Ethereum Community Series

Thanks for submitting your questions! Here’s the conversation with Aftab Hossain.

https://youtu.be/dX6VJZ5njmI

Hey all,
Thank you for your questions. Danny Ryan was kind enough to go through them. We probably answered all questions, even though not all of them were asked explicitly.

Also, note that we changed microphones after about 6 minutes – the audio quality gets much better.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XT2k8RjyoHq4IWRL1Uy15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikSK8V9yapQ

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It’s my pleasure and honor to continue the Ethereum Community Series. About a year ago, the idea of talking to community members morphed into a YouTube/podcast series including jtnichol, Ameen from Spankchain, Paul Brody and Vitalik, among other wonderful guests. After taking a small break, I’ll continue the series with Andrew Keys.

Please check Andrew’s post, 20 Blockchain Predictions for 2020. Andrew is on Twitter, and here’s his bio from Darma:

As Managing Partner at DARMA Capital, Andrew manages global business development and product strategy. Prior to DARMA Capital, Andrew was Head of Global Business Development and created much of the financial service offerings at ConsenSys, the world’s leading software company producing Ethereum blockchain solutions. Andrew remains on the Board of Advisors to ConsenSys.

During his tenure at ConsenSys, Andrew demonstrated the importance of blockchain tech in digitizing the global economy to central banks and Fortune 500 companies. In doing so, Andrew co-created the first Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service offering with Microsoft and launched the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), an open-source cross-industry initiative that has grown into the largest open-source blockchain business consortium on Earth.

Andrew comes to DARMA Capital with a wealth of capital markets, technology, and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, Andrew worked for UBS in equities analysis. Later, he was responsible for the creation and distribution of alternative asset insurance products to hedge funds. After, he co-founded a healthcare revenue cycle management company, where he learned the inefficiencies of legacy databases and payment processing systems. This realization led Andrew to blockchain, Ethereum, ConsenSys, and then to DARMA Capital.

Andrew graduated from Loyola University in Maryland and the University of Auckland with degrees in economics and international finance.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/03SoTUVuUoVaIrVkpt7Se1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqYh5nshxcE

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About a month ago, Naviers_Stoked posted the insightful “This Seat is Occupied” essay. Brad and I sit down to have a chat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmrdjmjIRXs

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Here is the Prologue to “Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire,” read by the author, Dan Conway (right-click here to download, or stream below):

Please check my talk with Dan, where we dive into his book.

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Now available for sale, “Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire,” depicts Dan Conway’s story through the biggest retail-driven bull run in crypto to date.

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America, now available on Amazon.com (US) & Amazon.de (EU)

Some of my favorite quotes On ETH not making a whole lot of sense

The only thing that wasn’t making sense was the price of ETH. The fundamentals of Ethereum couldn’t be better.

Transactions were rising daily, hundreds of dApps were now in development, the hashpower (processing power) of the Ethereum blockchain had grown by leaps and bounds over the previous three months and the developers conference had sold out in just a few days. The DAO disaster had happened six months prior, which is a lifetime in crypto, where everything moves at warp speed, because every player is animated by money.While the Ethereum platform was gaining strength, the price of ETH continued its slow-motion drop. This began after the DAO hack when a splinter group formed a copycat coin. By November 28, ETH had fallen to $8.81, putting us down 50 percent. We’d only realize that loss if we sold.
We had no plans to do so, but we didn’t have an unlimited runway.

Dan Conway, Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire

On subreddit culture

We developed our own euphoric subculture. J.T. Nichol, an early Ethereum believer and elementary school teacher from Kansas popularized the “Donut Day” meme by posting pictures of donuts being served at his school. Subsequently, every thirteen-dollar rise was deemed Donut Day. When newcomers to the thread asked how high we thought ETH would go, we’d all respond, Bout Tree Fiddy. We talked about buying Lambos, but most of us were kidding. We’d comment, This is gentlemen when the price suddenly shot up. I don’t know why. College kids were skipping class to watch the charts. We’d cheer them on and then remind them to get back to their schoolwork. A trader called Science Guy made screwball price predictions. After he returned from a brief trip, someone wrote, Welcome back, you filthy animal.
Your technical analysis is shit, but it wouldn’t be r/EthTrader without you.

