Dialogue with Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko: What is the latest progress of Ethereum? What will Ethereum look like a year from now?

Written by: Matthew Leising, Co-founder of DeCential
Edited by: Nan Feng / Source: Unitimes

Tim Beiko has always been a builder, whether it was starting a T-shirt business in high school or organizing other Ethereum core developers during the largest reform since Ethereum's launch in 2015 (the transition to PoS). Tim obtained a business degree from a university in Quebec, Canada, and was introduced to Bitcoin while running a house painting company after his T-shirt business failed. He then witnessed the explosion of The DAO incident in 2016, just as he was entering Ethereum.

However, he noticed that during the 2017 ICO (Initial Coin Offering) craze, people really wanted to use Ethereum—despite it not being very user-friendly and transaction costs potentially skyrocketing—and decided to help make Ethereum's underlying infrastructure as sound as possible.

In this interview, Beiko elaborates on the latest progress regarding the current (PoW) version of Ethereum's transition to the new version (PoS), a process referred to as "the Merge." The current version of Ethereum is called ETH 1.0 and is secured by a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, the same as that used by the Bitcoin blockchain; the new version of Ethereum is called ETH 2.0 and will switch to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system that relies on users (validators) staking ETH to secure and manage the blockchain. The base layer of Ethereum is referred to as L1 (Layer 1), and the current Ethereum L1 layer is slow and expensive but very secure.

To alleviate this issue, the Ethereum community has developed what are known as L2 (Layer 2) protocols, which are faster and cheaper than L1 while maintaining the same security as Ethereum L1.

The following is a transcript of DeCential co-founder Matthew Leising's recent interview with Tim Beiko. Here are the main points from the interview:

Matt Leising: First of all, I think many people want to know the latest progress on what you are working on, as you are responsible for coordinating the developers in the Ethereum community dedicated to ETH 2.0 work. That in itself is a daunting task; can you share the latest updates?

Tim Beiko: Sure. At the beginning of October this year, we completed the specifications for Ethereum's transition to PoS, so we gathered everyone from the ETH 1.0 and ETH 2.0 teams together and spent a week completing the prototype for this transition. We started from PoW and transitioned to PoS. This gave us good confidence that the overall specifications are feasible and the overall approach is reasonable. But obviously, during this time, we discovered all these small edge cases and made adjustments to make it production-ready.

What we are doing in November is trying to build these short-term testnets. This way, we can check if everything is working properly and then dismantle them. We hope that before the (Christmas) holidays, we can have a longer-lasting testnet so that application tools, infrastructure, and other things can use it and see how it works.

One thing happening in parallel is that we have started reaching out to the (Ethereum) community, trying to explain what the changes to PoS mean for them, trying to help people understand the implications and aspects related to applications, ensuring that when the relevant code is ready, we won't catch anyone off guard.

Matt Leising: Okay. The ongoing transition from ETH 1.0 to ETH 2.0 is referred to as "the Merge." Do you know when the Merge will happen?

Tim Beiko: Definitely next year. In fact, if we have a testnet by the end of this year, there may be some small adjustments we want to make, and I expect we can complete the code around February next year.

If we finish the code by February next year, what you can expect is that the Merge could happen a few months later. It might be in April or May next year. It’s still hard to give a specific date because if we find a major bug or something that takes us three weeks to fix, then obviously that will delay things by three weeks.

Matt Leising: To me, the Merge is the biggest change for Ethereum since its launch in 2015. Do you agree?

Tim Beiko: Yes, I completely agree. You can follow the work of Ethereum core developers through this link:
https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/acd/https%3A%2F%2Ftim.mirror.xyz%2FsR23jU02we6zXRgsF_oTUkttL83S3vyn05vJWnnp-Lc

Matt Leising: Right now, the ETH 1.0 chain is running every minute of every day, and you are trying to switch it to another chain.

Tim Beiko: I think that's very interesting. The Ethereum network is not only running in real-time, but it also has hundreds of billions of dollars in asset value, or potentially trillions if you count all the tokens built on Ethereum. At the same time, there is a very large set of validators. The number of these validators is one or two orders of magnitude larger than other PoS systems. So since the (PoS beacon chain) system is already live, and we want to get as many people involved as possible, things are not simple, and the need to coordinate among more people obviously slows things down.

Matt Leising: Stepping back, how did you become responsible for coordinating this massive change in Ethereum? You grew up in Canada; can you tell us about your upbringing and what your childhood was like?

Tim Beiko: Sure. I grew up in Canada; I'm from Montreal, but I recently moved to the West Coast of the United States. I've always been doing new things. I started a T-shirt business when I was a teenager, and then I ran a house painting company for a few years. Then I realized that this physical service of painting houses couldn't scale very much. You might be able to manage 10 to 20 painters yourself, but if you need to hire a manager, you can't scale it up significantly. At some point, I became interested in technology, partly because of this.

