Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Aya Miyaguchi: The Role and Challenges of the Ethereum Foundation

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

The Ethereum Foundation has played a crucial role in the evolution of the blockchain ecosystem. They pioneered the Swiss foundation structure and ran one of the first token sales. They played a key role in developing the second-most valuable blockchain network and still play a key role in funding research and steering the future of Ethereum. At the same time, it has been frequently criticized for a lack of transparency, being too slow in funding development and poor financial risk management. Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi joined us to discuss her journey into the space, the role of the Ethereum Foundation and their plans for the future. Topics covered in this episode: How Aya went from high school teacher to enter the crypto space Joining Kraken and building their presence in Japan The role of the Ethereum Foundation in the Ethereum ecosystem Decision making processes and governance in the Ethereum Foundation Ethereum's grant program and funding priorities The Ethereum Foundation's plans to attempt to become more transparent The Ethereum Foundation's approach to conflicts of interest Why the EF decided to support MolochDAO Whether Ethereum should be concerned about competition from other blockchain networks Episode links: Ethereum.org Ethereum Foundation to Spend $30 Million on Development Over Next Year Ethereum Foundation Website Ethereum Foundation Values by Aya Miyaguchi (Devcon4) - YouTube Ethereum Devcon 5 Japan - Oct 30 to Nov 2 DappCon Berlin - August 21 to 23 Sponsors: Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/287

This is Epicenter, Episode 287 with guest Ayya Miyaguchi. This episode of Epicenter is brought to you by Microsoft Azure. Do you have an idea for a blockchain app but are worried about the time and cost it will take to develop? The new Azure Blockchain Debkit is a free download that brings together the tools you need to get your first app running in less than 30 minutes. Learn more at aka.m.s. slash Epicenter. Hi, my name is Brian Foncett. Robin Crane. And my name is Friedrich Ernsd. So before we start with the interview, you guys did a wonderful

conference last year called DAPCon and another one is coming up again this year. Tell us a little bit about the DAPCon conference. Yeah, so it's, we had one last year. It was our first, it was NOSOS's first conference. We're organizing another one this year by popular demand. It'll be August 21 to 23rd. It'll it'll concentrate on DAPs, daps that are usable on Ethereum. And tickets are pretty affordable. So full price tickets is 150 euros and there are hacker tickets and student tickets.

And we are looking forward to having many hundred people there. If you want to check it out, it's at dabcon.io. Perfect. And of course, we can put a link to that in the episode notes too. One thing that we should also say is that a couple of the epicenter hosts are going to moderate panels as well. Okay. Well, that makes the conference all that much better. So today we spoke with Ayamiyaguchi.

She's the executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. And of course, Ethereum Foundation being, you know, one of the most, one of the largest, you know, kind of this original Swiss Crypto Foundation. and having had a tremendous impact on the space through their funding of Ethereum and developing of Ethereum and kind of steering Ethereum through all its history. Yeah, what did you think of the interview, Federica? I've had many positive things.

So I like that the Ethereum Foundation is moving into a direction of transparency, which so far has often been somewhat lacking. I remain curious to see how this plays out. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's, it's a little bit, it was not so easy to get answers, I think, for a lot of questions. But, you know, I think they're making an attempt and that's, that should be honored and appreciated. So let's go to the interview with Aya. Hi, and welcome. So we're here today with Aya Miyakuchi, she's the executive director of the

The Theorem Foundation. Of course, the Theorem Foundation, having had, you know, an enormous impact on the blockchain space since the beginning when And it conducted kind of the first, one of the first token sales or public fundraisers for a crypto project. And then has, you know, has done a tremendous amount in terms of building the Ethereum ecosystem. So we're really excited to have eye on today to speak a little bit about the role of the foundation and how that has changed and evolved over time. So thanks so much for joining us, Aya. Sorry to be here. So I'm curious to get started.

