ETH ETF news, Ethereum.org roadmap and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #769 - Ethereum Updates

Transcript

hello everyone welcome to another episode of theway refu w up the latest news ethereum ecosystem I'm your host and this the 24th of April 2024 all right everyone let's get into it so apologies for missing yesterday's episode everyone I did mention at the beginning of the week that I wanted to try and not miss any episodes this week but alas I ended up missing one there hopefully I won't miss any more for the rest of the week uh now uh obviously this is the last week before I take my breaks on the refu there and I just wanted to quickly say thank you again to everyone who's reached out uh about uh me taking a break and offering me words of encouragement it really does make taking the break easier uh it makes it like an easier decision that that happened there uh but thank you for that

but I'm not going to gush about that I'm not going to go on about that uh what I wanted to also mention before I jump into the news was that because I'm going to be away obviously for two weeks maybe more I don't know yet um I I did mention the other day that it may be more it just depends how I feel there are other places to get your news uh your ethereum related news if you are feeling stared because there's no refu obviously there are the popular and well-known ones like banket there's a few other kind of podcasts out there as well there's infinite jungle from Christine Kim you can watch the all C devs calls which aren't really like podcast but you can watch them to get your news about cev stuff but then there's also Rocket Fuel uh from wack whac attack here who's part

of the rocket pool community and he's been doing the rocket fuel series for a very long time now he's up to I Believe episode 384 uh and he covers news from the rocket pool ecosystem mainly but also a lot of ethereum related news so if you are starved for you know mostly daily content let's call it that on ethereum then you can go watch wack attack wack whack attack's Channel I'll link it in the YouTube description below and he also does a podcast um you know uh called the weekly orbit which I think is maybe mostly about rocket pool more so than maybe Rocket Fuel is but it's it's another weekly show that he does uh with his co-host that's uh that you can watch as well so that's called the weekly orbit I don't have it up here but I'll link this channel in the YouTube

description for you to go check out so hopefully that can Tide you over until I'm back there but anyway enough about that let's jump into the news so uh actually before we jump into the news just a quick shout out you guys know I'm going to eth Global Sydney next week um and I'll be there I'll be at a bunch of the side events hope to see many of you there but if you are going to be in Australia or in Sydney generally or live here live in Sydney and you haven't applied to attend yet and you haven't haven't kind of um made a decision to attend yet I highly recommend you do this is the first time there has been an eth Global in Australia in Australia we barely get ethereum conferences so I think that we should be supporting this one as much as we can so if you are in

Sydney or anywhere else in Australia and you can make it into Sydney for eth Global go check out the event link I'll link it in the YouTube description below for you to do so all right so we have some fresh eth ETF news today and look I'm not going to say that this is news to get too excited about but it is something it's news it's movement it's it's not just like pure speculation here there is actual movement happening so uh first of all Elenor uh Tourette here actually uh tweeted out uh that we're one month out as of today uh well as of yesterday I guess technically uh from the the sec's deadline to either approve or deny the eth spot ETFs and uh today the SEC delayed making decisions on applications from Franklin Templeton and grayscale which is obviously totally uh

expected here and then alen or continued as has been widely reported the consensus is that because there has been little to no meaningful engagement from SEC staff on the issuers applications that they will ultimately deny on May 23rd now uh this was posted at I believe my time 4:46 a.m. Australian time but then we had another tweet that was posted only a couple hours later at 6:34 a.m. by James ciet here one of the Bloomberg guys covering the ETF stuff where there was a lot of movement happening in the eth ETF space so he says here in his tweet a bunch of movement on eth ETFs from multiple issuers and the SEC uh grayscale just filed their s-3 prospectus for converting eth so that's their current uh trust that they want to convert into

an ETF or they closing the trust that you guys um you know know about uh there was gbtc that got converted into their proper ETF and they want to do the same thing with eth e uh there was the delay on Gray scale and Franklin as I just mentioned uh and black rock also filed an amendment to their 19 B4 eth ETF application uh as and there was also I believe that gry scal F filed for an ethereum mini trust which is similar to their Bitcoin mini trust so another ETF there now James of course said that uh him and Eric B buunis I believe that's how you say his surname there their odds of a approval are still at 25% for the approval on May 23rd here um which is obviously no change to what what their odds has been now the reason I bring all

of this up or the main reason I bring all of this up is because this we're basically like we're not at the finish line yet we're a month out but we're like we we're so close to the finish line now and obviously everyone has already uh come to the conclusion that these things aren't getting improved on May 23rd so on and so forth we've been over that a million times before but it's gotten to the point now where there is a relatively strong case to be made that there is actually back and forth happening between the SEC and the issuers it's just happening in the background because from my understanding the only things that need to be public is when stuff like this happens when amendments happen when uh you know the actual public facing documentation gets changed in some way or a new one gets

