Ethereum 2.0 solves congestion? they say you misunderstood
Original title: "Ethereum 2.0 solves congestion? They say you misunderstood"
Original source: HashQuark
The blockchain week in 2020 is coming as scheduled, and exciting activities are staged every day. HashQuark also joined forces with Flow, Avalanche, BlockStack, and Republic to hold the themed event "It's Time - New Infrastructure on the Wind", aiming to discuss the construction and development of many public chains. Among them, in the roundtable discussion on ETH2.0 around the overlord of the public chain, Ethereum, the ETH2.0 leaders of HashQuark, imToken, Spark Mining Pool, and InfStones have thrown out wonderful opinions and launched a heated discussion on ETH2.0.
The following is the full text of the roundtable discussion :
Roundtable Discussion: It's time—let's talk about ETH2.0 together
Special host: Lianwen Liu Feng (hereinafter referred to as "the host")
Roundtable guest: HashQuark Hu Zhixiang (Tony Zhixiang)
imToken Mako (Mako)
Spark Mine Pool Meow Uncle (Meow Uncle)
InfStones Rudy (Rudy)
Moderator:
. The first question is about the progress of ETH2.0 - the specific launch time has been pushed back and forth. Based on your observation and understanding, what do you think about the progress of ETH2.0?
Mako:
Many people don’t know the latest progress of ETH2.0, mainly because the official channel of voice is very scattered. I have been following up the development of ETH2.0 through different channels. The latest information is that Danny Ryan is participating As mentioned in the Bankless AMA live broadcast, an important cryptographic library that BLS relies on is still under audit. This library is very important to the security of the entire network, because it will be related to the private key generation and signature of ETH2.0; At present, this library is still being audited, and it is expected to be completed in two weeks. At the same time, there are still some other problems in the network...
Moderator:
Let me add what you said This two weeks was said by Danny Ryan (the person in charge of ETH 2.0). The news broke out from Trust Nodes, but they have actually said this many times, "In few weeks"... "In few weeks" .. Then "In few weeks" again and again. So I don’t really trust him anymore...
Mako:< /span>
Yes, actually this question... No matter who said it will come in two weeks, including Vitalik himself said at the Wanxiang Summit that it will come in November It will come, but I feel that the Ethereum official has not yet had a good channel to confirm. According to my observation, the official has completed all the code and preparations for Phase0.
Moderator:
Anyway, you are especially the most loyal supporters of (Ethereum 2.0), but as the editor-in-chief of Lianwen, I want our reporters to resolutely not publish these news. Some other people posted these news and said that the market is pulling the market. I think it is actually irresponsible. Because they said it too much, like a wolf story. Of course, if you (to all Panel guests) have different opinions, you can complain about me~
< span style="font-weight: bold;">Uncle Meow:
In fact, why is 2.0 always delayed? A big reason comes from some communities or the way this project is promoted-now the Ethereum Foundation is not developing the client itself, but handing over the 2.0 client to multiple teams to do it at the same time, and then each team is actually Evolve forward based on the same standard. Just like Mako said just now, the work on the basic library BLS has been done for a year. Because our Spark has been working on the 2.0-related product line since last year, and I was more optimistic at the time, so we finished the whole thing in three months, and then began to wait... It turned out that the wait was more than a year.
So what does the whole progress look like in the end? From a positive point of view, in fact, about 2-3 weeks ago, it can be found that the PR (Pull Request) of a document of the entire standard of phase 0 has been merged. This is actually a milestone. At least it shows that the phase 0 of 2.0 will not make any changes from the standard. Then the rest of the work actually lies in the specific follow-up and implementation of client development teams such as light house and prysmlabs, and joint debugging of multiple clients on the test network to ensure that everyone's implementation is consistent.