How did you originally become involved in the crypto space? So you were a high school teacher for 10 years. That seems quite a change in transition. Yes. So I am originally from Japan. I was born and grew up there. And like you said, my first career, professional career, was a high school teacher. And I was teaching English to high school students there for a long time, actually.

for over 10 years. And then as a teacher, basically I had some experience studying abroad and then Japan is big economy, but at the same time, it's pretty isolated. It's surrounded by the ocean, and then the culture is not that diverse. So my mission was to tell my students,

like, you know, to at least go out there and then see the world and then, you know, feel the diversity. So I was, I was telling him, like, I was inspiring students to do that. And my students started to go abroad. And then in the meantime, like, I also had this question about, like, how teachers didn't really try to go outside themselves. and then I thought it was important for education for teachers to also have more diverse experience. And I also got jealous of my students who were going up there. And there wasn't a lot of opportunity for teachers to kind of take a leave or paid leave

to go outside and learn. So I just decided to quit. I still I'm still passionate about education so if I I thought if I want to go back I can just always come back so I left the country

and then moved to the US and originally I wanted to well in order for me to get a job I or in order for me to get a job I needed a visa and in order for me to get a visa

at a working visa, it was better for me to get some, like, master's degree. And since I thought I learned enough about education being a teacher, I decided to get a business degree. And then, so when I was working on my MBA, my focus was sustainable business, which, you know, like, you kind of have to think about economic, environmental, social, sustainability, for business to even make profit. And I thought that was interesting, and I also had some experience working for non-profit when I was working on MBA. And also specifically, I was focused on microfinance, financial inclusion for that sustainable business study.

And that's when I learned about, I heard about Bitcoin. When was this, Ayah, which year? So this was in 2011. And that was the time that I heard about Bitcoin. And then originally, there was no materials to learn. So like now like Bitcoin seems very simple now for us. but since there was no information, education, it took me a while to understand what it was.

And then, but then when I learned, but it was, and I thought, oh, this is really, like it would be perfect opportunity or a combination with things like microfinance. And just it was just thinking about the efficiency that can create. but then now like of course busy thing we can do a lot more but back then I thought that was my interest and and then I well this is going to create a lot of impact in financial inclusions and then I just had a chance to since I was in San Francisco the company who started cracking well it was I joined crack in when the team was getting

non-deb people, so I was original, like a few funding members, one of a few funding members. And I had an opportunity to join Krakhan before their launch, before its launch. And that was early 2013. It was around the time that all other crypto efforts or startups started. other groups like Coinbase or like all started to happen. And then San Francisco was kind of center of those companies. And then the ripple was there. And I still remember my first blockchain event was Bitcoin event in San Jose, 2013 in April.

It felt big that the event seemed big back then. But now looking back, it was very small. We had everyone like who, are now the leaders of this industry. But it was very, very still, very geeky, nerdy group. Yeah. It's funny, like I thought, wow, this is almost too, too geeky for me. It came to a wrong place, but. Cool. And so, so you worked at Cracken for a few years. Then how did you, how did you end up at the Ethereum Foundation? Um, so I worked at Cracken a few years. My job involved a lot of different things, including like basically, I was heavily involved in starting, like, you know, like, up the ecosystem in Japan, the crypto.

There was no crypto industry there when I joined. But because of what happened to Mangogs, which was a big thing, the Mangogs packed also their, how they collapsed. I was heavily involved in the regulatory situations in Japan too and I was always having a conversation with the government and the bankruptcy case and also starting off the industry association there and I was doing all that and then and so clock and work was really still during the time

the early stage of crypto industry. My passion, again, original my passion was into this impact side of boxing. So I decided to leave and focused on more on this like, you know, social impact side of boxing. And then when I, I actually was kind of working on different things. and personally advising different applications. And around that time, yeah, I was asked to have interviews with the Thuring Foundation people when they were looking for help for the foundation.

