An Inside Look into the Ethereum All Core Devs Calls w/ Christine Kim (Galaxy)

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome back to the strange waterer podcast thank you for tuning in for another conversation there are a lot of ways you can understand ethereum but for me I've always understood ethereum to be the almost Masterpiece of the open- source movement not only is it perhaps the greatest most complicated system ever designed built operated and upgraded by The open- Source Community but it has achieved all of this through a globally decentralized process of voluntary

contributions the best way that I like to describe it is that the amazing thing about a is that the road map is explicitly created out in public the future of the world computer and with it the future of Global Financial and computational infrastructure is meticulously planned and read aloud on zoom and on YouTube today we have the perfect guide to understanding just how this process works what the core development process looks like and how it steers the future of etherum on nearly every single all cord developers call Christine Kim is diligently taking notes which she then

makes easily digestible and publicly available during today's conversation Christine walks us through the all core devs calls and through them gives us the inside look into how an ethereum hard Fork comes together this is a fascinating discussion on the inner workings of the most basic levels of the world computer and gives you an undeniable understanding just how deep open-source principles and methods run through the ethereum development process one more thing before we begin please do not take Financial advice from

this or any podcast ethereum will change the world one day but you can easily lose all of your money between now and then okay and now for Christine Kim Christine thank you so much for joining us on the strange water podcast thank you for having me rest it's a pleasure to be on the show of course and I'm so excited to talk to you um I think I mentioned before we started recording that I really treat you as like my uh Point person that can basically like explain ethereum knes into like something that is digestible for like

people that aren't just like kneee in solidity or or even lower level languages so um super excited and thank you for joining us of course I'm glad to hear that my work is useful to people in the ecosystem like you to keep up to dat that is definitely one of my goals whenever I'm doing those writeups or or producing content for sure so I would love to um kind of like walk through your story and get us to this point where um you've been doing it for a while but where you're like kind of shepherding and um like the good kind of secretary these are allore Dev meetings so can you talk a little bit about what's your background I know you spent a lot of time at coindesk and like maybe just your journey of I don't know

anything about crypto to finding yourself in this like really cool position um how did you get here yeah totally um so I first learned about Bitcoin through my sister I was studying economics at the time um in University at the University of British Columbia um I'm Canadian and um I was trying to I was just wrapping up my degree my bachelor's degree and my sister had had told me about Bitcoin I didn't know much about it at the time but I thought it'd be an interesting topic to dive into for my thesis like my uh final report that I'd write for my degree um and that's how I initially learned about Bitcoin because I did the research to understand

what Bitcoin is how um different Trends and its price at the time this was in 2018 um and that's also how I came across the the news site coindesk um because in the course of figuring out what Bitcoin was it's kind of hard um not to come across coind Des the major like crypto media site um and so once I had written that paper I was basically looking for a job I was straight out of college and um I had initially thought I wanted to work in um government in intergovernmental organizations um but I wasn't getting really very many responses from any uh organizations I wanted to work for um so out of like a a last minute last Stitch effort to do something after um

graduating I applied for the summer internship at coindesk which was hosted in New York my sister who had told me about Bitcoin used to live in New York so she was like you know what at the very least it's going to be a nice summer in New York City and then you know we can you can come back to Canada and we can figure things out from there all right I can figure things out from there um but lo and behold that summer internship kind of changed my life um it was um like I had learned a little bit about Bitcoin um when I was doing that paper but being a reporter being an intern for coind Des that was a whole another ball game I was just like learning so much about um ethereum I was learning about so many so many other you know tokens in

the ecosystem um and so I really fell in love with the industry then the people I was talking to the stories I was covering I was like wow this is the this is revolutionary I think that's when I really became a believer in the space um and so I was a and so I stayed on at coindesk as a reporter a full-time reporter after that internship um and I was really mentored by um many different um uh people at the organization um and I started actually covering the calls um as a reporter um so every I think it was Fridays at the time every call that call happened on Fridays uh the all core developer calls happened on Fridays and there was um Rachel Rose o she used to

cover the calls and she was like handing it off to me she was like this is how you cover the calls these are some of the terms you need to know so she really took me under a wing um and then I took over that Craft um from her and I kept it going uh throughout my time at coin desk and then now here at Galaxy joining the research team um I continue to cover the call so it's like a multi-year Journey um but I would say that it started off with um you know learning the trade from another um another uh woman in crypto um and I I really feel like I learned a lot um through the internship at at coindesk very cool and um we'll talk offline afterwards about how I can take that job from you when

you're done but but no I think that's I think that's really cool and I I I guess I would love to just spend a couple cple minutes talking about um your time at coin desk and like what what I think about specifically is like what is so cool and Magic about this industry is that everything is happening like right out in the open right on crypto Twitter right in GitHub repositories and there like anyone who has spent 5 seconds in this industry understands there's something inherently different from how information flows in this space versus how information Flows In Like traditional business businesses and I guess my question to you is as a journalist who kind of sat in one of

