Overview of the 11th AMA of the Ethereum Foundation重要内容

Original compilation by: Wu Shuo

On January 8, the Ethereum Foundation research team held the 11th AMA on the Reddit forum, where community members could leave questions in the post, and the research team members would provide answers. Wu Shuo summarized the relevant questions/technical points discussed in this AMA as follows:

1. EIP-4844 might allow L2s to reach about 440 TPS. What alternative technical solutions are available to achieve the scalability target of around 2000 TPS, like VISA, besides the distant danksharding?

EIP-4844 indeed only provides the first step for data publication (formerly known as data availability). In fact, by itself, it only economically separates data publication rather than scaling it—however, it does introduce the necessary cryptographic techniques to allow for full scaling. Currently, we do have some exciting research that can achieve a certain scale of expansion soon, such as PeerDAS, a solution that utilizes mainnet P2P components to implement a simpler and even more efficient DAS scheme. PeerDAS might be able to scale to 32 blobs per block, which is ten times the current amount, falling between 4844 and full danksharding. Expanding Ethereum's data capacity is absolutely our most important task in 2024 & 2025.

Vitalik also briefly listed two points:

• Plasma

• Better data compression methods

Some developers also mentioned that it could be achieved by "reducing the data consumption of transactions," such as contract redesign, state differentials, and batch compression.

2. How will Ethereum address the issues of liquidity fragmentation and composability on L2?

By implementing two elements, general synchronous composability can be regained:

• Shared sequencing: Shared sequencing means that, in any given slot, multiple rollups choose to share the same sequencer. In other words, at any given time, there exists a well-defined entity that has monopoly power to sort transactions across Rollups simultaneously. Corresponding projects include Espresso, based rollup, Taiko, etc.

• Real-time proving: Real-time proving means that transactions can be proven in real-time (using SNARK) to be valid. Real-time verification unlocks real-time settlement, instant processing of cumulative deposits and withdrawals, and even multiple processing within a single slot.

In this regard, Vitalik personally expressed his fondness for the design of UniswapX: we need to achieve cross-L2 transfers through permissionless open protocols rather than using proprietary "bridges" with our own tokens and on-chain governance.

3. What is the most underrated application or use case that you hope to see more investment and development in?

Zero-fee weekly lotteries, user-friendly wallets with privacy enhancements (AA wallets, optional signature algorithms and methods, privacy addresses, etc.).

4. Is there a plan to implement parallel execution similar to Monad on Ethereum's EVM? If not, what are the drawbacks of parallelizing the EVM?

Existing L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism may have already committed to accelerating EVM execution for some time and have previously persuaded Monad as Ethereum's Rollup.

5. How much can we safely raise the Gas limit now? What about after Verkle?

The Gas Limit has not increased for nearly three years, and it is reasonable to moderately raise the Gas limit now. The Gas Limit can be increased to about 40 million. The current Gas limit is 30 million. (Vitalik)

Verkle allows for "stateless validators," meaning validators can request Builders to generate a block and validate it as a self-contained unit in RAM without using a DB. Therefore, from this perspective, as long as "Solana-style" block producers can access data in a timely manner, or they can obtain data quickly enough from the portal network, increasing the Gas Limit should not be an issue.

However, this means that blocks will become larger, so bandwidth must be considered when increasing the Gas Limit.

6. What is the security budget needed for Ethereum? How is this number derived?

Security budget: The income earned by consensus participants (stakers or miners) over a period, typically a year.

Economic security: The asset value that consensus participants invest to protect the blockchain, incentivized by the security budget.

I believe the security budget should be large enough so that a quarter of ETH is staked. This is because it is a power of 2, avoiding disputes. Ethereum's philosophy is to adopt "minimum viable issuance" to achieve this goal.

To avoid paying excessively for economic security, a potential upgrade to a staking cap may be adopted, which would reduce issuance as total staking approaches the cap.

7. How do you view the re-staking risks of EigenLayer?

The risk to Ethereum is a large-scale EigenLayer slashing event, but if the slashing is legitimate, then the Ethereum protocol will self-repair: as the staked value decreases, increased rewards will attract new staking validators. For illegitimate slashing, such as smart contract risks, EigenLayer plans to set up protective measures (which may vary depending on your preference/dislike for more trusted methods, such as committees).

8. What would be the impact if most L2s no longer choose Ethereum as DA?

In my view, data-sharing security has strong network effects. If rollups stop using Ethereum as DA, it would indicate that Ethereum has lost to some competitors in the settlement game. Ethereum would lose fee revenue, the currency premium would decrease, and economic security and economic bandwidth would shrink. I predict it would slowly but surely die.

9. What is the structure of the Ethereum Foundation's research team? Is there a team responsible for specific risks (such as re-staking or liquidity staking centralization issues)? How many researchers are there?

There are many teams, and the research topics are very diverse. Many teams may be interested in the same topic, so you will see discussions about LST or re-staking from many teams. Therefore, it is more about what the default scope is and what each team's approach is. We have a total of 35 people.

10. What intersections exist between AI and blockchain?

Cryptocurrencies can serve as AI currency.

Security: AI will be much better than humans at identifying vulnerabilities.

Conversely, blockchain as infrastructure guarantees the security and cooperation of AI through trusted commitments, as well as bringing AI on-chain (such as MEV).

11. If Ethereum continues on its current path, do you think other blockchains will still be needed in 20 years?

Rollups are other blockchains, but generally, I still believe other chains will be needed because I believe in heterogeneity. Ethereum is a model but not the only model; there are many other ways to build a blockchain that makes sense for various use cases, and I hope their design choices are also validated.

12. Is it possible that privacy will take a backseat to other more pressing issues, such as scalability, in the future?

I expect solutions like Railway will eventually be available on existing L2s. At this point, it has not yet been enshrined or even standardized, as we have not even determined the main direction, with over a dozen methods, including (i) which ZK-SNARK scheme to use, (ii) how to create privacy pools, (iii) what type of UTXO system to build, (iv) trade-offs between complexity and functionality. (Vitalik)

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