And I spoke with them and I joined the foundation. That was early last year. So the foundation is a fairly centralized organ that governs or that kind of steers a space that is very decentralized. So how would you describe the role of the Ethereum Foundation in Ethereum today? Yeah, I wouldn't describe this organization as centralized at all, I guess at all, because when I joined And it was since, like, I think I flew to Berlin to meet some developers there. And I saw there are, you know, a bunch of other people who are all spread out to the different places in the world. But it is still compared to, like, even flat startup.

this is very decentralized because almost like not almost the old project in in Ethereum including the stuff that the members of the Ethereum foundations are involved in are not only by the foundation's members that they're collaborations with other community members so it is really hard to blow the line who is working on one project so I I couldn't tell who are the members of one project. And that alone shows how decentralized the whole thing is. So it's really hard to, it's more like the coordination is very important. And the foundation's role is to coordinate everything in the ecosystem.

So the goal is to really support the thing. And that's it. And meaning it can be about education. it can be about development research, but how it works is not us to, not the Ethereum Foundation to do education. Like we can support that effort, but fundamentally we are the coordinators.

We are, like our peoples are coordinating, like especially our operations team is coordinating. So the foundation's goal is to support everything in the Ethereum, We have operations team, we have grant program team, and then we do some developers and researchers who work on projects, but their projects also are not centralized by the Ethereum Foundation member. They work with people in the ecosystem to actually work on the project. So it's really hard to say who is working on one project because of that structure.

That sounds very difficult in terms of governance. Can you talk a little bit about the governance structure of the foundation? So how does the Ethereum Foundation actually take decisions and who has what role in that? Yeah, so the governance is definitely difficult. Like now people want to somehow the governance has become like a super hot topic. but it is governance exists in any organization, any structure. But again, I'm like the coordinator of coordinators, meaning we try to let each team or each members to make their own decisions.

And our job is to support their decision and they coordinate their decision with other decisions. So that's why I see my job as, the coordinator of coordinators, but I can't really coordinate everything by myself. So I have other people to coordinate together. And it's more like I oversee all these coordination work. So decision making is never top down. We don't really, I don't know if you know, like a lot of people.

I have this title, but this title doesn't really explain my work, because this is something that doesn't really exist. in other organizations. So just to get like a little bit more specific, so you mentioned kind of coordinating in different parts, but like are there some kind of, you know, principles or like core processes that you use to say like, okay, this is this is the way the Ethereum Foundation goes about it

so that, you know, we get good outcomes, and maybe the different interests are protected. Yeah. And there is like a team guess and then we let them make decisions over their roadmap and then they suggest budget. This is a plan that we want to, this is a roadmap, we want to execute this year and this is how much we need.

And then since that's one project we need to support and we have to think about the total budget. So that's why the coordination happens there. They can make their own decision for their own team. but like they can't really decide on other projects so we coordinate that effort so that's why when I use that term coordination yes we have to have some structure for for this coordination to work and the structure meaning like they suggest and it's that so it's not in the normal company the management decide on everything here's a plan like you guys have to work on this way but it's not that way. Like they suggest their ideas and then we coordinate their decisions. But given that there's probably not unlimited funding of all, this means that someone actually has to restrict teams and say, this is too much. You can't have that much. And decide on the

general direction that the foundation is going to go in. Is that you or who is that? we have we have like our other operations team that's basically we listen to like together with me listen to their request and then but again so I don't want to get too deep into like internal teams or so that the plan that we are about to make it more like make it clear is that this this concept of external teams that we're funding with grant and then and internal themes that we want to eliminate this distinction between internal or external. At the end of the day, the foundation's goal

is to support important project in the ecosystem. Well, I mean, important meaning, like our focus would be, like you said, when we have limited budget, how we make decisions is really like what are most important in the ecosystem now. So it shouldn't be about internal or external. And so we are looking at the number that I just mentioned, the ETHR, we're going to spend about $30 million to support ETHM this year,

is that that rough decision is decided by a few, like our operations team, including myself. And but then how we spend those money, depending on the types of decisions, we have multiple people to make decisions. Again, like I need other people. That's not really only unique about our organization. Like, I don't, yeah, maybe there are small companies who, like, only CEO make the decision, but that we have experts in finance and legal and, like, we have to discuss different things.