Why keep dragging? I don't think anyone knows what's wrong with implementing it. Because we followed up many testnets along the way and ran down, there were some problems in the middle testnet, and even the entire testnet crashed, and it took us another week to restore the nodes. In the end, it was found that many of them were actually engineering implementation problems, not that there were problems with the 2.0 standards and definitions. Therefore, it should be said that the foundation is still relatively cautious, and hopes to complete (re-release) all the content that can be audited, because after all, 1.0 to 2.0 is a one-way process, and asset security is very important.
HashQuark Tom:
I personally think it is completely possible to deploy the Deposit contract within 6 weeks as the official said this time, because the code of the contract has been audited. I have also read the code of the currency exchange contract, and it should be feasible. However, it should be noted that "the ability to deploy smart contracts" and "mainnet launch" are still two different things, because there are two trigger conditions for the mainnet launch, one is that 520,000 ETHs participate in 2.0, and the other is the launch time. Not sure. But overall, I am quite optimistic about the follow-up progress.
Moderator:
I think the 2.0 progress and current situation have been explained very clearly just now, let me give Rudy a new question-many people are saying A big challenge for 2.0 also comes from the diversity of its clients. Do you currently think this is a problem?
(Editor's note: Ethereum 2.0 currently has 4 client teams developing different clients)
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Rudy:
After many nodes went offline in this accident, in fact, many small nodes or individual nodes have lost the motivation to return to the test network to build nodes. This will also be a problem. On the one hand, Ethereum 2.0 emphasizes decentralization, and on the other hand, it puts forward the limitation of 2/3 online. This will lead to a large number of individual node and small node operators who are unwilling to fully participate in network operations because the threshold for running ETH2.0 nodes is not low, which will cause problems for the stability and security of network operation .
We saw today that HashQuark also launched its own products based on Ethereum 2.0 that can be easily applied; InfStone is also an infrastructure service provider that has been following up on ETH2. Our goal is to ensure a more secure and decentralized operation of the entire network, and reduce the difficulty and threshold of node operation through products on infrastructure services.
In line with the topic of "new infrastructure" we are discussing today, in addition to the diversity of clients, the diversity of infrastructure is also crucial. If the infrastructure is too centralized, the failure of a single entry or a single infrastructure could destabilize the entire network.
For example, many people have talked about uniswap recently. If the front-end webpage of uniswap is closed, the domain name of the website stops parsing, and the friendly trading interface is cancelled, then How many other people know how to use uniswap for transactions?
So whether it is the diversity of clients, infrastructure or tools, it is actually a decentralized network like Ethereum 2.0 pursued.
Moderator:
Can Tony tell us about the preparations for the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 on a node service like HashQuark?
Tony:
Several guests talked a lot just now, and I agree with many of their views. Like everyone else, we have carried out a lot of work around Ethereum 2.0. HashQuark started to follow up the development of each testnet and each client from the very early stage of the testnet. We also reproduced the 2.0 testnet and released the first Chinese original Ethereum 2.0 in-depth evaluation report. We also paid attention to The actual needs of many users in the market. Therefore, we decided to develop and launch the EtherPocket product, hoping to solve several major problems that you may encounter in 2.0 Staking. Consensys has done a research report before. There is a survey about how many Ethereum holders or holding addresses are willing to participate in Staking. In fact, 60% of users said that they have no willingness to staking - there are many reasons (1) they don’t have enough 32 ETH (2) they don’t have the ability to operate nodes (3) they worry about slash even if they run, if they get disconnected or accidentally If you violate the regulations, you will not only be unable to obtain income, but you will also be deducted. (4) ETH needs to be converted to ETH 2.0 if you want to staking. After the transfer, you cannot change to ETH, nor can you transfer and trade. There is no liquidity... Wait, these are when 2.0 arrives The practical problems that everyone staking may face. For the above problems, our EtherPocket products actually have corresponding solutions, even including providing liquidity for 2.0 tokens.
You can mortgage ETH on EtherPocket to get QETH, this QETH can be used as ETH2. Transfer, DeFi, and Lending.