filed that from my understanding is the only thing that really needs to be public here whereas the conversations between the SEC and the issue is they don't have to be public uh by law I believe I I believe they can be totally private but the reason why we heard it heard so much with the BTC ETFs well I think there's two main reasons one was that there was a lot of back and forth over the documentation because of the fact that it was the first of its kind ETF it was the first crypto asset ETF so it was to be expected that there was a lot of back and forth a lot of amendments that need to be made and that's what everyone was following leading up to the to the spot ETF y also there were a lot of leaks that came out too and I I put leaks in in you know in

quotes because I guess like they're not really leaks they're kind of strategic information outflows if you will uh from either the SEC or the issuers uh here and then also we saw how uh there was that kind of um uh the stuff that was like ex to that like the coin Telegraph in turn and then obviously the SEC get Twitter account getting hacked on January 9th so there was all that going on there but with the eth ETF as I've explained before it's a copy paste of the BTC one so there could be some little bits of back and forth going on between the SEC and the issuers but they're just keeping a LD on things because the SEC you know maybe they don't want to repeat what happened with the BTC spot ETF which be you know became a whole circus right and they

ended up getting their Twitter account hacked it was embarrassing for them so maybe they don't want to rep repeat that there and secondly there's probably not much for them to go back and forth on as I've said before it's a copy paste ETF the only difference really that is a you know two second change if they wanted to if the SEC wanted to change it is that some of these ETFs have a staking portion or a staking part as part of it now all the SEC would have to do is say hey remove the staking part of it now I would say that if we see these documentation these documents amended with the staking removed that to me would be a pretty strong signal that the SEC asked them to remove this ask the issuers to remove this I don't think the issuers are going to remove this on

their own I think it's going to be up to the SEC to directly ask them because as you guys know my opinion is that the E ETFs are not going to get approved as staking ETFs it's just going to be a normal spot uh ETF first which is totally fine they'll be staking ETFs later so that's kind of where we're at right now we're still on the could go either way kind of side of things here I'm still on the I think it's getting approved May 23rd but you guys know I'm Bas basically dying on that Hill um but I am trying to give like all sides of the cases here it's you know my opinion on this is is actually Irrelevant in the grand scheme of things because all I'm trying to do and all I've been trying to do for months with this is give you guys

all of the relevant information so that you can come to your own conclusions about this there's you know there's no need to listen to my opinion on this there's no need to listen to my my take on this and no need to listen to me saying to you guys that I think it's being approved I am just going off the same information that we all have access to I don't have any Insider information at all like I mean and if I did I definitely wouldn't be um wouldn't want to have it I would basically be trying to not have it because I I I I I think that's just like crazy that that people could have that that that information there all I'm looking at is just the public facing facts yeah I have no Insider information Ian have no Connections in this world anyway like I

am so far removed from the try world it's not even funny but what I do have is all the same information that everyone else has access to and what I do have is my way my unique way of looking at it and my speculate my speculation on these too and I've always made clear what I believe is speculative versus what I believe is fact and really there's very little fact here to go off other than uh that there is ETFs in the pipeline you know Black Rock has a really great track record the SEC hates crypto right so there there are certain facts that we can have 100% certainty is the um you know is the facts but then there is a lot of speculation around those facts which is what we've all been doing for months now but you know we're a month out and we could get clarity

even sooner than that as I said I would personally not that I would consider this a fact so to speak but I would personally find it very interesting let's put let's use that word if the issuers were to remove the staking portion of uh of their kind of applications here because I don't think they're going to do that on their own and that to me would send a pretty strong signal to the market that hey if the SSD is asking them to remove this portion that means that there is back and forth going on between the SEC and the issuers and that means that uh you know it's more likely that they're going to get approved on May 23rd uh than not here but that's the latest information we have right now just a few amendments here a prospectus filed it means the issuers aren't giving up on these ETFs

either they obviously want them really really badly whether they happen on May 23rd or not that's anyone's guess at this point still obviously but we know that they're coming eventually we know that eth is going to get a spot ETF eventually uh whether they the SEC has to be you know um dragged Kicking and Screaming to approve it or whether they just approve it on May 23rd and just put an end to the circus that would be the best path forward obviously in my opinion um but the ACC has different plans here who knows what they want to do who knows how they want to play this game they don't seem to care at all if they get sued don't seem to care at all if they look bad in court which is just insane to me to be honest um considering that they should they should be