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So, of course, their Ethereum has, you know, sort of its founder, Vitalik, Burduring, you know, who has a very, very high profile and kind of, you know, of course, the extremely well-known in the Ethereum community. So what's, what's Vitalik's role in the foundation? And, yeah, like, what's his role of responsibilities? And, like, how much power does he have? How much power?

So his role is the, where is it? I think he claims himself a chief science officer. and he's a he's a researcher and of course he's involved in like important research teams decisions but um right when then he is involved in some like I'm in charge of the foundations operations meaning like like things like budget and and he's aware of like how we, you know, decide on things and then also including budget. And then, you know, like, at the community, like, whoever wants to listen to him, they will listen to him, but he doesn't really control any decision-making.

In effect, someone actually has not only to control the budget, but also the strategic direction of the foundation, right? So you said that you have experts that you listen to, but it sounded like the team that finally calls the shots is the operation team. So is that correct? And if so, what kind of experts do you consult? And are these known, so basically are these known within the ecosystem as advisors to the foundation? And so what's the process, just for us to understand?

Yeah, so we tried to actually, when I joined that operation, there was no almost like it. There was very, very, like the operation team wasn't big. And then also the foundation wasn't really giving out grants, as you know. And then when we started giving a lot of grants, starting last year, we built this team or grant program team. And since this is still new, like the team was very still like originally, it was small. But now we have more people, including community members, someone like Evan Banness is also providing information,

like what he thinks they're most important because, as you know, like he knows, you know, he's watching. He has to write weekend into him, so he is watching everything in the ecosystem. So we have those people who are, who actually join the screening process of grant program. And I also talked about this at the video, the whole grant process from the screening and doing interview and making the final decisions that this involves all those other people. And then depending on the topic, we go to like when it involves security discussion, the grant team talks to our security team. but also sometimes, like, security teams outside. They have to reach different groups depending on the topic or depending on the project that they are considering.

So we see the entire ecosystem as basically we can reach anyone. Like if we want to, you know, take a look at prediction market discussion and then we go to like we go to NOSIS team and then maybe ask their feedback. or that's like that's totally possible unless you don't want to give any feedback, right? Okay. So that's, yeah, that's how. So you mentioned that the Ethereum Foundation is going to give out $30 million in grants. What are the, like what are the priorities, the funding priorities?

Like how much are you planning, like are you dividing it into different categories and allocating some amount to different categories or how are you going to go about deploying that money? Yeah, so again, this is going to be, a detail is going to be provided very soon. But there are a different way to categorize this. One is, oh, like I think that the fundamental criteria that we use, the grant program use is that like how, so when you take a look at one project and the solution it is providing how critical, of course, how important the solution is,

and how urgent that solution needs to happen, how unique the solution is compared to other ways of solving the problem. So that kind of key criteria we do have when the grant program screen projects. But also, and then there were topics that we originally kind of, you know, like, asked, meaning the wish list, like security, scaling, UX and all that.

But now the big categories that we have regarding the support of the term from the is one for, you know, like what's happening on the Ethereum now and also the future of Ethereum. And then it was something like blinging more developers to Ethereum or like the different types of things that we like the ecosystem to have more. And then the mostly, when we make decisions, we try to focus on the things. things on that if we don't give support, no one else would give support, but this is very important. So sometimes there are things that only the foundation can do because of our unique

position with the history. Can you give an example for that, Aya? Yeah, like something like research projects that like do, like a lot of project we support are a research project, right? and then most of them don't have business model, meaning the investors wouldn't be interested in supporting them unless investors could be interested in supporting them if they can see long-term effect, including the price service.

