Bankless - Devcon #3 - Dankrad | EIP-4844

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Welcome to Devcon 6. The first Devcon for Bankless, the conference was a ton of fun and an amazing cultural experience in Bogota, Colombia. Dankrad Feist is leading the charge of Danksharding, expressed through proto-danksharding in EIP-4844. The Layer 2 Wars are heating up, and Dankrad’s here to talk about it. ------ 📣 Push | Try the Communication Protocol of Web3 https://bankless.cc/Push  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER:          https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/    🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST:                 http://podcast.banklesshq.com/    ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  💠 NEXO | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/Nexo  🔐 LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  ⚡️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod  ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:30 Dankrad 4:00 Vibes & Morale 5:30 Post-Merge Ethereum 7:30 Danksharding 10:16 New Opportunities 11:55 Unlocking Use Cases 13:45 The Layer 2 Wars ------ Resources: Dankrad https://twitter.com/dankrad  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Welcome back Bankless Nation to DevCon 6, the DevCon 6 experience in this interview. I'm talking with Dankrad Feist of Danksharting fame. Of course, Dankrad is the guy that is leading dang sharding for us all. EIP 4844, which is proto-danksharting and then later dangsharding itself. I asked Dankrad about the Layer 2 wars and how 4844 will impact all of these things and what Ethereum will look like under a 4844 paradigm and really just why we should be excited about 4844. I also asked Dankrod about his experience in Bogota

what it's like to be at all of these Devcons and how Bogota is different and what Dankrad gets up to after DevCon is over and the sun goes down. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dankrad Feist from the EF, Mr. Danksharding himself, right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors

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Check them out at DeSoe.com. And now, onto the show. Bankless Nation, I'm here with Dankrad Feist here at Bogota, DevCon, 6. Thank you, Red. Have you been to every DevCon? No. No? Okay. How many DevCons have you been to? My first DevCon was Prague. Prague. Okay, 2018. So that's three DefCon. So this is your third DevCon.

How does this one compare to all the other ones? I think this one is really, really great. Yeah. Yeah, great shout out to the organizers. I think, like, it's, I think the best DevCon so far in terms of organization and how everything, like, just works smoothly. This is my first DefCon, but I've heard of the chaos of pre-execons. but I've heard of the chaos of previous SEPCONs, and it also seems to kind of correlate

with the general chaos of the Ethereum ecosystem. Now we're a little bit more, like, we're post-merged, like we've shipped some stuff. We got our coordination down, and it has also extended itself into the DevCon layer, if you will. What are you enjoying the most about Bogota and about DevCon? What's really, like, gotten your juices flown here? I think, like, yeah, it's the mood of, like, Ethereum.

Now, like, I think there was a long time where it felt like progress was really slow and was tough and, like, research never actually made it into the protocol. And I think we are at an inflection point where that is actually changing with the merge. And I think, like, you can feel it in the community that this, like, people see this optimism and are very happy that, like, over the next few years, we'll actually scale and will actually be able to do all the things we wanted to do. Certainly, yeah. And, you know, as all the listeners, we all know, we all feel like we're in a bear market,

but you don't really feel that energy here. And I want to ask you about like developer morale now that we are post-merge. Like it's probably the biggest win in the crypto space and definitely in the Ethereum space that we've ever had. So how is developer morale now? So I think, I mean, I always think like, I don't know, I can't speak for everyone. But I think like many developers feel that they're actually more productive in a bear market. And it's actually a better time to ship things because you don't, you're distracted by fewer

things. there are not that many people who maybe are only in it for the money and calling you all the time and all that. So I think people are still very positive and optimistic. I think it was a stressful time for many of them. So I think many of them will probably at some point want to take some time off as well. But I think the mood is optimistic. Certainly well-deserved. But also Ethereum developers never seem to stop developing.

Now that we have this confidence of the merge behind, us. I've always thought that the merge was just the biggest training ground for developer coordination and developer shipping. And now not only have we practiced coordination, we've delivered it and had that great successful merge. And now we're on the other side of it. Do you think development is actually going to speed up once everyone has had their break and comes back to the table? I mean, personally, I do hope so because in a way, I think what we are planning to do over the next few years is going to be quite difficult. Like, it will require a lot of work and a lot of coordination.