And there is no limit of 32 ETH in EtherPocket, if you have 50 ETH, you don’t have to worry that you can only be a node and 18 coins are Wasted; or if you only have 1 ETH, even 0.1 ETH can come to EtherPocket to do 2.0 Staking, which greatly reduces the threshold for everyone to participate.
In addition, relying on HashQuark's rich experience in node operation and subsequent hosting solutions, it can achieve the highest income under the premise of fully guaranteeing the safety of users' funds Rate. You don't have to worry about our disconnection and other illegal operations that will cause everyone to be slashed.
Moderator:
Speaking of which, does anyone want to complain? For example, if one or several infrastructure service providers have a particularly high market share, will there be a situation where all resources are biased towards a few oligarchs? Will decentralization not be guaranteed after PoW turns to PoS?
Uncle Meow:
This question is indeed quite acute... (laughs) After Ethereum becomes PoS, whether its degree of decentralization can really be better than PoW may have to be left to time. Verify, for example, whether more node service providers have emerged to participate in this ecology, the distribution situation, and who will host them, and whether these nodes are actually on Alibaba Cloud or on Amazon, because physical The machine level is a real single point of risk. No matter which operator you find for hosting, the most important thing is where the operator's machine runs. If both HashQuark’s EtherPocket and our SparkPool nodes run on Alibaba Cloud, if there is a problem with Alibaba Cloud, everyone will be out of luck... This situation is very extreme, but it must be considered.
So I personally have an assertion that in the 2.0 Phase 0 stage, you are not really participating in Staking, but choosing who you believe, or Saying who you are willing to entrust your money to is essentially a matter of trust, and this trust will definitely concentrate on oligarchs with rich infrastructure experience, good reputation, and high brand recognition. For example, in the past, you had a lot of coins stored on the exchange, so I still put the coins on the exchange in 2.0; HashQuark has been doing Staking for many years and has HashKey and many investors as endorsements, so many people may be willing to put coins on EtherPocket; SparkPool (Spark mining pool) has been the largest mining pool in Ethereum for 4 years, so miners may still choose Spark.
From a commercial point of view, this trend is determined by the bottom of the head (users choose convenient and trusted brands to generate benefits), but whether it is beneficial to the entire ecology needs Leave it to time to verify—whether PoS can be decentralized enough, or PoW is enough. In the longer term, as far as my understanding of the PoW ecology is concerned, PoW seems to be growing vegetables in the soil-that is to say, miners actually have their own closed-loop ecology, and they don't care much about the ecological development of Ethereum. What, only care about the income of mining, the residual value of the mining machine and so on. Precisely because they don't care about other aspects, they will continue to mine in the bear market regardless of the weather-that is to say, the security of the Ethereum network is actually handed over to a group of people who don't care about the ecology of Ethereum. Can make PoW very secure.
According to the observation of past PoS projects (including DPoS), it can be found that node operators and project ecology are often strongly bound , they will observe what rich applications or how many users there are on this chain, and their attention to the public chain ecology is highly relevant and speculative. So I am worried that if one day they become very large nodes, then they will have a great say, and then they can influence the direction of the network and even shake the security of the network.
Although there will be oligarchs in business under both PoW and PoS forms, the impact on ecological development is actually different. One is to grow vegetables in the soil. The bacteria (ecology) in the soil have nothing to do with the vegetables but they are also very important; while PoS is like doing hydroponics, all the nutrients (ecology) that the vegetables need will be in the water. Although vegetables may grow better, they are actually grown in greenhouses. Whether it can be more open is actually a question mark.
Moderator:
Thank you, Uncle Miao. If you can speak out your thoughts more loudly and let more people hear them in the community, everyone will know that this issue is actually worth discussing. . This is actually because some people, including myself, have concerns about oligarchs from the design to the actual implementation of ETH2.0.
