we will need to fine-tune to achieve roadmap goals (e.g. individual slot finality may require adjusting the staking yield curve, increasing the maximum effective balance, etc.) rather than being done specifically to adjust issuance changes.
Question: What application scenarios and use cases do you think are most undervalued and would you like to see more investment and development in?
Justin Drake：I believe that a zero-fee weekly “Ethereum World Lottery” is a low-hanging fruit. We can now use VDF for lottery-level randomness generation, and the smart contract logic is otherwise very simple.
Nerolation: Combining user-friendly wallets with enhanced privacy, such as account abstraction wallets.
source:https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/191kke6/ama_we_are_ef_research_pt_11_10_january_2024/
