Special Projects at Ethereum Foundation

Transcript

so it's my very special pleasure to introduce the head of special projects from the etherion foundation virgil griffith please make him feel welcome [Applause] alright hello everyone you press the button okay so so so hi nice night now as I see everyone so a special projects mostly work songs it's kind of a myriad of things there they're usually things that we think are valuable to do but but they're not quite quite incredibly important for anyone to work on it full-time so this is just kind of a grab bag so I'll give you sort so there's

kind what we got so here so here's so here's a new idea for for etherium I said it's this idea that I call game warping so the so so so we've all heard heard of the prisoner's dilemma and how this is the classically non cooperative game under aetherium fun fact this actually becomes a cooperative game so so the way you can do this is if you and I go do something naughty we can both put put in a million dollar deposit and if we publish the defect message our million dollars gets burned so the idea is that as long as the police don't offer us more than a million dollars to defect it is rational for us to cooperate and so this this is sort of a generic strategy that you can use to

turn pretty seemingly any non cooperative game into a cooperative game so there's there's like a paper about this if you if you want to you can you can come read it I think it's one of us is if you're looking for like you know you know it's been for like a template for building your aetherium startup or like what aetherium is for this is what i suggest reading so so so we had this new thing coming out so yeah so in about two months so he throws gonna be declared Sharia compliant so we started working with this group called Imani associates they do Sharia kusa Sharia consulting for fortune 500s after after much discussion it looks like you know they said you know ether thumbs up and

they even said you know proof of stake is more whole than proof of work so hey you know I mean I mean it surprised me too so I'm so so if you want you you can you can read about it and yeah and so so the way this started okay so it's like I show it to you so so we've been working with them for a little bit and yes this is coming out so the hope will be that the the Islamic banking world will start standardizing on aetherium sorry I'll see how that goes so this is another new project coming out so we were working on revising the the EIP process so you've all seen this this this there's been a big governance discussion lately so this

doesn't solve the governance question but it helps just like take kind of a cut out of it so so originally we were talking about something as you know what the IPS are very important so a ridge where we are going to join the IETF the internet Engineering Task Force to help us write these standards the more we talked an internet Engineering Task Force they basically told us to go somewhere else and you're like oh well that's interesting and they basically said that they have that they have too much bureaucracy and it will saddle us with it with a lot of red tape and they said oh well well who were some place that we could go to and they said oh well there's these people people call it called oasis and so so so we're doing an experiment we're gonna put that put the e ip's so we're gonna do some VIP so

it'll be like come there'll be two parallel tracks there'll be the regular ew I process and they're all the koream here and there'll be this new Oasis inspired process and so these who are consultants to help you get your standards you know the best they can be yes I know we'll we'll kind of see how that goes and they'll probably an announcement of that in in in probably a month or two if you're curious so if you got ahead here's how it works so it's so it breaks down power between two different groups there's the technical steering committee and there's the project governance board so the tairy committee will probably composed of mostly the magician's who currently do most of the work and the project governance board is mostly organizations

so right now these are these are sort of the there's I guess there's three organizations and and Nick Johnson's because you know we just we just love Nick yeah so if you're curious about this you can you can you can about it and this will be a new experiment so so so a lot of so this is back the idea of what aetherium is for I actually think this might become the new killer app for for etherium and in its insurance and I mean I must admit I mean I know relatively little little about insurance but I think this might be the new thing so obviously the very first killer app for aetherium was just sitting an integer to each other and you know because you know we all like sending money and the second one was was the ICO and so I'll give you an example of this

insurance one so there's think we'll call parametric insurance where there's no claims process it's closer to a prediction market like if X happens you just get paid and so so so the first one is when it was the one called Co called hurricane guard in Puerto Rico so for those of you unaware they have had problems with hurricanes and I learned that regular citizens actually could not get there's this parent at hurricane insurance because I don't know just attune to - there wasn't too much bureaucracy or was just just too expensive and but with this today you can you you can you can you can buy a policy and the policy says if the National Weather Service reports that there's been wind speeds above some

integer in my zip code you just get paid and you get paid within 24 hours and just yeah you know and and it just works I'm inclined to say probably all disaster and weather and weather insurance should be done this way so so yeah so I think this could be the next killer app for aetherium so so there's another one so I'm so aetherium classic there are friends now I know surprises me too and so so so I can't tell you how this started so so this is so that so actually a store actually it started at last year's at con yeah so so after after one year we have gone from from you know I guess being introduced to

each other to friends so you know hey that's great so so this was I so after last year's ad con we decided to to make a bridge between the two actually can we press the button Larry oh yeah we said it'd make a bridge between the two racially you could have rap et Cie and rapped east on on each other's chains so we did that first and then we just had to give them a grant because because we found you know we had some extra et Cie just lying around and there that you know and they were very thankful for that and now she's doing all kinds of great things like so so they're now funding some of the test nets and they have this new thing called called open RPC for make it interface with aetherium clients and now really like et et Cie is doing all kinds of

like like like lovely work for us and whining for the broader a theorem community and we should all like say you know thanks guys so um so this may be an inspiration for doing future collaborations so these so this is some new stuff coming out so so there's this one works so this is so this is this is a ETH link the idea is so this is this is a plug-in between aetherium name service and ipfs so the idea is that if you register foodies and you associate an ipfs hash with it you can go to food eath dot link like that you just take your DNS in a pinned dot link to it and it will just work so so you can see this uh right here um and there's there's no