these traditional businesses covering this new space do you have any Reflections on um just like that time were there things that were like particularly easy particularly challenging I mean I guess to put it simply what's it like to be a like journalist like capital J journalist for crypto it is extremely difficult um I got to say there was a reason and I switched over to research um I think covering the space as a journalist um is very difficult because sometimes figuring out what is the truth figuring out what actually is going on requires you to have such a niche technical understanding of a topic that as a

journalist you're covering you know four or five different projects at the same time you're really only looking for like a your editor is only looking for like a 300 400w article on this thing and so you don't really have the time to really like dive become an expert in whatever thing that you are covering and I'm and this is true for any kind of industry at that a journalist might be covering but especially for crypto because the technical knowledge is so high I think um it it's it's really difficult just to get started um but once you kind of get your your your footing or your grasping of at least like Bitcoin or at least ethereum or at least one project and really get into the technical depths of of one thing in crypto you can

use that to like kind of Branch off so the learning curve is very steep um and and that's one of the reasons that makes covering crypto as a journalist hard but another thing that I I think I would mention is yes while there are um lots of of details about projects that are out in the open um because it's because certain projects like ethereum and um and um Bitcoin or so open source it's very hard sometimes to um reach out and to find answers to your questions because there's no PR team or media team to really reach out to you kind of have to have a long-standing rapport with the developers that are building the project

and um due to the time in which I was covering crypto which was a little bit after kind of the Ico craze and the SEC was coming after lots of crypto projects for icos there was quite a bit of of of apprehension towards journalists um um especially developers that wanted to remain pseudonymous or Anonymous completely um so it made gathering information for stories pretty difficult um and also you know relationships with developers and the people building the projects just a lot more tenuous because there's that inherent level of distrust of oh are you going to you know misrepresent my project say that I'm the CEO of the Network rather than the CEO

of the foundation that is building the network like these kinds of nuances that I think if you're a new report new journalist covering the space you don't really pick up on these on these nuances like that early on um so yeah for a number of reasons I think covering this space as a journalist is hard but it also has extremely high payoffs if you think about some of the stories that broke um that coindesk broke around the FTX uh collaps that's you know quality journalism right there investigative journalism continuing to push um and ask like tough questions even when you're getting pushed back and and and people are are kind of like calling you out on on Twitter and all these social media platforms for being for you know asking

quote unquote like wrong questions I think that um if as a journalist you can maintain your integrity and continue to ask and continue to kind of like um dig uh deep then uh the the payoff is quite high so um hard but High payoff yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense and I think um I think you could probably say that about everything in our industry this hard but a lot of payoff and I guess um last question on on you know journalism um so here's a question for you just like totally in an opinion but like where we are today uh for crypto journalism I mean do you feel like the the interesting market and the

interesting people to write to are like the people that are already here the builders like the people like you and me who are already invested and want to learn more about where the community is going or is it really about finding those incremental people that aren't in crypto and helping them like translating or like wacky like Dave consensus blah blah blah into something that is like digestible for like let's say a trafi guy or even like a retirement investor like where do you see um is like the biggest need and therefore opportunity in uh crypto journalism honestly I think in all fronts we could use some help um especially for I think back then in 2018 um when I was doing the internship

there was a great need to explain crypto to people help people understand what a blockchain is what Bitcoin is and yeah despite the fact that we have a Bitcoin spot ETF and there's a lot more institu institutions involved in this space there's still a heavy need to educate even the general public on um these topics um but as the industry matures there's also a heavy need to be able to um translate the more sophisticated crypto Niche topics the more cuttingedge developments and report them in a manner that is um that is that is more breaking news um instead of like 101 type thing um especially if you if you

if we consider the crypto industry to be um to be getting to reaching a level of adoption where where now it's going to be a a regularly covered topic by the likes of Bloomberg by by the likes of these like CNBC these traditional media companies then to some extent like we should continue to have coverage that's just 247 SE like that's just constant and just assumes that you know we all know that crypto is important and you know here are the major developments cuttingedge development so I think um so I I really think that in this space like uh we're still very early days and we need more on all fronts um I can't say that you know we need more one more than

the other right now because I still find you know the I still see you know a lack of quality journalism on on crypto and I'd love to see um I'd love to see it improve over the next couple years and I'm sure it will um as as the industry starts to to gain more mainstream adoption yeah for sure I I very much believe in that too so opportunity for uh all crypto media people so let's um let's let's kind of move this story back towards um ethereum and the allore devs call and during you know your your background you talked a little bit about during your time at coindesk you were exposed to the call and then kind of like through a handoff process were given the uh the like keys to the the

the piece that you do and I guess like let's just be honest here take a step back if you have like a child's understanding the world if you hear like I am going to be the secretary to the developer core call once a week like that sounds boring and dry and like kind of grunt work I think people like you and me know that that's probably the most interesting seat at the table um and we'll we'll talk through why that for the rest of the this episode but can you talk through a little bit about like one how did you even become exposed to this and then during those early days like how did what were your Vibes like what were you feeling and why did you see this and realize like oh my God this