So, yes, like, we definitely need to, like, improve our game as well on, like, making those changes happen. But I think, yeah, I think it's going to, I think it's going to work. Like, I can see, like, lots of momentum in the team community. What are the technical challenges that you see looming overhead in the horizon? So, I mean, I think, like, yeah, I mean, basically with sharding, data sharding, we are attempting something that has never been done.

And it's also especially like, so it's like a complete change in terms of how blockchain work. And clearly like some other projects are attempting this as well. I think all of them are somewhat less ambitious in terms of decentralization than we are. And so that makes it just a very hard project to deliver these things. And like doing all these on a working project, project that has like large scale use makes this all the more difficult. Yeah.

But isn't Ethereum always doing things that have never been done before? Yes. I mean, I guess the merge was one of these things. But yes, yeah, for sure it is. But I think, yeah, I mean, I think like these changes over the next few years are, I think like Vitalik had this nice S curve. And I think, yes, it is right. We had this little inflection at the bottom.

And now we have to like deliver the rest of it. And so the year of 2021 was like, the year of Ultrasound Bunny, it was EIP-1559, it was the merge, and, like, you know, testing this merge. But now that's all behind us, and now everyone is focused on EIP 4844 or Proto-Dank-Sharting, of which is your name, right? Danksharding, Dankrad, and also Proto Lambda. Do you feel like, my vision is like the Rocky Balbo is running up the stairs and, like, now it's your moment. Is that how you feel? It's like, oh, this is Dankrad's moment.

I mean, it's certainly the things that I have been looking forward to the most. in terms of what I actually wanted to do when I joined Ethereum research a few years ago. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to these changes making it to the protocol. Okay, so what about Deng Sharding or Proto-Dank Sharding? Why is that what your brain focuses on? Like, why is that the thing that interests you? Like some people, some people are interested in the IP-559. Justin Drake is interested in Ultrashtown money.

You're interested in Deng Sharding. Why? I mean, all of these are important things. But clearly, I think, I mean, Ethereum right now maybe can serve in its current form, like maybe a million people or something, and we want to bring that to a billion. So, like, I feel like every day we're spending at the current form is, like, a day that's lost to all the other people who could use Ethereum. So I think, like, in that respect, I feel that's a very urgent change.

Sure. Okay. And I'm sure you've explained what Proto-Danksharding and Dang Sharding is. But have you ever done it in, like, can you explain day? dank sharding in like one sentence or less? How quickly can you explain dank sharding? It's basically, it's the roll-up booster. You've heard about roll-ups.

They make Ethereum much cheaper and more efficient. And basically it's like putting an after burner under them and making them work even much more cheaply and allowing them to serve a lot more users. And why? What is the big technical lift here? Like when you look under the hood of the Ethereum protocol, what's the technical lift that we've never done before?

So in terms of like the current change for 844, there is no fundamental change how technically the blockchain works. There are some new things that we introduce that will prepare it for full sharding. But those are not strictly technically necessary for what we're doing there. What the big change where sharding will be that we're building a blockchain that maintains the full security as we're used to anti-seminization from Ethereum. but does it by providing a data availability that scales beyond what the individual node can process. So so far, all blockchains are built in mind with like, okay, like we can never do more than your individual know that you run at home can process. And we are going beyond that. We are building a blockchain that is as secure and decentralized, but can go beyond that scale.

Okay, beautiful. And, of course, having accessibility is a core pillar of Ethereum. and this is how we, like you said, allow Ethereum to be accessed by everyone in the world. Now that we're post-merge, there was, I'm assuming, a lot of previous developer talent that was focused on the merge, that is now no longer focused on the merge.

And so now, like, now it's being diffused across, you know, all the other EIPs. Is it, like, how much of EIP 4-4-4 is now the focus versus people focusing on other things like account abstraction or other EIPs? I mean, so these are discussions that are going on right now. know, and clearly, like, I'm a big proponent of, like, making 4844 happen, even in the next hard fork.