Dan Conway, Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire

This talk is hosted on:
The Podcast – RSS https://ethcs.org/feed/podcast/
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ma9_sYxs5I
Direct as an MP3 – http://ethcs.org/files/danconway.mp3

See also: the Prologue, read by Dan himself, at https://www.ethcs.org/confessions-of-a-crypto-millionaire-prologue-by-dan-conway.

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America

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I tried to ask everybody’s questions but for the sake of not getting too repetitive, some of them are answered in the conversation even though they weren’t explicitly asked by me. Also, check out their miner, because it’s easier to mine your own ETH for testing purposes.

This is a fast-paced conversation packed with insights, so let’s get started!

“I think in many ways we had better questions and more insightful comments from the [Ethereum] community on Reddit than we sometimes get from professional journalists. The community has some technical knowledge that most professional journalists don’t have, and honestly, they seemed to have put the dots together about our vision – the comments I’ve read online have often been much more thoughtful and much closer to [the vision that we have] than sometimes the analyses we read in the press.“

Paul Brody

Some questions on Paul..

u/reterical asks two introductionairy questions. (timestamp)
1. “What first resonated with you about Ethereum and / or Blockchain?”
2. “Have you personally interacted with Ethereum projects?”

Some questions on EY building on Ethereum..

u/reterical asks “Why did you and EY land on Ethereum as the project to build on?” (timestamp)
u/ethical-trade asks “How did you manage to convince your management to release Nightfall in the public domain?” (timestamp)
u/lilpath asks “In convincing your clients to use a public blockchain, what has been the most common and effective ‘aha’ moment that your team has given them?” Also, and I’m paraphrasing, “if blockchain is to revolutionize accounting (among other sectors), does EY see their dedicated jump into blockchain as a way to potentially leapfrog the rest of the Big 4, in terms of revenue at least?” (timestamp)
u/KingLeo23 and u/SteveAM1 ask about the EY Dye Pack. From your LinkedIn: “EY Dye Pack uses ZKP software to identify stolen tokens, prevent their usage, and issue replacement tokens to the victims of thefts, analogous to those exploding dye packs we all see in movies about bank robberies.” How does this work? Any technical paper to be pointed to? (timestamp)
u/runnlngoutofspaces says “The Github page reads ‘Note that this code has not yet completed a security review and therefore we strongly recommend that you do not use it in production or to transfer items of material value. We take no responsibility for any loss you may incur through the use of this code.”” When could we expect that Nightfall has undergone a 3rd party security audit and is safe to use in a production environment?(timestamp) (I’m sorry to have butchered your question!)
u/DboVilakati asks “Given EY’s interest in developing on the public Ethereum network, how does EY hedge against stalled development (like scaling), regulatory risk, and ‘competing’ networks? I’m curious how a large organization such as EY plans for developing business lines in the future on the back of as of yet un-actualized technology.” u/sleepyninja asks a similar question. (timestamp)
u/fatfire_throwaway97 asks “How many partnerships/clients does E&Y have that develop on the Ethereum blockchain ? How much growth does this number have?” (timestamp)
u/ethical-trade asks “What proportion of EY’s clients is willing to start using blockchain because it’s actually useful to them, as opposed to using for marketing or for purposes for which a standard database would have done the job?” (timestamp)
u/mountainminer asks “What are some real world examples of intercompany contracts, accounts payable, inventory and other supply chain problems that ethereum could pay a critical role in solving?*” (timestamp)
u/EthFan asks “What type of products and services will E&Y be rolling out using Nightfall in Q1 2020?” (timestamp)
u/sebit asks two questions. “Which industry can profit the most by integrating parts of their business model on the ethereum blockchain in terms of increasing their efficiency or enabling new ways to deliver value? And to follow up, where do you think we should make a cut on what should be put on a blockchain and what shouldn’t?” (timestamp)
u/rxg says “You’ve said before that you believe that fiat currency tokens will be the way that enterprises will want to do transactions.” He asks “Could you expand on that? By fiat currency tokens do you mean strictly crypto tokens pegged to the dollar and backed by the dollar by a custodian like USDT? Do you think trustless stablecoins pegged to the dollar which are backed by crypto, like DAI, will be viewed by enterprises as something different or unacceptable in some way?” (timestamp)
u/labrav asks “What do you think would it take for a onchain-based stablecoin like dai to be integrated in enterprise-level blockchain-transactions as a means of payment? Do you think that will ever happen?” (timestamp)
u/MammothGroomer86 asks “Nightfall supports ERC-721 non-fungible tokens, will the Nightfall software adopt interoperability features, as well? What are your thoughts on it in terms of cross-industry adoption of blockchain?” (timestamp) (Paul mentioned the 0xcert fork and this article.)
u/ro-_-b asks “What kind of job profiles does he expect to emerge at EY based on EY’s engagement in the field? What roles will EY hire for to support the implementation for their clients?” (timestamp)