But normally it's hard for them to receive support because they don't have business model. Okay, that makes sense. So you just said that you're going to give out 30 million in grants for this year. As far as I know, the foundation doesn't release financial statements. So can you give us a sense of what percentage? So how much money does the foundation have? So basically, if you continue giving out grants for 30 million a year,

how long will it last you, I guess is what I'm asking? well that's that's uh that depends on of course price of ease right and then how much so how much ether we have is is sort of public information because you can just go get the information online uh so it's already out there they like information about like about six that 650 k ether that EF has and also we do have some Fiat and then combining that as like how long this lasts. It's like, yes, it depends on the price of ease and it changes every day. So why doesn't the Ethereum Foundation like publish, I don't know, like every quarter is like, okay, these are the assets we have. Here's how we spent the money. These are like there's very,

feels like there's a lack of kind of lack of communication and transparency in the foundation. Do you see that the same way? So just objectively like also like Ethereum is as you know like a Swiss foundation and the EF has to do everything that is required by the Swiss laws because we are a Swiss foundation

and so it's doing everything that it's required. Regarding financial statement, as a foundation, when there's obligation to disclose financial, this is, you know, just my knowledge is

that you are required when you have actual like source of income from other organization, meaning normal foundations have received grants from other organizations for governments.

and that's where you have responsibility. I mean, I don't think anyone doubts that the Theorem Foundation is complying with all of the, you know, foundation regulations and stuff. I'm sure you are. But it still seems that maybe there's besides the legal issues that's sort of from the theorem community. Yeah, exactly. Like a reasonable expectation that there would be like a transparent sharing or information. Yeah.

So that's why that's why we are trying to. you know, share, like you said, right? It's not legality. Like, it's about, you know, like, for the community to feel good about the entire ecosystem. But again, like, if community sees the same foundation to be, I see the EDF, you know, it's one of the older, but, but again, like, since it does have a unique position, so we try to give. more information, that's really coming very soon. So that's like right now, we are having this conversation. We're about to make, I'm pretty sure when this podcast is out there,

I don't know when it's going to, it's going to be up. Yes, that's happening now. That's good to hear that you're working on transparency. So may I just come back to the runway question again? So basically, if you look at the 650K, ETH that the foundation holds, And if we assume that that's the main money that the foundation actually has, so it doesn't have enormous amounts in Fiat, that's 130 million today. So if you give up 30 million in grants, and that's your main expense,

that's a runway of four years at today's ether prices. So do you expect that ether prices go up, or do you expect that development is done in very few, in a very few number of years. So we do have some fiat amount. If you want to, there's some information out there. Again, we are going to give more information soon, but we do have some fiat amount, of course,

so the year that you should just mention. But at the same time, again, one of the things we try to do here is we don't think the only EF providing or supporting the entire ecosystem is not sustainable. And one, it's not sustainable, but it's also not good for that this is supposed to be decentralized, right? So that's why there are other funding mechanism now exist, which we are excited for them to exist, but also at the same time, we're happy to work together with them. That's why we were talking about more collaborations there.

So hopefully, and then there are other, you know, like efforts. We're studying like Dow funding or all that. So we are optimistic that there will be more other funding systems to exist in the new future. And then there are already exist compared to before. And that's a beauty. of making this more decentralized. Yeah, totally. I mean, we'd love to come back to that in a second.

But I'm just curious. So you mentioned the Ethereum Foundation has a bunch of ETH and it has a bunch of Fiat. Like, are there other like investments Ethereum Foundation has made, like either into, you know, equity of companies or potentially in different tokens. And like, if so, like, you know, what are they? And how do you go about managing conflicts of interest?

A foundation in non-profit can totally legally, again, like going back to invest. But we don't invest. That's not the decision, at least so far, that Aetherin Foundation has never made the decision to invest in other things. Or it could invest in the Ethereum project, but we are not doing that now. So that's the question sometimes I get asked, but we don't invest. investing things other than we do hold either. How do you deal with other potential conflicts of interest? So what comes to mind, for example, is Vittalik's angel investment into stockware and

Starkware then receiving a four million grant from the foundation. Do you have processes in place to make sure that everything is above wood? Yeah, the process is basically, I think it is never start. with whoever is involved in investment and then we should support that like it always start from like you know bottom up water the most important and then someone applies for a gland and is this really important for the ecosystem and so you know like we had no doubt that what star queer was working on was important and they have great teams and and our whole team discussed with them.