is this needs to be my chair and not like oh wow that seems like kind of a boring job I gotta admit sometimes covering these calls it does feel very boring it does still feel very like H so dry um another hour and a half of my week you know listening to this all this technical dialogue um but yeah it's a good question because I think when I was first given the responsibility it was primarily because ethereum as the second largest blockchain in the world which it still was at the time in 2018 um was undergoing quite a bit of upgrades and it's very different from Bitcoin in that these upgrades um are upgrades that um major

ethereum investors will be impacted by um these could involve changes to the monetary policy it could involve Chang is to the consensus protocol itself it's it's these are major overhauls of the way that ethereum works and and therefore there's lots of eyes on there's lots of interest in in knowing what is happening on the protocol layer of ethereum and um rather than getting it through you know hearsay you can go straight to the horse's mouth so to speak and and listen to what the developers are talking about on a week- toe basis and these calls were really where the decisions get made um and this is something that uh that uh the the reporter the senior reporter that I was working under really impressed on me she said um you know Christine like we're

not going to cover these calls we're we're not going to write a summary of these calls every single week but there are key decisions that might be made on them so keep your ears out for them and if we do we're going to be the first to break it um but as I was but in order for me to train my ears to know like what's an important decision and what's not I really needed to understand um the technical lingo that these developers were talking about and once I understood once I could understand the calls I think that's when I realized that there weren't many people who could do what I do there weren't many people that could um understand the calls in the way that Rachel and I could understand them um which is why when I developed that skill I continued to find ways to not only

report the important decisions that were being made but just educate people on how to better understand what's going on in these calls the structure of the calls the people that are tring ing them um you know the the process in which decisions get made um I think I I knew at the time that this was a very Niche understanding and if I could um if I could help people if I could share that skill with people or at least help people you know better understand it then I knew it would be an asset for me trying to make cuz at the time I was I was new I wanted to make a name for myself in the industry um and so yeah and so I think that's that's really how things got started for me very cool very cool very inspiring to um like just kind

of be put in a situation where like hey your job is a reporter you need to watch this in case there's something to report on and then like through your job you realize like this isn't something I should be doing so that I don't get fired this is something that is like incredibly important and if I'm able to like conquer this then I can like contribute back to again something that anyone listening to this uh episode like believes this like transformational technology that like will change the world and so um kudos for you for seeing the opportunity and running with it because uh a lot of people see opportunities or maybe even miss them but not a lot of people run for them totally and I I should also add that you know through this process I did get

quite a bit of positive affirmation of what I was doing by the likes of the people that were running the calls they noticed that I was covering them and they're like oh you know usually Rachel covers that calls but now you're the one asking questions about what we're talking about and building that rapport with them and having developers encourage me to to teach me and and show me that this is something that we need so um I I definitely couldn't have done it alone um and appreciate kind of all the support that I got within coindesk and then within the the ethereum developer Community to to keep me going yeah cool and thank you to the community for pushing Christine on so um I'd like to like kind of let's pick apart what

one of these meetings looks like or what one of these calls looks like so the purpose of uh this conversation is obviously not to single out anyone so feel free to avoid names but can you talk through like what first at the very basic level like what does an ethereum all core devs call look like like who's on it who's um chair Manning it like what what what does it look like yeah so the structure of the call has changed quite significantly over the past couple years I'll just share the current umu structure of it because going through all the iterations would take too much time um but right now there's two bi-weekly call series one of them is dedicated towards protocol level changes on the consensus layer and then protocol

level changes on the execution layer and that is because ethereum ever since is switched to proof of stake is now this merged combined network of of two different protocols um and the execution layer meetings um have are chaired by the ethereum foundation protocol support lead Tim Tim boo um and they're attended by all the execution layer software client teams and sometimes by consensus layer client teams too that just want to participate um depending on the topic of the call you'll have um people from all different parts of the ethereum ecosystem join in to um explain why a certain code chain should be included in the next ethereum upgrade so you will

sometimes see representatives from major um applications built on ethereum like Lio Unis swap uh rollups um sometimes join these calls um in addition to the client teams that are always on the calls and um you have quite a bit of ethereum foundation researchers on the call as well um so these are are people that are not actively building ethereum software or or preparing the upgrades but they're researching different um protocol changes to potentially pursue in the future um and usually the calls are structured in in a way in such a way where developers talk about the next immediate upgrade so if denune is in a couple weeks the first topic will be Denon and preparations if dencon is

already happen then the first topic will probably be about Electra which is like the next e theory of upgrade so it starts off with kind of a discussion about you know what is the most timely thing which is usually an upgrade um and then it'll uh trickle into kind of other um pertinent decisions or or um conversations that need to happen around um tooling around other parts of the ethereum code base that is not just specifically the consensus layer specifications or the execution layer cons execution layer spec code specifications it could do anything with like the apis that make ethereum work the um I think ethereum developers had talked a little bit about like client development that's going to happen but

like client development might uh happen primarily um on another kind of uh third party protocol called the portal Network um so anything that's related to the protocol but touches like other aspects of of the protocol like meev boost might be another topic of conversation um so so yeah so the protocol itself and then you you usually have topics around um things that are related to the protocol and then you have topics related to research um and so these are kind of three broad areas that are often discussed on the on the topic on the call um and the consensus layer uh meetings ACDC calls are chaired by um the ethereum foundation researcher