Some questions on Ethereum as a network..

u/ethical-trade ask “Will the work done on Nightfall become unusable on the new blockchain (Eth 2.0)? If only partially, to what extent?” u/ChazSchmidt asked “How does EY plan to handle the transition of its clients from ETH 1.0 to 2.0?” (timestamp)
u/lawfultots asks “What’s your take or your team’s take on Ethereum 2.0 development and deployment? Is it essential for your work long term or could you live on a fork of Ethereum 1.0?” (timestamp)
u/dbovilakati asks “Is EY contributing to public Ethereum network protocol development and scaling solutions? If so, how? Does EY do so for any other public blockchain networks?” (timestamp)
u/pocketwailord asks “Where do you see EY’s role with Ethereum once things like DeFi, sharding, and other emerging technologies take off? Will they work mostly with business level improvements, or protocol improvements as a whole?” (timestamp)

Some general questions..

u/whuttheeperson asks three questions. (timestamp)
1. “How aware are you and the EY team of communities like r/ethtrader and the overlap of interests between the community and EY? What do you think about it?”
2. “How cautious are you and the team regarding behaviour that could be construed as ‘pumping’ or ‘shilling’ if you mention Ethereum?” (We had to skip this one so I’ll repost in the comments.)
3. “Is there an internal EY policy on owning Ethereum or other cryptos due to COI concerns? Do you get the sense a lot of the team owns some crypto? Do you?”
u/bitchstolemykodo says “My question has to do with zero-knowledge proofs. I think maybe you were kidding in one of the videos where you made a comment referencing how difficult it is to understand exactly what is going on behind-the-scenes with these proofs, but I can tell you, I’m going over the material that is out there and I’m really struggling to understand it all.” He asks “How important do you feel it is that users of a technology like this are able to understand how it works? One of the descriptions I hear given for why we like blockchain is because it’s trustless. Is it important that the cryptography behind blockchain be trustless too? Can it be trustless if so few people understand how it works?” (timestamp)

Some closing questions..

u/reterical asks “If you could be any Blockchain, which one would you be? Why?” (timestamp)
I asked “Did I forget anything? Is there something you wished I would’ve asked you about?” (timestamp)
I asked “Where can people find you and learn more about you?” (timestamp)

The talks are hosted on:
The Podcast – RSS https://ethcs.org/feed/podcast/
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R15fh8PfiVk
Direct as an MP3 – http://ethcs.org/files/paulbrody.mp3

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Camila Russo on the history of Ethereum, financial news reporting in Argentina and the excitement around #DeFi.