And then we were confident that they would make good progress. And there are milestones that set place so that not entire money has been provided yet, of course. And they report to us every quarter. So it is like one thing, it's already creating good impact. But also about StarCwares, I don't. know how he was actually involved in the, but it is public information that he already made it clear before I guess this grant happened.

And yeah, that's the only detail, like, you know. But yeah, again, like we, of course we watch, because, you know, this was public information, and then of course we watched that, if that could happen, we will definitely watch and discuss. You talked about DAO mechanisms of funding earlier, and at Ethereum you made the announcement that the Ethereum Foundation

is actually going to invest into the Monarch DAO. Can you talk about the rationale behind that and what your hopes for DAO funding mechanisms are for the future? We just made an announcement at Ethereum and that the ETHRIN Foundation is supporting Murdoch with 1,000 Heath and along with Vitalik himself as an individual and Constances and Jo Lovin as individual that was announced at the Thiel. But then there are other individuals who have been part of it has been part of

marked out already. And I do think this is very good experience. Well, not just I, but the EF, we thought we're always open to experiments with using this technology, but then you can really put a lot of money into like something dangerous. But this is something that we thought it was a good team. And then it's something, Dow funding is something that the funding is something that the different way the ecosystem should experiment. And so we are happy to support those airports and starting with smaller months.

And that's not just for Molok's out, but this was the first thing we did. And we will be excited to see more if there will be something that will work. And yeah, so I'm excited to see this coming. then how does it work? And then it's an exciting thing to see in the ecosystem. So historically, the Ethereum community has been this like kind of super open-minded place and like very tolerant of like all kinds of opinions. At least that's my personal impression.

It seems though that like in the last, I don't know, year or I'm not sure exactly sort of the time frame, but like it's kind of been changing and there's a lot for a bunch of things, right? So I think one, this is if Ethereum maximalism has kind of come up with, you know, a lot of people being very adamant that Ethereum is the one and only, a little bit like, you know, people have done it off in Bitcoin. And it's become much more like hostile to, or like contentious and argumentative. Like you also see those changes. And like, what do you think is a driving factor here? I personally blame Twitter. I know, I think it's the modern world. and not just about Ethereum or crypto,

I think it's kind of the challenge this modern society has. It's a free debate space. And then used to be like there is like a professional of media who passed things. And then you actually check resources, check the source of information. So it's really hard to see what information is correct. And even this concept of,

though Ethereum is getting, becoming more maximalism. It's when one person started to say, you know, other people could be manipulated. But I still see the whole Ethereum ecosystem to be very, very, like, open and peaceful. I mean, like, first of all, when I decided to support it, them, not other, other, like, broadchains or other crypto effort is really, about the culture. Like to me technology is something you can copy, anyone can copy, but the reason why this attracted so many people, the Ethereum didn't we do a lot of like a money marketing or it's just didn't, it naturally attracted so many people is really what is special

about Ethereum's culture? So like you say, said, like, I mean, you probably know better than like what, like how it's just a, this is very open, but also we don't, to me, Ethereum is really about, I use the term Kaizen at Devcom, but like improving something that exists. And as long that the vision, long term vision is like we want to create this platform, finish creating this platform so that the apps can create the world of what the more distributed world the power distributed power decentralized world so that that we can solve problems like a financial inclusions and and that's the vision we want to see because we see a lot of problems because of this

because of centralized structure of this modern society and and that vision we naturally attracted people like, oh, I want to be part of this community because people care about this. And I don't think that has changed. But if you only focus on some arguments on social media, it does, you know, like kind of spotlight those problems. But I still don't think atheism has a lot of maximalists. But, you know, sometimes people have passion.

about what they work on. So they might feel very protective about what they're working on, but that doesn't mean, like, Ethereum has become maximalism. I don't think so. Yeah, and then I personally, like, again, like when I said,

we need to support experiments is this whole crypto thing, is this whole thing is experiment. And that's why it's so hard to work with regulators, because, you know, they're scared of risks. But for experiments to be experimented, we have to have different efforts. We can't just have one effort when it's still an experiment.