concerned about that but at the end of the day they're not for a variety of reasons and Gary giner isn't for a variety of reasons and it seems like an Institutional rot at the SEC that it's pervasive and is something that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon and which brings me to my next point of discussion uh which is related to this so you guys will remember a few weeks ago I talked about this debt box casee that the SEC lost where the judge basically told the SEC that it was abusing its power and they basically broke the law in the case by what they were trying to do here now we have an update on this so basically two lawyers at the SEC resigned after due to this case here now you may be looking at this and being like oh wow suddenly you know

some justice in the world suddenly some kind of um you know consequences for the SEC here no no no this is no consequences for the SEC these two lawyers were not high higher up in the SEC they were not highly ranked in the SEC I believe one was a junior lawyer one was more senior but they hadn't been at the SEC very long and they definitely definitely were not calling any shots when it came to this case or anything got to do with the SEC so of course we make the conclusion that they're just a sacrificial Lambs that Gary ginla put up they thought to themselves well they being the SEC and more specifically Gary ginla thought to himself well someone's head needs to roll for this you know this was a a really big um loss for the SEC it's an embarrassment for the SEC we

need to show the public that some heads are rolling and that you know we'll we'll do better in the future or something like that so that's what they did they basically uh I I believe there was a quote in this Bloom Bloomberg article that basically said that the SEC lawyers did not resign they would get fired so you see what I mean by institutional right here this is not just Gary Gensler this is the SEC under Gary ginla where it has been set you know this rot starts at the top and it has been set in and then Congress has allowed it to has allowed it to continue as well because the Democrats are doing nothing to ctail this the SEC is their thing right now right Gary gzo is their appointee but they have zero interest in doing anything about the SEC abusing its

power they're more interested in Banning Tik Tok right like it's just the priorities are not there at all right now um and this is getting into political stuff here but obviously this is very uh very political here and very politically charged but that's that's kind of the consequences that we saw here had two lawyers that really had no power at the SEC no sway over anything it was definitely not their decision to do these things they were asked to step down or asked they'd be fired I mean come on like I I wish that happened to Gary Gensler because it's it's it's really him that's kind of uh started this rot and it's kind of perpetuated down um not just for crypto but just like the SEC generally here but yeah anyway enough of me rancing about the SEC and everything and all and everything in between there uh but yeah

as I was saying before month out guys from the eth ETF you know what's funny I was joking in the daily way Discord before that maybe I'll just take a break until May 23rd from crypto and then come back and either the if ETF is is denied or approved uh but maybe that'll be the day that I come back who knows we'll see how I feel because honestly over the next month it's unless we see something that like changes the odds in any direction substantially uh it's just going to be more of the same more of the same circus more of the same speculation uh and I'm super tired of it like I don't obviously you guys know I'm generally tired right now I need a break but the ETF stuff has really kind of just B you know blown my brain because it's a lot of stuff that I had to learn

that I wasn't aware of before it's not crypto related really it's more got to do with how you know the SEC acts and how uh the trafy world acts and how there's all these politics involved I I'd be a terrible politician guys I cannot like this stuff just rots away at my at my brain thinking about this a lot and I really don't like thinking about it but obviously it's very relevant it's very relevant to eth as an asset it's very relevant to eth e as a market right e market price so I figure it's worth keeping up to date with it so that I can disseminate this information out to you guys and make sure that you guys are as informed as possible on all of uh this stuff happening here but anyway enough on the ETF stuff let's move on to a couple of e Direct ethereum Tech related

news so the first up here is that uh the Q2 2024 road map from ethereum.org was published today now as you guys know ethereum.org is the Premier place to get all of your ethereum information it's amazing it's great it looks great you guys know i' I've talked about this website a lot in the past it's really the the place you should start if you want to learn about ethereum really which is which is great it's a it's a huge kind of um repository of information there now with this Q2 2024 product road map you can go here Link in the YouTube description below and you can see what they've got planned so they've got a layer 2 revamp planned they've got a bunch of docu more documentation coming uh AI chatbot Explorations uh machine and AI translations uh and so on and so forth

there's a lot in here as I said I'll link in the YouTube description below for you guys to check out but I'm really excited about this um this layer 2 revamp here because they they say here blobs are here and layer 2 activity is surging the focus of ethereum.org has always been ethereum mainnet uh such AKA L1 but these rapid scaling infrastructure improvements make it clear that ethereum.org should grow into a more comprehensive resource for the ethereum ecosystem we are in the early stages of planning this transition and welcome your thoughts and you can join the discussion on Discord here so I'm glad that they're prioritizing this because that is definitely a section of ethereum.org that is both pretty sparse but also comes under heavy criticism because I don't know if it's still like this maybe if I if I kind of go into it