About Camila

I’m a financial journalist with experience across continents and asset classes. My focus has been on the crazier/more volatile corners of the market.

I recently left Bloomberg News to become an independent writer. First up is finishing my book on the foundation of the second-biggest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and the crypto bubble it helped create, to be published by Harper Collins by the end of the year.

During my eight years at Bloomberg I covered the Argentine market (bonds, stocks, FX) for 4+ years based in Buenos Aires; wrote about European stocks with a focus on Southern Europe in Madrid; analysed macro emerging markets moves for the Markets Live blog in New York; was one of the most prolific and dedicated cryptocurrency reporters. Previous to Bloomberg I wrote international news for Chile’s largest national newspaper, El Mercurio.

I’ve moderated and spoken at some of the most influential cryptocurrency conferences, done multiple TV and radio appearances, and was awarded first place for online journalism by Brazil’s exchange operator BM&F Bovespa earlier in my career. — I even made an appearance in a crypto song 🙂

Sign up for her daily DeFi newsletter at https://thedefiant.substack.com/ and give her a follow on Twitter, @camirusso. Her website is camirusso.com.

Check the original thread on Reddit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt77qm856Jk

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Hi,
Welcome to conversation four in the Ethereum Community Series, today with u/chazschmidt. Chaz is a core contributor of EthHub, content writer @ settlefinance… and he’s working on a secret new project. He’s also a research analyst at readysetcrypto. You can find him on Twitter, at @chazschmidt.

If you’re new to this, please check out earlier conversations with jtnichol, Ameen Soleimani and Vitalik Buterin. Thanks to the people who posted and upvoted today’s questions.

Link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6obZPCeHabs&list=PLTzbA2lLaEj3O0PiYVP9p-YS3PoF_Le8L&index=4
Link to MP3: https://ethcs.org/files/chazschmidt.mp3

Intro * Can you share a little bit about the place where you’re sitting right now? * Who are you and what are your interests? What is your background? * What, if anything, did you study? * Who do you look up to, and if it’s nobody in particular, where do you go for advice?

Questions * What is your favorite dapp on Ethereum that you think isn’t getting enough attention? (timestamp) u/sassalAnthony Sassano * What’s your go to when somebody asks you to explain “crypto” to them? (timestamp) u/CommunistAndy * Is there anything you can tell us about your secret new project? (timestamp) u/TulsiBlabbard[+1] * How did you end up working for / contributing to EthHub? (timestamp) u/krokodilmannchen * How could r/ethtrader and EthHub work together to encourage a stronger, more knowledgeable Ethereum community, particularly for newcomers? (timestamp) u/carlslarson * 2020 EOY price predictions? (timestamp) u/mikey4eth * What do you think about EthHub running a Community Call to balance out Core Dev Calls for getting sentiments? (timestamp) u/hodldwon * What’s an Ethereum-maximalist in your humble opinion and do you believe it is a good or bad thing for community cohesion? (timestamp) u/hodldwon * Why are you in the space (not how you got in, but why?). Where do you see us in 3-4 years time (mostly with regards to tech, like zk-zk-rollups, Eth2.0, dApps you think we need or think we’ll invent)? (timestamp) u/hodldwon * What is the day-to-day work as a research analyst of crypto protocols / Dapps? (timestamp) u/ruvalm * How do you envision Ethereum becoming a prevalent protocol in mainstream Internet users’ life in 5-10 years? u/ruvalm * What is your personal favourite potential use case for Ethereum?…Not necessarily the one that’s going to have most widescale adoption but the one that you personally would like to see come to fruition. (timestamp) u/shammyfeencontentment * What do you think about the current issuance rate. Should it be reduced again? (timestamp) u/-molite * What do you think blockchain will enable that no one is thinking about? (timestamp) u/reterical * What are, in your opinion, some points in which EthHub can still improve — be it in terms of reach, new features or media formats? (timestamp) u/ruvalm * If you ever came to the Pit in KC for a bite, what would you want? (timestamp) u/jtnichol * What first attracted you to Ethereum? (timestamp) u/reterical * What are your opinions on both DETH and bitcoin sv and the circumstances surrounding them now? (timestamp) u/toxic_badgers * What is your favorite video game of all time? (timestamp) u/DCinvestor * What are the top three uses for ETH that the developers are working for and do these differ from what the average person on the street thinks. Put another way, does the public share the same vision for ETH that the developers have. (timestamp) u/Shortstack02 * What is the most exiting thing happening with ETH that perhaps has not trickled down to the common person. (timestamp) u/Shortstack02[ * Many people are pushing the narrative or believe that Ethereum development is slowing down to a standstill. Are there any metrics that you could show them that would alleviate their concerns? (timestamp) u/pocketwailord * Have you ever thought that gay sex is literally twice as manly as straight sex? (timestamp) u/ethical-trade