plugins and and no nothing so so this gives some that you can do with your with your ENS name and you can host host your naughty websites alright so so so awhile ago Vitalik asked me Virgil what what are what are the biggest reasons not to do proof of stake and I said I said I say but booboo stick is so great he's like well I know that I can't I say but but if there were to be a concern you know you know what B what would be one I said well I said well well the your OPSEC goes goes go your opposite concerns go up a lot and because the idea is that you know if you get so under proof of work if you get owned someone can merely start mining under their own keys but an approved stick it

gets a little bit watch it gets a lot worse so under proof of stake they they can cause you to get slashed so they can't take your money but they can cause you to burn all your money and you're like oh well you know that's that's that's kind of a downer so so so so so so we had this idea for for for fixing it so it's called the never slash so it's a it's a never / calm it'sit'sit's - working on it basically just is this instead of storing the the private keys on your own disk you you put them on a hardware wallet and you connect the hardware wallet to a Raspberry Pi and then you get the Raspberry Pi to your computer and so so that said the idea is that that when you want to sign a message so it goes to the Raspberry Pi then to the

hardware wallet and the idea is that if the if the Raspberry Pi in the middle ever sees a vote that would cause you to get slashed it just it just declines to relay the vote so the idea is as long as it's Raspberry Pi is plugged in physically plugged in you can't get slashed even if you get owned so yeah so this is this is uh so I so for all of you that are concerned they're gonna be validators or startups taking we think this is probably a good good thing to do so so this is a no this is another new idea that we're playing with a special project so I so I call it national side chains and so the idea is to have an optional fallback to the traditional legal system if you want it if you don't

want it hey man totally cool and I'm you know and there's pbbb like regular Theory I'm so so so so so so we wonder how this so we blaze already was to have like a different side chain for every government in the world and so so so the idea is like if I'm a Singaporean yours and I say you're an Australian but whatever reason we just love French courts we can we we can instead of doing our transaction on the on the on the big aetherium chain we can do it on the dot FR side chain and the idea is that that the the the side chains they are they are backdoored by the DNS set keys of the of the Gov for each country so if you want to be back to or by Singapore government you can do gov SG etc so yeah

I don't know if that's that's that that's kind of the idea and so so so a so if you want to fall back to the traditional legal system you can now do that and if you don't want to do that well you know just just so just keep doing what you're doing now all right so so we we have we have a we have a bunch of new swag so there you can see this fine swag right here for aetherium I want you can see it for lots of them and you can pay an either in either eath or Doge and we have all kinds of lovely schwag do we oh no wait a minute this is this is this is this is the UH not not not updated slides well alright well there's some more slides I'll just I'll just tell you about them well here I'll

guess mm okay so I'll do the first one right now so these are these things called a cone called ether cards so I can I can give these all out to y'all so these are great it says ether dot cards these so these are mostly this is physicalized ether it's mostly for like physical air drops so I can I can I can give them out to to all of you here I'll just like put them let them down here and yeah just just kind of give them out yeah here you go and so actually here so I mean let me I'll take one of them I'll take one of them yeah um can we take oh yeah I guess you can't see a picture of it anyway okay so the idea is that so you know pretty artwork on the front you can get whatever artwork you want there is

your address here and there's and if you scratch this off it reveals the private key and the idea is that until you scratch this off this is as good as cash so so so this is mostly been useful for for doing gift cards you know say for Christmas or for your on bow but it's also been really useful for uh basically for airdrop so if you have a conference and and you want and you want to you know you know give out give a token from say every sponsor you can now do that so yeah so if you want to get so these are just the samples I'm sorry there's no money on them oh yeah no no no no no I mean okay no no no no okay I actually was going to put money on it I actually was but our lawyer said you

can't do that because because because because then you become a money transfer service and I'm just like so you know so no I I was down to do it but you know but it sorry sorry you know blamed a lawyer's so yeah they say if you're hosting an event you know recommend them I think I think I think I think these are a lot of fun so ants wear ether cards you see lots of pretty art so like here you know so here's the so like so here's Chinese New Year here's Singapore you know yeah you get the idea alright let's see do we have nope we don't have that so do we do we have well okay well I'll just tell you about the the other ones can we so another one is is ETH so for a while we want to have a new wiki so there's a

new wiki coming out actually I guess this I guess will be this month so it is ETH quickie um thanks so much for a Pandya for the domain and so so the hope this will be be the be the standard wiki for aetherium we so it uses this new wiki software or that has like just just come out I want to thank think it coin because cuz they're basically so so I want to get stuff done in time time for this conference but the developers all working on working on other stuff so so I started using git coin for github issues to to to get them to tuned to meet my own deadlines and so that was very that was very thoughtful to get coin there's can we can we get a web browser or something like that I guess

we can't I guess we can get the rest well well okay well there was there was there was one more thing on on visual check sums but I guess we'll talk off that I guess guess I get the next one there there are there are some new events coming out that with that I actually I'm not allowed to talk about so but but you should look at but there but there will be new things coming the at the at the Microsoft build conference in May so it's Soumya you might want to watch that there also will be new announcements at the upcoming hyper ledger conferences so you might want to watch that as well so but but I've been told I can't talk about it so so okay oh that's that's kind of that's kind of

what I got always there's at the end yes the end all right [Applause]