Danny Ryan um and is attended by the consensus layer client teams and it has very similar structure to what I just mentioned with the execution layer um Danny Ryan is actually on Hiatus right now I don't know if people know um for a couple of months um shout out to him for for you know Manning the the ship for the ACDC calls um and so instead I think one of his colleagues on the research team will be sharing the meetings oh and they all happen on Zoom so these are Zoom links um that are shared around and anyone can join um but if you're not like a participant in the call then generally you join by going to the YouTube live stream so the channel in which you can stream these calls live

and and that I stream them live is called the at ethereum protocol channel so yeah very cool very cool and um first of all Danny thank you for everything you've done for ethereum and please take a well-deserved Break um and cool so thank you for walking us through the call I think like the the next thing that would be interesting to talk about is what how an agenda comes together for a call so I think just for the the sake of uh brevity let's let's just say that the execution and consensus um calls are the same structurally like they you know you you walk through the same uh categories eips uh research tooling um but like how do before we even get to

the meeting like how are we deciding what are the the things that um we're going to talk about like are we even at the point yet where we're deciding which eips are included into the conversation for the next hard fork or is that happening on these calls like describe to me when we're going into a new week like how does the agenda for that week's call um take form yeah so the the way that the agenda is formed is the chair of the meetings so either Tim or Danny will create a GitHub issue um so withum has a very large GitHub repository and one of these repositories keeps track of

every single agenda um that these ACDC calls ever since the ACDC calls ACD calls have been around these uh these issues have been tracked um and so the chair will probably open up that that call um that issue U maybe like a week prior to when the call actually happens and it'll have very Bare Bones of things that developers need to get discuss so the chair will be like okay at the very least we've got to talk about what eips are going to be included in a lecture because we just finished atud so I know and I know that from the last call like these are certain items that we said we were going to follow up with so they put a Bare Bones like agenda um line by line of you know topic one topic two topic

three if there's anything else people think we should discuss on this call please comment and after that issue you'll see a bunch of comments from people from different client teams stakeholders being like I want to discuss this CIP I want to talk about this change to the engine API um and then the chair of the call will take note of that and update the agenda on the GitHub and then by the time of the call you have a very comprehensive list of of what should be talked about and developers try and make it through the entire list sometimes they don't enough time because these calls are capped at an hour and a half long um although sometimes they'll go over but not usually so yeah that's generally how the the agenda gets created yeah

that's very cool and you know I because we're talking about like the most precious thing in our industry right core ethereum development like I think it's worth kind of picking apart core principles here right so like decentralization and like the ability for the community to come together and make decisions is a core principle of ethereum and so I would love for you to talk through it would be extremely easy for me to misinterpret what what you just said with okay Danny is in charge of consensus and he controls what's going to happen and who's allowed to talk about what and that's how it works and then um Tim is in charge of execution

and same thing there but we know that's not how it works we know that like ethereum is about coming to consensus and like making decisions together and so I guess um let me try to package this together in a question but do you have any Reflections on like what is done at the organizing level and at the agenda setting level to make sure that the entire decentralized Community has a voice in saying like this is what needs to be on the agenda and like I want to influence the way that it goes and like how do we make sure that this process um remains something you know core to or sorry that has the principles of

decentralization yeah I think the main aspect of this entire process that makes it so collaborative and so open and so permissionless is not necessarily the the real representation of people from the from the ethereum ecosystem because the people who participate on the calls are a very small number of people compared to the larger ethereum ecosystem and they're not even necessarily like diverse in that you know you know like 25% is represented of the application layer and then 25% is represented of consens layer it's not it's really mainly you know just developers which again is not you know

the representation of the entire ecosystem but what does make it very unique and very collaborative is how how open um open the call is and that if anybody wanted to join the call if anybody wanted to add an agenda item they could not that many people do though because they don't necessarily um have you know have a a bone to pick um with what core developers are responsible for which is the protocol layer of ethereum or um you know people on the application people who are building rollups or stuff um might have different priorities just

focusing on different um different um initiatives or projects um whereas ethereum protocol developers this is their sole responsibility to make sure that upgrades are are are going smoothly um so I think the main thing that makes these calls like open and decentralized is just the fact that nobody is barred from joining these calls even though not everybody joins I know that's a little bit of weird statement but it's just the the Avenue like the openness um I think is the biggest thing and then in answer to to what I think will continue to preserve this is I don't think this is ever going to

happen but I really appreciate how the governance processes of ethereum is offchain it none of it happens through like token holder voting none of it happens in such a way where um you can that's codified in the protocol of ethereum I think as soon as you start to try and and embed governance processes into the protocol itself it creates a lot of opportunities for people to try and gain the system to try and Hack That governance process um and so for a long time I think the intentionality of keeping it offchain keeping it um harder to to to Really um detail out and really