Mako I know you have been doing a lot of popularization and education work on Ethereum in the community, and I am also your loyal reader, can you please tell everyone What you have seen so far, what is the biggest misunderstanding or the most common misunderstanding about Ethereum 2.0? The other three experts, if you have anything to add after listening to Mako's insights later, you are also welcome to add.
Mako:
The biggest problem of Ethereum at present is that it will be congested, so many people look forward to when Ethereum 2.0 will come, and many people think that there will be no congestion after Ethereum 2.0 . But in fact, if there is no Rollup and no Layer 2, Ethereum 2.0 will also be blocked. (Editor's note: rollup is a layer2 expansion solution) The entire design of 2.0 may have better compatibility or a new consensus. Fragmentation can also expand the performance of Ethereum, but with the increase of Ethereum use cases, ETH2.0 There will still be congestion, and ETH 2.0 also requires a Layer 2 solution.
In addition, the roadmap that recently proposed Rollup as the core also needs sharding, and the roadmap of Ethereum has not changed. For the development process of Ethereum, first put forward a new proposal in the developer forum or initiate a discussion on cryptography issues. After everyone feels that there is no major problem, you can turn it into a Spec, and finally different clients to fulfill. Recently, Vitalik proposed the roadmap of Ethereum with rollup as the core in the developer community. Many people questioned whether the roadmap of Ethereum has changed, but in fact my understanding has not changed. He just mentioned the rollup plan more It is more obvious, that is to say, we can actually expand in 1.0 now, and I don’t have to wait until 2.0 to do it, so Uncle Meow also said just now, now PoW+ Rollup can actually expand the performance of Ethereum by 100 times. It can be said that there are very Many Layer 2 solutions are already on the way, only one step away.
In summary, bringing rollup to a higher level allows us to plan the expansion of Ethereum from the current stage . To put it more intuitively, the current Ethereum 1.0 TPS is about 30. After the rollup is launched (performance), it will be 100 times the current level, reaching 3,000 TPS, and after Phase 1, it can probably do 100,000 TPS. In this way, ETH1.0 can expand its performance through Layer2, instead of waiting for Phase 2 as originally planned.
Moderator:
So what Mako means is that you don’t have to put all your expectations on Ethereum 2.0. The current Layer 2 is also worthy of attention. Whether it is 1.0 or 2.0, Layer 2 is a very helpful infrastructure for Ethereum.
What questions do you have? Do you have anything to add? What about the most misunderstood public opinion about Ethereum 2.0?
Uncle Meow:
Let me say a few more words. In fact, I have a question mark about whether we need sharding. The reason why sharding is needed is that we want to split the state of a chain. Will rollup itself be a shard? For example, the rollup scheme of OVM and ZK has essentially realized fragmentation (the purpose of splitting the state). Then the next thing we have to consider is how to do the cross-shard layer 2, which seems to return to some paths originally planned by Ethereum (Phase 1 said that it needs to be sharded, and Phase 2 needs to be executed across shards) as This also proposes concepts like "execution environment" and so on. But now it seems that with rollup, the execution environment for sharding already exists. Ethereum can also implement different implementations in the non-homogeneous layer2, such as privacy-oriented and contract-oriented implementation. In fact, there are already many solutions.
So we stand at this point in time, Phase 1 fragmentation is necessary, but maybe half a year later everyone may suddenly realize that rollup has actually It’s sharding; even if we don’t need Phase 1 at all, then we will probably ask “Do we really need PoS?”
This is actually One of my ultimate challenges to myself.
I have been in charge of Spark ETH2.0 since a year ago, but currently I am in charge of the entire product line of Spark. After comparing with PoS horizontally and vertically, I actually have more thoughts. There are some answers that need to be handed over to time and to the entire community. The results will only be seen if the ecology and business continue to advance.
Moderator:
Thank you, do you have any questions to add?