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Hi,
Welcome to conversation three in the Ethereum Community Series, today with u/vbuterin! If you’re new to this, please check out earlier conversations with jtnichol and Ameen Soleimani.

Thank you all for the 150+ questions and I’m sorry if yours didn’t make the cut. (Please make sure to listen to the entire conversation, there’s a good chance your question actually did get answered. I would also recommend listeners or viewers to check Vitalik’s recent talk with Laura Shin, Into the Ether, and his talks with Dimitri from Hidden Forces and Tyler from Conversations with Tyler.)

Link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3vxt6l7ATw
Link to MP3: https://ethcs.org/files/vitalikbuterin.mp3
Link to RSS: https://ethcs.org/feed/podcast/

Please note that I grouped the questions into five categories: Intro, General, General Ethereum, Technical Ethereum and Closing Questions. Please click the category to go to the YouTube-timestamp. Also, I tried to tag everyone that submitted questions but I might’ve lumped some together and thus might have tagged the wrong person, whoops!

I did my best to ask the questions more or less chronologically.

General * You’re incredibly gracious on Twitter. How do you manage to stay calm in the face of trolling, ignorance, and tribalism? u/reterical * What do you think about the crypto-space as a whole? For me it seems that there are a lot of different bubbles with maximalists who want their own technology/coin not only to succeed but others also to fail. Do you share their opinion that one day there will be one superior coin/blockchain or is there enough space for different blockchains and technologies? u/spcialx * You and Glen Weyl say that the crypto community is a great testing ground for Radical Market ideas such as quadratic voting and Harberger taxes. Blockchain projects are in need of better rules, and the communities are generally more receptive to trying out radical changes and games. If these ideas are successful, how do you see them being transitioned from the blockchain space into the “real world?” Do you foresee incumbents of the current systems rejecting these ideas out of fear of losing their own power and property? How might a righteous idea overcome these rejections? u/blockduane * How long do you believe it’ll be before we have a unique human identity protocol with strong anonymity guarantees and what do you think is the most promising approach to this problem? u/DCinvestor * How is your relationship with Vlad changing and do you see him continuing to contribute to Ethereum long-term or moving in a different direction? u/lfc052505, and u/etherbie * Vitalik, are you aware that you have 82,300 donuts!? And that Reddit recently announced they are supporting a community initiative, r/daonuts, to decentralise the donuts system. Do you think there is value in bringing Ethereum/web3 technologies back into web2 entities like Reddit? What would you like to see change with how Reddit communities operate? u/carlslarson * How do you manage being productive while having to attend talks and meetings all around the globe. as a person who trots the globe for work, i find it takes a lot of energy beyond the work to do, to be effective. curious on how your routine is. u/nhaneezy * Which country are you legally (for tax purposes) a resident of? u/Rabid_Tanuki