Define actually has been like um a double Ed sword because at times people have said that ethereum governance is centralized and is a black box nobody can really understand it but I think also for that reason it's a lot harder to game and a lot harder to kind of um a lot harder to attack um and then the last thing that I'll say on this question is I think people underestimate how how much of a role the ethereum foundation still plays in coordinating governance so many individuals on these calls are funded like employed by the ethereum foundation or in some way kind of benefiting from the coordination that

the ethereum foundation gives be it as researchers or client teams or um be it through like funding of of audits and different initiatives that the developers are working on different testing initiatives um different um yeah different kind of parts that are integral to to making sure that ethereum continues to upgrade smoothly um so yeah so I think a lot of different thoughts there but um I think just the the so long as as these decisions and these calls can remain open and transparent I think ethereum's governance will

continue to have those features but let's just say like Zoom suddenly censors certain I don't know users from certain IP addresses in the country or like GitHub does the same I think ethereum developers what they would do in that situation is like immediately move to another platform and replicate the same system just on another you know site um and so so long as everyone can still access the information and still have the open invite no matter what platform it's on um I think is one of the key features that makes um the ethereum governance process open yeah yeah it makes a lot of sense to me but you said something that uh I'm GNA ask you a provocative question and I think

that I am like 1 million per on board with you that like forget like the theory and sketching it out on paper the reality is is that by not having governance enshrined in the protocol it has not created a game that you can win um and instead like the only people willing to like roll up their sleeves and like bother to like untangle this like complete mess of like people and companies and entities like are ones that actually like want to uh contribute and grow to it so totally with you on that but then I guess the the next question is is like well when if ever is it appropriate to enshrine your governance decisions into a protocol

like do you think that everything that's happening within the application layer that is like in shrining governance and voting and all this kind of crazy things like might be P taking us down a path that um ethereum itself has shown us maybe suboptimal I can't think of an example where I think onchain governance has worked um I can't think of a decentralized autonomous organization or like um a self upgrading protocol um that you know is able to execute upgrades with just onchain votes I don't think I've ever seen that play out in a way that does work and incentivize more participation than

the participa the level of participation that I'm seeing in the ethereum governance process um so until I see you know onchain governance working in some form I don't think I would ever support it um on the ethereum side I think uh the most decentralized blockchains in the world today um both do not do onchain governance but that's not to say that um the efforts in which certain layer 2 protocols like optimism are really trying to figure out ways to to do governance on chain and and make it sustainable that's not to say that those efforts are are shouldn't be had I I just I I think it's a little bit

premature to implement any of those very experimental processes on um a Network that has so much value like um ethereum so TBD I would say you know let's see it work at least for an application um I'd love to see you know onchain governance working for um say a protocol like Lio and make it completely you know permissionless or working for a rollup and you know all of their operations become decentralized like I'd love to see it working first on you know one of these applications um before I can really say confidently that there's

like a situation or a scenario where I'd be supportive of of governance decisions happening on chain H Christine thank you I was so excited for this call just to talk about ethereum but I never thought that like I'd find another person during recording like this who like thinks the same way that I do and I I'll take it a step further you may not think as this as harshly as I do but like I just fully believe that Dows aren't real like I believe Dows are constructions that we've created so that we can issue illegal Securities and not call them Securities right and I think that um everything that's going on is like maybe interesting but like it's just not real and um you know I've never heard it kind

of like applied and thought through in the ethereum in the Bitcoin context where you're totally totally right like the only things we actually consider decentralized don't allow the the protocol to touch governance and um just wow that that was a really cool way to um just think about what like decentralization means in the real world yeah yeah 100% and they're like practical reality if you think about most Dows they're not decentralized they're not autonomous and oftentimes they're not even organizations in the eyes of regulators and lawmakers so I agree I think that um just because we attach like a a certain name to

something or or call something decentralized doesn't make it actually decentralized yeah yeah yeah and I I could go all day on that but I'll move us forward so um I I think now would be like a really really awesome time to kind of talk through at a high level um like what one of these like a a full cycle of a Dev call looks like and specifically I'm thinking about like a hard Fork so right here we're a couple weeks out from uh Denon uh like actually hitting chain and we now see blobs and and like we're in a new era but I think it's like a really good opportunity to kind of look back and um my my question is from your perspective can you talk through like what was this whole process of like

getting to Proto Dan sharding like from the um from from the dev side like where where were the the fights or the conflicts like what um from your perspective ended up being a lot easier and smoother than it came can you just like give us your Vibe on like what it took to get to where we are today which is post dencon yeah it took a lot of time way more time than developers initially mapped out which is usually how it works they say that an upgrade will only take six months and then it takes two years um but that's also because etherum developers are very optimistic and positive which are are not bad

characteristics but anyways um I think the first major step was figuring out what should be prior ized for denune so since the Shanghai upgrade um developers have started to get into this Norm where they want to focus and anchor the upgrade on one large major code change and then only package in the other code changes that won't slow that major code change down and can be implemented with little to no no um complexity um that's how the Shanghai upgrade happened you know the main thing going into Shanghai was stake eth withdrawal um and there was a couple other eips that were being included and so I think