Mako:
Uncle Miao also said just now that sharding is more about the execution level, we can put the transaction on Layer2, but in the final state (for rollup) we compress the transaction and put it on the chain , then you still need to store things on the chain. At present, 1.0 just can’t store a lot of things (questioning whether Uncle Miao just said that Ethereum really needs to be fragmented)
Uncle Meow:
We can't store a lot of things here, this thing is actually an engineering problem, why can't we store it?
There are two main clients that have opened 1.0, one is called Open Ethereum, which evolved from Parity, and the other is actually the Geth client. At the same time, there is actually another interesting thing, that is, there is an overseas client team. They have achieved a 10-fold storage expansion by modifying Geth. To put it bluntly, what does it mean-you are writing Geth in a mess now, and you are wrong to say that this messy writing cannot be expanded! We optimized it casually and it increased by 10 times, and if we optimize it again, it may reach 50 times; does that mean that we may not need sharding at all in the next five years, but only need engineering optimization. This may be a less sacrificing solution for everyone.
Rudy:
It was a very good chat, let me summarize it a little bit. I think what you two are talking about is not the public's misunderstanding of Ethereum 2.0, but the current confusion of the Ethereum community about the way forward. Through the chat just now, I seem to see a misunderstanding that the public may have about 2.0, that is, they think that the roadmap of Ethereum 2.0 has been drawn, and that Phase0, Phase1, and Phase2 can be done step by step. Constantly exploring and reworking.
We can make an analogy to Polkadot. At first we saw that Polkadot’s positioning was cross-chain, but I later found out that Polkadot (silently changed its positioning) The current structure is a shard chain. For the direction of Ethereum, sharding or rollup may actually be a matter of different routes.
Moderator:
Is there anyone else to add?
Mako:
Let me say it again, now there are two ideas for capacity expansion: sharding or Layer2. For the Ethereum community, I want both.
Tony:
Everyone has really said it very well. I think from the perspective of misunderstanding, many people think that the biggest significance of 2.0 to Ethereum is to maintain The Ethereum in the hands of coin holders is more valuable (the topic hype drives up the price of the currency), but I think the biggest beneficiaries of 2.0 will be developers, because the changes in the overall architecture of Ethereum 2.0 and the improvement in performance are actually more beneficial to developers. Friendly too.
In addition, everyone was talking about oligarchs just now, and some people think that the degree of decentralization of ETH2.0 is difficult to guarantee. I actually think that the opening of Ethereum 2.0 Staking has actually improved the decentralized governance capabilities of the entire network. Whether it is PoW or PoS, oligarchs will definitely appear, but 32 ETH as a node has a smaller chance of centralizing the entire network from both technical and economic aspects.
Moderator:
Thank you Tony, I see that all the guests are having a good chat, and their own discussions are actually very deep. In order not to delay everyone’s dinner, I Let me ask you one last question.
I heard that Ethereum 2.0 is still a particularly long "century project", which is also beneficial. In fact, it leaves other competitors, that is, other public chain infrastructure. a time window. Do you think there is any public chain infrastructure that can seize this opportunity to break through in this long discussion-push-rework-rediscussion process?
Tony:
HashQuark is now a node of more than 40 public chains, so we have been in contact with many projects. This year we are more concerned about Polkadot, but it also has its own problems, and we don’t know when cross-chain will be realized. In addition, projects such as Dfinity, Near, PlatON, and Filecoin have basically planned the main application directions of the current blockchain.
In addition, the bridging of Bitcoin to Ethereum is also a direction that everyone can pay attention to. Although Ethereum has such a rich ecology and is so sought after by users, the market value of Bitcoin has not been shaken. Therefore, if the bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum is mature enough and the most valuable assets have been carried on the application, then perhaps It is possible that many DeFi projects are not worth considering at all.
Mako:
From the perspective of imToken, many people have the inherent impression that imToken has always paid more attention to the Ethereum wallet, but in fact, since 2018, we have made it clear that our "multi-chain wallet "Such a positioning. We have recently supported the wallets of Polkadot, Kusama, and Filecoin. For users, we are an asset management tool. We all choose public chains that we think have a chance to break through.