here but there is on their layer 2 page I believe that they called a few things layer that they shouldn't have called layer twos and there was like drama around that um and and and and so on and so forth so I think that they're trying to revamp it and they want to be up to date with the latest and greatest when it comes to defining what a layer 2 is defining what a rollup is and maybe they can take inspiration from l2b because I think l2b does it the best right now uh but yeah it's great to see that they're going to be revamping this because yeah there definitely needs to be more information on here and a you know more comprehensive overview of the layer 2 ecosystem on here given that it is so important for ethereum going forward all right so we have a new post here

from Barnaby today on everything got to do with epbs slot auctions execution tickets a test the propos of Separation pre-c confirmations and even pepc and he's proposed an alternative mechanism called APS durn which is an alternative to execution tickets in order to achieve a Testa proposa separation so this is quite a lengthy post guys and it does get quite technical it talks all about the pipeline of how an ethereum uh kind of um block gets made how how kind of validate is a test of those blocks what we can do to make sure that we can be as sensorship resistant as possible what we can do to make sure that we basically enshrine the existing relay infrastructure into ethereum with epbs and so on and so forth so basically if you are interested in any of this

stuff this is a blog post for you to go read it is probably the latest and greatest research when it comes to any of this stuff Barnaby is one of the people that follows this more closely uh you know one of one of the people that follows it most closely here uh and there's a bunch of Di as well just explain things I wouldn't say it's too technical to the point where there's like math everywhere and scientific notation or anything like that it's just that it assumes a lot of prior knowledge let's just say that and to be fair I've talked about a lot of this on the refi before so a lot of these things will be familiar to you if you read this blog post but go give it a read I'll link it in the YouTube description below uh for you to do so here uh but in terms of

timing around this you know none of this stuff seems to be going forward for pectra it still could like I think what one of the things which is EP b bs um that's the thing that's being pushed hard on right now and that's the thing a lot of uh I guess like core researchers and developers and even community members want to see included in Petra but I don't know if it will get included by then but I say that it will get probably included in the upgrades after that you know sometime next year but there's just so many moving parts right now guys like this stuff is distinctly separate to like The Verge for example which is another major road map item that wants to get delivered next year and then there's so many other things as well but I think a big part of the road

map is definitely centered around you know meev hardening the ethereum consensus protocol uh and and basically uh making it and hardening censorship resistance as well which all fall into this bucket here so I think that this stuff is going to definitely be prioritized I'm just not sure on timing of when it's going to get into the network but anyway you can go give this blog post a read I'll link it in the YouTube description below for you to do so all right finally here we have something that was posted by Josh Davis so the ethereum protocol Fellowship had a very successful fourth cohort and a new cohort is on the horizon but you can read the recap all about the fourth cohort here so for those of you who don't know the ethereum protol fellowship is basically an initiative that the ethereum foundation runs to

recruit new core developers and researchers to so this as I said is their fourth cohort they have a fifth one up and coming now but this was the biggest one yet you can actually go read this blog post and see which projects people worked on uh with and there's a lot here I mean Jesus there's a lot there's like 30 or something projects here he 35 projects here which is is absolutely massive and then there's also U information about the next cohort but I want to use use this as a bit of a springboard to talk about something that annoyed me a little bit the other day so I got into a little bit of a I wouldn't say heated discussion but like a little bit of a Twitter back and forth about ethereum core development and research generally and I I got a bit annoyed

because people were making out as if ethereum L1 is not evolving and ethereum L1 is stagnating too much and ethereum L1 has lost its drive and its spark and its kind of fire to evolve and the reason why that annoy me uh is because of the fact that that is's completely wrong like you guys know I focus pretty heavily on all of the core Dev related stuff happening you guys have all seen of italic road map you guys have seen all of the the research going on and there's just too much to keep up with so to say that ethereum layer one or ethereum core development is stagnating or slowing down in any capacity is absolutely ridiculous to me I think it's in the best place it's ever been I think that there is so much going on at every Bas every kind of like part of the