the biggest debate was do we structure the Denon upgrade in a similar manner if so what is the major code change that should go in and can we package in these other uh code changes that would be really beneficial to the ecosystem um but also do so in a way that doesn't de delay um Proto dink sharting so I think once the decision was made that you know we should really prioritize protu dting sharting it was a controversial one because um because Layer Two rollups are experimental and um at the time um fees were not that high on ethereum um and I think there was lots of questions too of is you know Proto sharting a more

important initiative than um you know upgrading the evm than um what are the some enshrined PBS um then yeah Mac CB like single slot finality there's lot yeah sure lots of other things um but once it was decided on I think the next step was um changing the consensus layer specifications and the execution layer specifications in order to support um blobs which was a new Endeavor I mean this is a new fee Market a new transaction type um you have to figure out how to update the consensus layer specifications with as little complexity

as possible and as high security as possible and so Developers for quite a while were were arguing back and forth about what is the most optimal way to send blobs around do we send it with blocks or decouple them from blocks um how should we Implement you know the new OP codes that will be able to alert users about how much blobs cost and um you know what their base fee is and um you know how those be named um so I think after deciding what goes into the upgrade the biggest conversation then shifts to how do we actually implemented how do we put it into change the specifications and then once the

specifications are more or less flushed out that's when the client implementation starts so the client teams look at the consensus specifications that have been finalized more or less Frozen and then they Implement that into their own language their own programming language their own um yeah their own make um yeah they they it's like you know you get a script and then you have to perform it in your own unique way um and client teams obviously implemented the specifications in many different ways and sometimes they don't um work together and they cause bugs um so the the other the next stage is testing all of these different client implementations together and figuring

out what are the bugs between these these implementations where do we need more standardization lot of back forth between clients implementation and the consensus layer specifications like if we notice that there's a bug in this client then maybe it means we have to change the consensus layer specification um a lot of back and forth um and so you have several test Nets you have so many test Nets between different clients um and the testing process I think for denu took very long um there were developer focused test Nets um and by the time we got to upgrading the public test Nets which were G Andia and um I don't know another one um once you got kind of related once you started getting into

the public test net phase phases um I think that's when developers actually started to think about what we should go into about the next upgrade Electra um so yeah so that's kind of the life cycle I think by the time you get to the public test net phases it's like everything's more or less set settled um and while developers did notice you know a few issues that they had to kind of um fix it wasn't anything that was that required them to go back to stage one or two or like go back to changing like core aspects of the consensus spe specs so so yeah and then after the public test Nets you get to Main net um and

then and then you move on to the next upgrade and start all over again very cool so let's let's uh break that into four phases like we'll call phase one decide phase two plan phase three Implement and phase four test so um I guess like the this first phase is where we're like deciding of all the possible things we could do we're deciding on our like probably going forward in the future our Cornerstone EIP and then all the supporting things um my question to you is like roughly Ballpark and I know it's going to change based on every single uh hard Fork cycle but like can you just give us a rough guideline on of these four phases like what percentage

of the time is spent in each phase um I think probably the shortest amount of time although it is probably the the one that gets covered the most is the first phase because the planning phase for certain code changes if you think about the merge if you think about INR PBS if you think about P ass if you think about these all of these code Changers are code changes developers know they want to get in they've already gone through phase one um we know it's going to get in at some point but they've taken years to figure out how to put into the protocol like veral is another good example so I think the the planning phase like figuring out how to really

put it into the protocol is the longest phase um especially for large Cod changes and then probably the second longest phase if I had to put um if I had to rank them is probably the testing so once the consensus specifications have been confirmed once developers know this is how we are going to implement this code change and client teams implement it I think testing um it multi client test Nets testing it to to make sure that there are no bugs that takes um kind of the second largest chunk of time um yeah so because yeah there are there are many code changes that

developers have been saying would be going into an upgrade um for years but just haven't had the bandwidth of the resources to really uh dedicate to to figuring out how exactly it's going to go in um so I think the planning phase really is the longest and then once it's figured out and once client teams figure it out um it's the testing phase that really takes up the second largest amount of time yeah yeah makes sense so I I think I LED that we're having this conversation uh with Denon just being like uh such a important moment so nearby because denune and specifically Proto Dan sharting um are are like this very interesting piece of the road map

so let me just unpack this a little bit right the the endgame goal is to get to dank sharting which um if you're not familiar just if you think of Proto D sharting hopefully you know what blobs are by now all dting is doing is taking the amount of blobs and like drastically increasing it so we can have like 64 blobs per block the problem is is that like there's no way that let's say my computer in my fiance's closet that's an ethereum node like it's not powerful enough to do kyg commitments or do the computation on 64 blobs and so like my computer would never be able to keep up with full dank charting and so the the kind of whole construction is we do Proto Dan sharting which every computer

can keep up with then between Proto danen sharting and dank sharting we're going to have andrine PBS which we don't need to get into that but point is is that it um will has a lot of implications for other pieces of the stock but in this will allow like my computer to um process these 64 blob blocks and so all that is background the reason I bring it up is because when you're planning on the ethereum road map we've sequenced this in a way where um in order to complete the vision of dank charting we have another huge huge Tech lift that needs to happen in between and so um I this might be such a big