There are definitely some other things that will compete with that, like withdrawals need to happen. Lots of EIPs want to get in, of course. I would say, like, getting 4844 done is very, very urgent. I hear that from many, like, roll-up teams and other teams that, like, they're literally making the case that they have business cases. They want to deploy, and they cannot happen. if they don't have 4844.

Sure. So I'm making the case that this should be a very high priority, but the discussions on that are not finished. Certainly. And the way I kind of think of 4844 or Deng Sharding, you call it an afterburners for roll-ups. I think that's a great way to articulate it. It's also just like unlocking a ton of new use cases on roll-ups

that we wouldn't be able to have otherwise, mainly just because we're lowering the fees down to almost the theoretical minimum. And it's also like this question, Often, like, people have these use cases in mind, but they just know that at the current scale, they can just never work. So they don't even try to deploy them. So I think these can now happen. Okay, so we ship dang sharding, layer two's become super fast, super cheap, super available. What are some of these use cases that people are talking to you about or are the use cases that you're excited about that would be unlocked after 4844?

I mean, I think that's like, I mean, it's a permissionless system. Like, I think, I think we probably can't even imagine what people are going to build on it. Like, I mean, I think five years ago we wouldn't have known what people will build on it now. But I think they're great many. I mean, clearly, like, I'm always like, okay, like, think about the simple things as well. Like, I mean, think about payments. Like, it is an important use case and we can't probably support it now. But I think, like, many other cool things, like maybe more social media apps, that sort of stuff can happen.

I can't. I don't have a great imagination for everything that could happen. Sure. And of course it's a hard question when you just don't know. The blockchain world has never seen this availability before. We haven't had these opportunities because we haven't had secure block space that is super cheap. My take on this is that the Ethereum layer one is heavy, heavy finance. You know, NFTs that are super highly valued, a lot of defy stuff. And Vitalik, of course, is obsessed with non-financial use cases of a blockchain. And I think that, that we don't really get non-financial use cases of the blockchain until we get transactions that are basically free.

Right. Because the only transactions that we can really afford are they're super expensive ones, and those are going to be finance transactions. Well, there are some exception. There are some high value non-financial transactions like, yeah, Ns, key revocations, things like that. Sure. Right, but it's very limited.

But overall, it's true. Yeah. And so if we want to unlock non-financial use cases of a blockchain, we need transactions that aren't financial, as in like, basically free. So I'm sure Vitalik will be super happy to see all these new use. cases that come about. What else across the Ethereum developer space has captured your attention, or are you just like tunnel vision on 4844? I definitely do have like most of my attention is focused on the technical stuff. So like I'm and particularly L1. So like my other big project

is statelessness, which I also think is like an important change to the blockchain. Yeah, I don't know. Like I mean, I can see many things happening, but often I don't, you have particular the time to look very deeply into the applications. So right after this interview, I'm about to interview Bartak right over there, and the Layer 2 wars are hot. And, I mean, you're at the EF, so you kind of just get to watch them all happen in front of you. Do you have any hot takes about the Layer 2 wars or just, like, any observations? Because there's a ton of announcements that happened this week.

Right. I don't think I have any hot takes. No, I'm really glad that it happens. And like, I don't know, I couldn't have imagined like even one year ago how many teams would be, and really high quality teams would be trying to do this. Clearly, they are still like, I mean, there's still many problems, right? Like, I mean, most of them, almost all of them aren't proper altus yet. And that's really the big challenge that probably are also going to talk about with Bartak.

But, but I mean, I have no, I mean, I don't think all of them are going to make it. But I have no, I'm pretty certain that within a year we will see like fully decentralized, proper, secure L2s on Ethereum. And that's amazing. Well, Bart, Dan Krad, this certainly seems to be the golden age of Ethereum building. And so thank you for being a shepherd, a pioneer of that age. And I hope you have a fantastic time, the rest of your time here at Etha, at DevCon Bogota. Yeah. Cheers.

Yeah.