stacks so to speak uh so much going on that it's impossible for one person to keep up with I know I can't keep up with it all so I got really annoyed about that and this is just one example of this with the ethereum protocol Fellowship 35 projects all focused on various different core protocol stuff here from things like building a node crawler to uh dealing with building prisms e epbs support uh to doing improvements to metrics you know Post vericle State expiry so on and so forth this stuff is not easy to groc guys like this is hard core bleeding edge core development and research here and this is just one part of it there are hundreds of core developers and researchers and then hundreds more people who read and digest all the information they get involved in their

own capacity maybe as a you know as a as a kind of hobby capacity more more more so than a full-time capacity you have all of the teams and all of the efforts that surround the core development and research that feed up into it so there's just so much going on that I found it bizarre that someone would insinuate or people would insinuate that ethereum L1 is stagnating in any way it definitely is not it's definitely evolving faster than it ever has here and then that's not even to mention all the l2s which are evolving and um and kind of like developing faster than the L1 and that's part of the whole road map of ethereum that that is the rooll abcentric road map it's not just about scalability but it's all also about being able to move faster being able to experiment more and

being able to provide a uh you know more kind of like um how do I put it here a more more blossoming uh and kind of like fast moving ecosystem than what we're used to on ethereum L1 but that does not at all mean that L1 is stagnating as you guys know I know I'm preaching to the choir here because I cover eth L1 stuff all the time but that yeah that comment really did kind of annoy me and it was it was it was part of the thread where someone said that you know there's no young people in ethereum all of the the ethereum media PE media people are over the age of 35 and uh you know we need more young people in ethereum which also is completely wrong because for one I'm not 35 I'm 32 and I'm ethereum media person uh two I work so bloody hard in

this ecosystem that I now have to take a break because I've burned myself out uh and three I'm not the only one who does this you know the bankless guys are are grinding all the time and you know I I don't even think it's relevant to mention anyone's age because I think you're just being really kind of discriminatory uh to People by mentioning their age you know I'm of the firm belief that really your age doesn't dictate what you uh kind of are as a as a person when it comes to your mind I think that I've met I mean I don't think this I know I've met met multiple older folks like over 5050 years old over 60 years old that have sharper minds and are more Curious and uh more involved with the crypto ecosystem than people in their 20s like age is not anything

relevant here in my eyes I feel like it's it's up to the individual if the individual is a curious mind if they want to get involved with stuff if they want to be on the bleeding edge of stuff if they're always willing to learn new things and and they don't want to stagnate in their own personal growth then they are the you know they are the the people that um that we should be focusing on whether they're you know 80 years old or whether they're 20 years old it doesn't matter to me as long as you have a curious mind that's what matters and you know I have personal experience with this as well like outside of crypto my my grandfather is 92 years old right 92 years old his mind is so sharp still and he's still keeping up with things he you know he's he's

he's still keeping up with news and developments he's still reading books he's still trying to keep his mind really really sharp um and and you know he's he's very like 92 guys that's that's crazy he doesn't have you know Dementia or Alzheimer's or anything like that obviously at you know when you have those diseases it's different but like that's a I think a different discussion to what I'm trying to get through here whereas that it just the matters on the individual it just really matters about if you're a curious mind and that's what I've always thought when it comes to this sorts of stuff so I got kind of annoyed about that and I think for all the other people out there who are you know my age or older don't let that Define you at all I certainly don't let it Define me when it comes to

my mind body a different thing you know obviously as you get older your body's not going to you're not going to um respond to you as it used to I know that you know 10 years ago if I was to um not not so much me but my friends they would get you know they'd get drunk and then the next day they'd be bouncing off walls they'd be fine if they do that now it's like a week of recovery right so obviously physical thing is different but when it comes to your mind uh you you know your mind will obviously slow down over time but at the same time you can still keep that curious mind you can still keep that willingness to learn that drive to learn all the way up as as I said to my grandfather's age of 92 and Beyond there is no reason to slow down

at all I mean I actually think at that age is even more reason to do more stuff because you know that your time is pretty much not up but you know that wow okay I'm 92 like gez this is you know this is this is not you know it's not the end yet but hey I'm pretty close I'm not not not not uh not 20 with 80 years or 60 years or 70 years or whatever it is ahead of me right so I think at that age it's more of a thing of like just do whatever you want and and and focus on whatever you want but I think that as I said like it shouldn't be an age thing as much as it should be an individual thing where if you got a curious mind if you're interested in learning new things if you're interested in keeping up with

things and you want to make the most of life really generally then uh you know age doesn't matter in that uh in that capacity there but anyway enough of me rancing about that there I might cut today's episode a little bit short for today uh but yeah once again thank you everyone for listening and watching be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet give it a thumbs up subscribe to newsletter join the Discord Channel and I'll catch you all tomorrow thanks everyone