question that that there really isn't an answer but I was wondering if you had any insights on like how to slot together these upgrades which have dependencies on each other in a way that um like makes the sequence make sense but also like allows us to start pushing functionality to the front like long before like the entire like 10year vision of ethereum has been implemented I think your question was on basically like how developers prioritize um different upgrades and um given that there are dependencies that certain upgrades have on other upgrades um you know how do they navigate that

and another example that I would mention is um goal one of the questions that people that developers have been talking about a lot is you know maybe we shouldn't do a account abstraction maybe we shouldn't do um upgrading the evm because it might negatively impact veral down the road um maybe we shouldn't do inclusion list because it'll negatively impact account obstruction down the road like these are examples of code changes that developers have in the back of their mind and they're always considering how will this upgrade that we're thinking about right now impact that one down the road and and often times the answer to these questions is we're not sure because these other upgrades down the road we're not sure how they're going to be implemented um

and so I think what is very very important for listeners to understand about the ethereum development road map is that it is constantly changing so for the merge the initial specifications like the initial way that people thought that ethereum was going to transition to proof of stake was after sharding it was after scalability was reached reached and developers swapped that over they said no we're going to go to proof of stake first and then we're going to do scalability um very in the very initial you know years in which ethereum um launched in 2015 proof of stake was supposed to be the last upgrade and now it's you know we have you know a bajillion more upgrades to go um so I I think that in answer to you know how

developers prioritize and how developers um you know consider dependencies is that their thinking is always updating if you think that um you know data availability sampling is going to happen two or three years down the line there could be research breakthrough that brings it up and allows it to happen in Electra or on the on know very like short timeline similar to Electra and parallel to Electra which is what's happening right now with with data availability sampling um or you could think that oh you know like enshrine PBS it's so important it's going to happen in the next year and research just there's not there's insufficient research and now insr PBS is 3 to four years out or when it by the time it gets

Implement it's like 20 it's like 2030 or something um so I I think yeah so I think this is why people really need to stay up to date um and take it call by call because developers thinking changes so frequently around these things to the point where even sometimes I'm like two calls ago you said you weren't going to do it and now you're saying you're going to do it yeah no fair point and I think the answer to my uh very poorly formed question is that like it is an an incredibly important thing to think about sequencing and dependencies but you cannot ever get locked into a idea of what's going to happen because like this is very fluid and that's both in terms

of the development of the technology but also like what it means to be a decentralized community is like some Jabron is going to show up with a game-changing idea in five minutes and we're all going to pivot towards it exactly yeah Okay cool so with the last like few minutes here um I would really love to talk about one of the moments where everything changes and I'm not sure if you were in your seat uh at any of these specific moments but I'll just pull up the big one to head which is this trans sorry this transition from execution sharting to dank sharting right which is we as a community were walking down a path for a very long time like a lot of people were researching building tooling building ideas building

research and at a certain point we all realize like this is not going to work in any sort of way that we thought it did and you know from the outside at a high level we we all had to watch the community like pretty painfully swallow that we need to walk away from this path and and go down a new one and I guess my question to you is like I experienced it from the outside very far away but what are those moments like in the core development calls are those moments of like a lot of stress where people who have sacrificed so much down this route are really fighting towards the shift or do these shifts happen once everyone has spent so much for so little and have

become so exhausted that everyone agrees for a pivot like talk to me through these these moments where ethereum realizes what we're doing is not working and we need to think about something else yeah to give a little bit of context on the shift in thinking around scalability during the planning for the merge um or I guess even you know a couple years back developers had thought that the best way to scale ethereum was to basically create these mini databases where you'd have like 64 mini blockchains and they would all process ethereum's transaction and you know in parallel so that the compute is like 64 times or um

more uh efficient and there were whole new blockchain projects that were built off of this saying that you know we can achieve the sharding vision um a lot faster than ethereum can but it turned out that the complexity of such a blockchain um was just too much and it wasn't feasible at least from developers point of view to implement and so they pivoted to this this other vision for for scaling which is modularity um instead of of being a general purpose blockchain um ethereum is going to Trend towards being a more simplified Network

that um offers data availability for rabs basically the the ability for um compressed like transaction data from other protocols uh to be like settled and and finalized on ethereum so that shift I would say like happened quite gradually at least from my point of view because I wasn't part of any of the you know backdoor conversations that ethereum core developers were having but just from the perspective of um the public I think that um there were certain developers that initially I think Alexia AK kunov it comes to mind who you know were very open about their disagreements around sharding um the

reasons why sharding wouldn't work um and the the kind of support around rollups and layer twos um also kind of happened very gradually in my mind um and I think that one of the one of the parts of of this like story that people may not realize is that um I don't think many people even understand or know or fully like realized that ethereum does not plan to scale that ethereum does not plan to reduce fees um that's not their goal and yet ethereum