Punk Rock T-shirt Boy

Matt Leising: What did your T-shirts say? What kind of T-shirts were they?

Tim Beiko: I was a huge fan of punk rock, so it was a T-shirt brand—we would sponsor bands and stuff like that.

Matt Leising: Can you name a few bands?

Tim Beiko: They were all small local bands. I don't think any of them are still around today.

Matt Leising: So you didn't sell Iron Maiden T-shirts?

Tim Beiko: No, unfortunately, I didn't get that big.

Matt Leising: What did your parents do while you were growing up?

Tim Beiko: My mom is a doctor, a general practitioner. My dad used to be, and still is, an engineer; he used to work for a fiber optics sales company. He didn't like it very much; he always liked building houses, so he quit and now he builds houses.

Matt Leising: So you realized that inventory-based businesses don't scale very well. It's indeed difficult. Did you also enjoy playing with computers as a child? Video games?

Tim Beiko: I loved online games. I was in the top 100 of this game called AdventureQuest or BattleOn. I also had a high rank in Neopets. When I was a kid, I would wake up at 5 AM to play computer games. I would also find ways to hack into them. I remember when Animal Crossing came out on GameCube, you could change the date on the GameCube to speed things up. So I would plant some crops, then close the game, go into settings, move the date forward a week, and then I could harvest the crops.

Matt Leising: That's interesting. Were you attracted to anything in school? Were you a good student?

Tim Beiko: I was okay. I managed to scrape by. I wasn't particularly attracted to anything special. I liked doing business and projects.

Matt Leising: At what age did you start your T-shirt business?

Tim Beiko: Around 15 or 16.

Matt Leising: A few years later, you started getting into house painting?

Tim Beiko: Yes, I was 17 at the time because I remember 18 is the legal age in Quebec, and many things can be complicated if you're under 18.

Matt Leising: Were you planning to go to college at that time? Or what were your plans?

Tim Beiko: Yes, Quebec is strange; basically, high school is one year shorter than in other parts of Canada and the U.S., and college is also one year shorter. You have two years in an independent school, which is great if you want to become a nurse or get vocational training. But for those who want to go to university, it’s a strange transitional phase where it feels like university, but you’re actually in high school, and it’s not as strict as university. At that time, there was a massive student strike in Quebec, and our school was closed for 6 to 9 months. I basically dropped out of offline school and registered online to finish my studies. But it was cool because there were no super high requirements, and it was much better to complete assignments online.

Matt Leising: Did you have a moderate education in computer science?

Tim Beiko: I initially didn't study computer science. It wasn't until much later that I chose to pursue it. So I completed those two years and then went to business school at university, where a friend and I decided we wanted to start a tech company. I taught myself programming, and she taught herself design. So we did that for about a year. The company failed; it didn't succeed, but I learned enough programming to know how little I knew. So after the company went under, I decided to go back to studying computer science instead of business.

From Iraqi Dinar to Bitcoin

Matt Leising: Had you encountered cryptocurrency before, or did you learn about it through this course?

Tim Beiko: I was actually introduced to cryptocurrency by a painter who worked for me before. It was his summer job, and he was always keen on some strange schemes. The U.S. had obviously invaded Iraq (in 2003), and the Iraqi currency was under monetary sanctions. So he would buy Iraqi Dinar in bulk on E-bay and hide them under his mattress. He would buy and save them, hoping that one day when the U.S. left Iraq, they would appreciate in value. He always had these strange plans, and another thing that felt equally strange at the time was Bitcoin.

So he was the one who told me about Bitcoin. When he told me, I bought one Bitcoin, which should have been in 2014, worth about $1,000. I just bought Bitcoin and then forgot about it.

I kept in touch with that person for two years; he would bring up cryptocurrency, but when I talked to him, I wouldn't think about cryptocurrency. He mentioned Ethereum to me quite early on; I don't know if it was before or after Ethereum launched.

I wasn't paying much attention to Ethereum at the time; it felt too complicated to me. Then when I heard about Ethereum again, it was during The DAO project, when The DAO was in its fundraising period and the attack hadn't happened yet. I bought ETH before The DAO was attacked because I wanted to contribute to The DAO.

For a long time after the attack on The DAO, it felt like the project had failed. To some extent, I had to realize that my ETH was worth so little that it wasn't even worth selling.

Matt Leising: So you weren't a "diamond hand," but rather thought it was too much trouble.

Tim Beiko: Yes. So I still kept a loose eye on Ethereum, but it wasn't until around the end of 2017 that I started seeing some projects based on Ethereum. The projects I remember include Golem and Melonport, along with a few others. Now there are projects using Ethereum, and since then, I started paying close attention to it again.

Matt Leising: The price obviously also hit new highs, right?

Tim Beiko: That was before that. I bought it at around $20, and then it went back up to around $20 in March 2017; I remember thinking that I finally hadn't lost money.