At the same time, in fact, the good opportunity of many public chains is that they do not need to start from scratch, all blockchain projects are Open source, new public chains can completely learn from these mature models, including Ethereum also borrowed from many mature BIP proposals from the Bitcoin community, and new public chains have many opportunities.
At the same time, Ethereum is developing standards, such as BLS aggregate signatures. We can see that Filecoin is also used, and Polkadot is also using it. In use; including virtual machine standards and VDF random numbers are being explored to land through cooperation with other public chains. I hope that in the end, we can see a strong master who can make full use of some of the current essence and make a better infrastructure. The final public chain may not be Ethereum, but it will definitely benefit from the Ethereum standard.
Uncle Meow:
I understand this question as whether the public chain can flourish for a long time.
I personally think that a hundred flowers will bloom in a certain period, but this situation may not be maintained for a long time. The reason is that many public chains that say they want to be "Ethereum killers" are actually just doing some variable parameter adjustments.
For example, if I want to have a higher TPS, I want to focus on sharding, and I want to do PoS earlier than Ethereum. For example, we now see Near, Solana, etc., and some focus on privacy. They are actually doing additional supplements or further optimization of the existing content of Ethereum. This project is called enhancement.
But whether enhancement can become a Killer, this is a question. On the contrary, it is because, for example, as Mako said just now, the entire advancement of the public chain does not exist in a technical or engineering oligopoly situation. Many things can be used for reference. For example, if a public chain needs to run the most The fastest way is to directly take the structure of the supply chain of Ethereum and use it, and then meet the needs of the community it should have.
Ethereum will be like a strong gravity point, absorbing a lot of enhancements from other public chains; while other public chains want to bloom, thrive, and find New breakthroughs also have advantages - because it does not have so many assets and is relatively lightweight, it can be explored more aggressively and actively. In contrast, Ethereum already has many assets, and it may not be easy for projects and users to make many changes quickly.
So back to this question, everyone is doing variable parameter adjustment, but no one knows what the optimal ratio of variable parameter adjustment should be. So I think that in the end, it is possible that the market is constantly advancing and technology is evolving, and then Ethereum will absorb enough and better technologies and solutions. It is difficult for a public chain with an EVM structure to surpass Ethereum. And it is very likely that the Ethereum killer we will eventually see is not based on EVM, but a new set of public chain paradigms, just like the feeling of Ethereum to Bitcoin.
It’s also like when we observe the public chain now, in fact, few people have added Bitcoin to the scope of this topic, because compared In other words, Bitcoin and Ethereum are no longer the same level of things and content.
Rudy:
I have been thinking about this issue during the process of everyone’s speech. As an infrastructure provider, InfStones has been exposed to various public chains with PoS consensus before. I am personally working on Ethereum 2.0 In the process of this study, I gradually became a believer in Ethereum. Ethereum’s current technology, community, and ecology are indeed good enough. When Ethereum’s DeFi became popular, Polkadot, TRON and some public chains immediately copied it to develop their own DeFi, but the limelight soon passed up. Because it is actually easy to copy many things, but in fact there is not enough ecology and users to support these applications. At the same time, Ethereum itself is also developing continuously, incorporating many new ideas and technologies. In the Ethereum community, even just a few of us have had so many speculations and discussions here-such as Rollup and sharding, and Rollup itself is divided into many categories. This is actually a phenomenon that we really hardly see in many other communities. .
But it is also difficult for me to give a conclusion in my heart that other public chains will not work, because we have followed many other public chains all the way down, and they may not There's so much new stuff coming out, but it still holds its own. Although I haven't thought deeply about the reasons for this, I feel that in such a rapidly developing industry, everything has not yet been finalized. Who will stand out in the end really depends on the follow-up development.
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