That's why we are very open to different ideas. So many blockchains are actually seen as competitors to Ethereum. How do you feel about that? And how do you think Ethereum should deal with competition? Yeah, so the competition exists. I don't want to sound like too naive that I don't see any competitions. Like the competition does exist in different definitions. But we as the Ethereum Foundation or I think the Ethereum culture in general,

it doesn't really, like we're not really working on this to win. And so the competition is really, like, there are other efforts that exist for us to, like, it can actually help us to be better. That already happens before, too. So again, like I think like Vitalik created Ethereum when he thought about the better way to use blockchain than Bitcoin. And then because of Bitcoin, he was able to grade Ethereum. Like, without that, Ethereum hasn't been born. So it's not, you know, like that's not competition. It's more like this is one idea that can inspire other ideas.

So any other ideas can be inspiration for us to be better. But again, it's not about winning. and that we think other things out there could inspire us. And that's the fundamental philosophy here. And I think that's the fundamental philosophy that the Ethereum Community also believes. But in the end, right, you have all of these different applications and there you have all of these different platforms,

and they're all trying to get the applications to build on. them. So it is competitive, right? Because if the applications go elsewhere, then a project is not going to win or not going to succeed. For the application side, when you're a business, like, you have your own priorities, right? And it's their decision to, you know, to decide which, which blockchain makes most sense for them. But there are things that, like, they're like for Ethereum, decentralization is the priority. right, like we don't compromise there. That's why there's scaling issues that the whole ecosystem has been working on.

If we don't care about decentralization and then your decision would be something else, that's okay because that's their decision. And you can define that as competition, but when you, when your priority is something else, like we don't see it as a competition like yeah yeah then then you decide on something else and then there's no point for us to like you know convince them no you should because like you care about different things in the world we care about decentralization and maybe some people don't but i think it's naturally attracted so many people because so many people care about decentralizations So what are your hopes for Ethereum for the end of the year and maybe for the next five years?

So my, I mean, yes, like the entire ecosystem and also you have the end of the year, just 30 East 2.0 will show more progress. But also we see a lot of the apps applications are making huge progress. already and again that Debcom we often have this you know announcements and updates from them that's always exciting so and that's a devcom by the way Devcon 5 this year is happening in Osaka in Japan in October we hope to see those exciting more exciting amounts announcement new applications happening and And then I personally hope to see more usability in Ethereum, like both for developer experience,

but also for the apps, usability for end users. And then the long land, again, like my original passion into this was maybe for this technology blockchain to be used for social impact or like financial inclusion. like I'd like to see that more. It's actually already happening, which is exciting. But I'd like to see that more in the long run. And then with that, we are doing this survey of DAP's solving real world issues. We started to do that at the end of last year.

And we were receiving like hundreds of submissions now, which show that how many these. apps are actually solving like real stuff like compared to five years ago you know a long time ago it was only those applications who you know said they were using blockchains but you know not necessarily you didn't really see the solution happening but now we see that I'm excited about that now but I'm excited about the future that the world will have more of those and then again going back to my original passion is something I'm excited about. Yeah, well, thanks so much for coming on. I am just regarding DEF CON 5, so that's going to be

in Japan and of course we'll put the links in the... Yeah, I'm actually wearing a Ethereum Japan t-shirt. For people in Japan. And just what are, can you remind us of the dates? Oh, yes, October 8th to 11th. and in Osaka, Japan, and more information will come very soon. And I'm, of course, I'm from there, so I'm very excited about that. And then Osaka is very, like, more unique, has more characters.

That's perfect for Ethereum. And I, you know, I'm pretty sure a lot of people haven't been there. So I'm excited to see our community people there. Okay, well, thanks so much, Aya. It was a pleasure having you on. And yeah, learning about the Ethereum Foundation. Thank you so much. Bye.

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