General Ethereum * Over a year ago you suggested that prices had outpaced development, but I’m curious if your opinion has changed given current prices and the latest developments. u/olddaddywarbucks * Almost 18 months after the ICO euphoria, which, in your opinion are the successful examples of dapps, utility tokens, and so, as it comes to real adoption. u/martinkarolev, and u/chazschimdt * Do you have a vision for what comes after Eth 2.0? Does Ethereum become a a very reliable and somewhat stagnant base layer, with most of the innovation happening on L2? Or do you expect that the base layer should continue to evolve in dramatic fashion to keep up with the latest technology? u/DCinvestor, u/spacepiratem too (kind of, on the robustness of L1 iirc) * I think it’s fair to say an initial shared vision/gameplan involved the EF funding development of a technology trifecta (blockchain, swarm, whisper) + a browser to use it all. Has that plan been lost and if so is that a good outcome? u/carlslarson

(Similar question) At the moment everyone is talking about Ethereum 2.0. Is Ethereum’s grand vision still enabling web3 and how has this vision developed over time? How far are the “other” web3 components that are being developed and when would you consider Ethereum to be “complete”? /u/smidge (your question was definitely answered in the convo, as part of DCInvestor’s question iirc) * How do you feel about the progress OmiseGO has made with their MoreViable Plasma release? u/ZipZapBeepBoop * Recently someone did some in-depth investigation into Ethereum holdings and your personal wealth. In my mind, that’s really nobody’s business but yours. So my question is how do we protect identities on the Ethereum? What is the current status of privacy mechanisms like zksnarks? When can we expect to see more accessible privacy options? u/0661 * There is a lot of talk about the “failures” of Ethereum governance from some in the community, but what do you see as the primary advantages of Ethereum’s somewhat unique governance structure, and what role can/should the broader community of non-devs play in this structure? u/DCinvestor * As we begin to possibly enter a more robust multi-chain world, what do you believe is the unique value proposition of Ethereum, in comparison to the value propositions articulated by many competing chains (often focused upon scalability, interoperability, on-chain governance, etc.)? u/dcinvestor, also tagging u/spcialx * I know I have heard you mention implementing a supply cap and the benefits of doing so; I think many people really want to see one because to most people, finite supply triggers a value mechanism in our brains. Do you think a supply cap will be implemented? and if so when? and what number? u/Wendys_4_Tendies

Technical Ethereum * Re beacon chain. You’ve been thinking about on chain randomness for a long time, from Randao around 2016 to now VDF (verifiable delay functions) and threshold signatures etc etc. Besides protocol security, how else do you think having cheaply available provable randomness on the web will change the world? What will the world do differently with this randomness in the future? /u/ckd001 * Do you think STARK proofs will eventually become small enough to use in place of SNARKs in schemes such as roll-up? Do you eventually forsee transaction aggregation using STARKs at L1 of the protocol rather than L2? u/consideritwon * With the switch over to PoS and the need for stakers to maintain uptime will the security requirements be a barrier to entry for an average user who wishes to stake? u/consideritwon * What’s your biggest concern for the transition into PoS? u/eddyg987 * In an ideal world what are 3 things that could happen that would allow Serenity Phase 2 to be deployed quicker? As a follow up question is there anything members of the wider community can do to make these things more likely to happen? u/blockchainunchained

Closing questions * How much do you actually work a week? u/spcialx * What books strongly shaped your worldview? u/Automne888 * Outside crypto, what fascinates you? u/Etereve (it got asked, u/jtnichol!) > “What do you daydream about doing (in the abstract or concretely) aside and apart from crypto?” u/reterical * What do you do to relax when your not working and do you have a favourite T-shirt? > And where do you get your T-shirt’s?!?! u/shammyfeen * Where do you see yourself (yourself, not Ethereum) in 10 years time? Do you ever think about early retirement? u/moontrainpassenger

Things mentioned * https://slatestarcodex.com/ * http://glenweyl.com/ * https://twitter.com/robinhanson * https://meltingasphalt.com/ (Hanson’s co-author)

“Keep being a great community.” – u/vbuterin

Ethereum Community Series: Recent Episodes

krokodilmannchen