At that time, I was studying CS (computer science), focusing on artificial intelligence, and I still thought AI was a safer career path than cryptocurrency. At that moment, people still felt that Ethereum might just disappear. Right? It seemed like there was no guarantee that this thing would stick around.

Matt Leising: I completely agree. And it hit an all-time high of $1,400 in 2018, but then there was a huge crash. For a long time after that, it dropped to around $100.

Tim Beiko: In fact, I was more involved at that time. In the summer of 2017, there were a lot of ICOs, and I thought that even though most ICOs wouldn't work and a large portion of them were scams, it indicated a huge demand for Ethereum. Right?

Using Ethereum at that time was a terrible experience. When there were these ICOs, the transaction pool would be congested for days. Gas prices skyrocketed, and people thought it was terrible because the fees were too high and completely unpredictable. That was when I realized that I really wanted to work on the Ethereum protocol itself.

Matt Leising: So you wanted to work for the Ethereum system to ensure its infrastructure was robust.

Tim Beiko: Exactly. Then I also realized that I wasn't technically good enough to write code. At that time, I was at best a junior programmer. So in the following year, I was interested in spending more time contributing to it.

"I feel good about Ethereum now"

Tim Beiko: Eventually, ConsenSys was looking for a product manager for their protocol team. So it felt like a good fit for me. I enjoy being a product manager responsible for very technical things, but I don't enjoy being an engineer or researcher myself.

Matt Leising: So, considering your profile over the years, from your time at ConsenSys in 2018 and 2019 to now, how do you compare the evolution and innovation of Ethereum technology from a few years ago to now?

Tim Beiko: I'll start with the protocol layer and then the applications. In terms of the protocol layer, I think the frenzy of 2017 surprised everyone. We spent a lot of time in 2018 and 2019 fixing things, making sure everything was running smoothly, and making clients more reliable. It wasn't until the end of 2019 and into 2020 that we started considering big new features.

Especially regarding ETH 1.0, there was this idea that "oh, ETH 2.0 will solve all our problems, and we don't need to do these radical things." I remember discussing this during the Devcon conference (held in November 2018 in Prague), and we realized that even if ETH 2.0 came and delivered everything, it would still take years, so we might need to do some quite significant things to maintain Ethereum's sustainability.

Many of the things we planned to do back then are still ongoing today. EIP-1559 is one of the things we completed. Another big thing is statelessness. The fact that Ethereum's state is growing infinitely makes it harder for nodes to run. The third thing is dealing with historical data. The fact that current Ethereum nodes must forever store all data obviously puts a lot of pressure on the network, considering that this data won't change anymore, and there are better ways to handle it.

Matt Leising: What is your biggest concern about Ethereum right now?

Tim Beiko: I feel good about Ethereum now. Similarly, my perspective is focused on the Ethereum protocol layer. The big problem we face is how to transition to PoS. I'm confident about that. In terms of dealing with state growth, I think we are on the right track. While it's not something that will happen tomorrow, many smart people are working on it.

If there's something that needs to be accelerated, I think it should be around better tools and migration for L2. I think the current fees on the Ethereum network are high, but for people like me, that's not part of our work because it's not an issue with the protocol itself; it's a matter of network supply and demand. But I really want to ensure that we do everything we can to push as much as possible onto the L2 networks and provide a smooth experience for people using L2s.

Matt Leising: Have you heard about ConstitutionDAO recently?

Tim Beiko: Yes, I have heard about it.

Matt Leising: I was actually considering joining; I was going to give them $20 worth of ETH, but the gas fees were as high as $85, so I had to give up.

Tim Beiko: Yes, I've actually done a few transfers where the gas cost was higher than the actual amount being transferred. It really is terrible.

Matt Leising: Don't you feel concerned about that? Do you think L2s and ETH 2.0 will greatly alleviate this situation?

Tim Beiko: Yes. I mean, L2s are already running. Last weekend, I used Optimism and Arbitrum, and transferring on both networks only cost a few dollars. Importantly, on the Ethereum protocol layer, we are continuing to work towards sharding. I'm not too worried about the feasibility of this technology; I'm more concerned about its deployment and adoption and ensuring that people use it in a more appropriate way. For example, if someone wants to use Ethereum L1, they can freely do so, but we should make it clear that if the amount you're sending isn't as high as $100,000, then you should use L2. We should make it easy for applications to deploy on all L2 networks and ensure they are first-class citizens.

Matt Leising: That's great. How do you expect Ethereum to be a year from now?

Tim Beiko: If we transition to PoS by then, I would be very excited. If the transaction volume on L2 is higher than on Ethereum L1, ideally by 10 times or even 100 times, or not necessarily just in terms of value transfer but also in usage, because I think Ethereum L1 will still be the primary place for large value transfers. If by the end of 2022, most transaction volume is happening on L2 and we have transitioned to PoS, I would be very happy.

Matt Leising: Alright, Tim, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for taking the time to share your background story with us.

Tim Beiko: Thank you for having me.