Gibson Hall, once the base for the National Provincial Bank, hosted Devcon1—Ethereum's second major conference. Every seat filled. The baroque ceilings and chandeliers overhead framed something that w
Gibson Hall, once the base for the National Provincial Bank, hosted Devcon1—Ethereum's second major conference. Every seat filled. The baroque ceilings and chandeliers overhead framed something that would have seemed impossible years earlier: executives from Deloitte and UBS sitting alongside blockchain developers. These financial institutions had gone from hostile to curious about the technology. They sent delegations.
We attended the conference and spent time with Dr. Gavin Wood, Ethereum's Chief Technology Officer. He built the C++ client, created the user interface and development tools, and shaped much of the vision behind Web 3 and decentralized systems. The Ethereum Yellow Paper carries his name.
Our conversation covered what comes next for the network, how to handle more transactions, and Casper—the new consensus system based on economic stakes.
Two years in, you've gone from a startup concept to a packed conference and partnerships with companies like Microsoft. Did you expect this when you started?
Wood answered: "When I initially began working on Ethereum I honestly doubted I'd ever see any money at all. It looked like yet another open-source project in the making; an unproven, and partially complete whitepaper. The reason I started work on it was two fold; academic curiosity (let's see what is wrong with it!) and a desire to work on a green-field project for a bit of a break. After I saw the amount of money in Bitcoin first-hand and the apparent lack of technical ambition within the community in general, I realised that the Ethereum proposition was indeed well placed; at that point I would have had no problem believing the magnitude of devcon-1."
Of the decentralized apps you've come across, which ones make use of the platform in unexpected ways?
"The heavy-weight Ðapps surprise me somewhat; I heard that a certain prediction market uses all sorts of mathematical modelling such that it can barely run with the present gas limit," Wood said. "Many make different uses of the platform in different ways. The idea of Provenance (supply-chain information, accessible to the consumer) uses Ethereum to truly cross trust boundaries; the larger ideas behind Slockit (physical locking and unlocking through blockchain logic) use Ethereum to automate the sharing economy. I think the truly revolutionary Ðapps have yet to be proposed."
An ambitious project like Ethereum seems to reshape how people think about blockchain as a category. Has that helped the broader ecosystem?
"Yes; very much so. Blockchain is a nascent technology. Bitcoin was an important part of getting this technology recognised, largely through the socially-sensitive MVP of a currency. However it didn't really capture the imagination of developers in general. Ethereum, I think, is beginning to do that. Still, it'll take another 5+ years (and probably a burst bubble) before the technology pervades society fully. The timescale is dependent upon the uptake of developers, investors, business leaders and, eventually, consumers; it'll happen eventually because it's simply a superior way of doing business," Wood explained.
Bitcoin remains toxic in banking. Friday's panel on adoption touched on this: the political philosophy embedded in Bitcoin's origins has become a liability in corporate settings. Does Ethereum get treated differently?
"With a few exceptions, Bitcoin is old, stubborn and self-serving. Comparatively, Ethereum is hot, young and willing to please. What's not to like?" Wood said with an emoticon.
Some developers are trying to build Ethereum-like functionality on top of Bitcoin. Rootstock represents this approach. Does that threat register for you?
"In general I don't 'worry' about other technology. I'm in the business of creating value, not a monopoly," Wood replied.
Monday's sessions hammered on one topic: scaling. How to expand transaction throughput without breaking the system. You've backed a specific approach. Which one?
"Chain fibres; an idea I came up with when chatting to Janislav Malahov (self-styled 'godfather of Ethereum') back in July 2014. Vitalik [Buterin] and I went discussed it and we made some important improvements. It's basically sharding over state space, with transactions collators providing proofs to allow validators/miners to do their job without being forced to maintain every chain. Cross-shard transactions happen through validators that maintain multiple chains. It differs from other approaches in that it's still possible to make synchronous transactions involving multiple accounts if you pay more/accept a delay to get them into the chain. It's non-deterministic and relies upon market mechanisms to provide cross-shard transaction execution," Wood described.
Casper came up repeatedly at the conference—Vlad laid out the details. This is a proof-of-stake system that anchors security to economic incentives. What path led to this consensus mechanism, and how did the team align on it?
"The desire to have a PoS chain was strong, even back before Frontier. However we felt current approaches were lacking in several ways including security. Having some sort of upgrade once we had an approach we were all comfortable with seemed the best chance of getting a secure, PoS-based Ethereum," Wood explained.
An economic model for consensus creates friction, particularly for a network still in its infancy. Does that concern you as a potential limitation?
Wood said: "In some senses, yes. Ethereum was not meant to be crypto-currency, but rather a platform for creating applications. Forcing those who actually wish to *only* create an application and don't want to be concerned with currency (crypto- or otherwise) introduces a conceptual barrier over that of, say, just using some open-source software. However, the fact of the matter is that Ethereum is a community-maintained resource. There must be some sort of give and take to avoid misuse of the resource. The question must really be how to make that give-and-take sufficiently transparent and convenient that no would-be users are put off."
Funding came up during the adoption discussion. Bitcoin companies have pulled in far more capital. Does that give them an edge in solving technical problems faster than Ethereum can?
"One thing I've noticed over the past 24 months is that while money might help with some problems, its effectiveness is neither infinite nor consistent; in some senses it can actually hinder progress," Wood said. "It's worth noting that much of the critical work within the Ethereum project (Whitepaper, Yellowpaper, global meetup network, three interoperable multiplatform smart-contract-capable clients) was done with very little financing in the first 6 months of the project. The Bitcoin community has indeed had a vast amount of money pumped into it. It has not helped them avoid trivialities like the block size debate or bringing forth other basic improvements to the protocol. In my opinion, real innovation comes from having freedom in ones heart and mind. A bag of cash is useful only in so much as to guarantee that freedom."