developers do continue to make optimizations to the execution layer of ethereum that makes it better that makes the the smart contract um development environment better on ethereum um so so I don't really think there was like a moment where you know one plan was thrown away and another was taken it was more like the voices and the thinking around sharding in the research community of ethereum um grew weaker and weaker and funding and resources for the people looking into charting what's drying up and the and at the same time the amount of interest and resources and and focus in terms of the research commun and going into modularity was was

increasing quite rapidly and I will say I think also all of the Innovation happening in Celestia in Cosmos and these other modular ecosystems also propelled the research and helped the research um on the ethereum side too so ethereum's research and and its development road map doesn't happen in a in a in a silo it definitely is impacted I think by the broader crypto ecosystem too um and I think that still that transition of ethereum wanting to scale through um data availability sampling is not only it's not fully realized on ethereum but it's also not fully understood yet I think by the entire ethereum Community yeah I mean for sure

I think that data availability just the the basic concept is understood by like you me and like six other people but um to to get to the full vision is a tall ask and I guess let me sum up with what you just said and tell me that it's fair that these moments whether we're talking about the uh strategy for execution scaling or we're talking about like the implementation for the merge was another one of these pivot Points like we've had a few it seems like especially with hindsight it looks like the community was like hit a you know was walking down a road and then decided to take a left and like that's what it looks like especially if you're reading articles

about how we used to want to do this but now we're doing this but it sounds like the real EXP erience and the felt experience is much more analogist to turning a cruise ship whereas like if you zoom out you'll see yes it was a 180 degree turn but like because it's so massive and like the the the scales are so large that any individual moment if you're on that cruise ship you won't experience a turn you'll just feel like you're going straight and it sounds like that's what one of these like major pivot Points in the history of ethereum feels like is not that there is a point where someone had to win and someone had to lose but more the weight of the research and the weight of the community

is like gradually pushing everyone where we need to go yeah yeah I I would say more you know the the impetus is the research shifting like the person in that analogy the person who changes the course um I would say primarily are the researchers like the people that are diving into the nitty grees of like what it takes to do sharding and what takes to um you know do the merge in a certain way rather than the other one and they set the course and there's like a trickle down effect because the information is so dense it takes a little bit of time to translate it takes a little bit of time to reach everyone and then like the ship slowly starts to like move over to that direction um so

yeah I agree that it's not like a a one-time thing I think the the the beginning or like the start of those shifts generally does is instigated by by the thinking of researchers um which is also why I think it's important outside of the ACD calls for people who are interested in in any of this um to really keep their eye out for the eth research posts um because many ideas on the eth research side um do eventually uh make it on to the all core developer calls yeah and it's it's hard to tell like in the moment when you see a new eth researcher one but like if anyone has any doubts of what Christina saying like go pick your favorite part about ethereum and then go find the original

eth research post that spawned it because it's there and just like going back and reading vitalik's white paper on ethereum and you realize like oh my God he's talking about the thing that just raised today aund million do to build that Vision like that's what all of these eth research posts are like and it's it's just very incredible to be in a space where like they literally tell you on YouTube and on Zoom like how the world is going to change and all you need to be doing is paying attention yeah that's true it it is quite incredible the open source and transparent nature of all the development work that happens on ethereum Christine uh I am going to cut us off here just for uh for your schedule and everyone's attention so um

thank you so much I really appreciate your time and just your stewardship of ethereum but like really taking the time to like help us on the outside really understand like how any of this actually works so thank you of course my pleasure it was a pleasure chatting with you Rex of course yeah and Before I Let You Go um for anyone in the audience who wants to find you um wants to find Galaxy and also find uh ethereum core devs like what's the best place to start and then if they're interested in getting involved in the process like do you have any advice any tips like how do you get involved in ethereum in core ethereum um well depends on your skill set um I will say uh if you are technically minded um have thoughts or

ideas or suggestions around how to make the ethereum protocol better be sure to share your ideas on eth research and eth magicians get some um traction there if you are more of a non-technical person like me um just trying to trying to figure out um how best to to you know I don't know like figure other things Parts out of about the ethereum community that doesn't always have to be technical um I would say probably the best thing to do is take a look at what the ethereum cat herters projects are doing um and also what um what some of the needs are by um also listening in on

the calls sometimes there will be just shoutouts for you know people that could take meeting notes for other types of calls other than the ACD calls I only have so much time in bandwidth so you know when there's a call happening on a c abstraction or call happening on inclusion lists I can't necessarily summarize them so if you are staying up to date on what's going on in the ethereum community um I would say even if you know you don't have someone over your shoulder being like we will give you money to do this um to go ahead jump right in and share what you're doing on Twitter Twitter is probably the best place I know farcaster is up and coming but start sharing your content with people there um to take a look at the content that I'm putting out and that

are our team at Galaxy is putting out um you can find all of that Conta on galaxy.com um and then if any if any of the listeners want to reach out to me um my DMs are open on Twitter my handle is Christine dkim great thank you so much and um again I just want to say one more time uh just how grateful I am and how excited I am by this conversation and um of course by ethereum So Christine thank you and have a great rest of your day thank you Rex