Infinite Gardens Have No Walls | Jill Gunter - Espresso Systems

[Music] all righty we all we all awake we're rounding it out we'll make it through Friday night let's go uh this afternoon has been filled with amazing speakers we still have amazing speakers that's one of the things that makes eth Denver uh one of the Premier ethereum Events anywhere in the world um coming up next uh long-term ecosystem OG uh Jill Gunter she's going to talk to us about infinite Gardens having no walls Round of Applause [Applause] please all right yeah Friday night let's go my name is Jill Gunter I work for a company called espresso systems but I work on ethereum and this evening I want to talk about Walt Gardens and the incredible alternative that we have built with ethereum and how we preserve it a Walled Garden is a closed ecosystem controlled by a single entity imposing restrictions on who can contribute what can get built and who can access it so I'm wondering who here has experienced the friction of opening a bank account in another country anyone yep who here's tried to get an app listed in the Apple App Store any web 2 developers or indeed in web 3 now too yeah who here has gone through the process of opening relationships with Wall Street Banks maybe some fund managers in the audience yep who here has lived in or traveled to a nation that has Capital controls in place yeah and who here may be immigrated from their home country and had to take their wealth and their assets with them we've all experienced wal Gardens but as we know there is a better way and that's what we're building with ethereum an ecosystem where anyone can contribute anything can be built and everyone has access and I truly believe that ethereum is the best tool for Innovation that Humanity has because it is permission it is composable it is Unstoppable these are the qualities that make ethereum different from the walled Gardens of corporate finance and corporate technology these are the superpowers that apps on ethereum get so ethereum is permissionless again anyone can contribute anyone can build anyone can access it and because ethereum is permissionless that has allowed Nations to run fundraisers raising $225 million instantly with global access it's also allowed us to support funding for people whose own states are attacking them ethereum is composable it's a composable environment it's an open ecosystem where anything can get built and everything is compatible and we get Innovations like a non-caster and Bounty bot and indeed the intersection of the two an anonymous bounty on a decentralized social media platform Innovation that can't happen elsewhere and we get decentralized stable coins that can be backed by any onchain asset ethereum is Unstoppable the platform and the apps that call it home cannot be shut down and through that it's given us verifiable Anonymous referendums on AutoCraft s and on currencies and what is it that underpins all of these superpowers it's decentralization this is the Beating Heart of what makes ethereum a worthwhile project it's decentralization that keeps ethereum composable permissionless and Unstoppable but it's extremely hard to preserve it demands tradeoffs in terms of user experience it it demands that the technology is more complex but those are sacrifices that we're willing to make to build in and on ethereum now in the last few years it's been easy to think that maybe we don't need a protocol to be as strong as we've built ethereum to be we've seen market share and M share go to weaker protocols to our mem coin loving Brethren over on the other chains and until last week there hadn't been a major hack in the last 2 years and so it was easy for everyone to become complacent but this is my call for us to double down on building a strong set of protocols in the ethereum ecosystem because everyday trust assumptions are invisible until something goes wrong said another way Hard Times create strong protocols strong protocols create Good Times you are here good times create weak protocols and weak protocols create hard times but I want to emphasize there are so many incredible teams in the ethereum ecosystem fighting to keep ethereum competitive and a strong protocol to keep it adhering to its values flash Bots working on Builder decentralization op working on interop the open intense framework spearheaded by the EF but bringing together competitors AC across the ecosystem to build to keep ethereum composable and then of course the core devs and the EF working to scale da and keep ethereum secure because we all know this without a strong protocol what are we doing here why build on chain at all we need to keep this magnifying glass on the ethereum ecosystem and infrastructure and ensure that we're not recreating the permission closed and centrally controlled ecosystems that we know in traditional finance and the tech conglomerates we need to ensure that all the chains on ethereum can scale and can work together like one unified chain and we need to build with censorship resistance in mind and so with that I'd like to introduce briefly a concern in all of this that I care about particularly deeply in the spirit of doubling down on a secure strong ethereum we need to talk about sequencers almost every single L2 that is live today runs a centralized sequencer this is the component of the software that orders transactions and posts it to ethereum for settlement now what does that mean what does that mean for the user if you're using a centralized sequencer on your favorite L2 well if the centralized sequencer goes down or tries to censor you I've got good news for you for six out of the 10 top 10 l2s by tvl they have working Escape hatches which means that you can't be censored for very long whether it's after 7 days or after a half hour approving period you will get your funds back but and I want us to be vigilant about this for four out of the top 10 that's not the case their centralized sequencers can still will censor you and they're working towards improvements I know that but this compromises today the permissionless quality that ethereum espouses now as long as you do have this thing this working skap patch maybe there's nothing wrong with using a centralized sequencer except for the fact that we rely on it for cross-chain composability and composability is one of those core values that we care about right it's a big part of why apps choose to build on ethereum and we can't live with a fragmented ethereum we will lose and so this brings us to centralized pre- confirmations sequencers again provide a key component of interoperability and composability because they provide these centralized pre-confirmation so who here has ever used an L2 great yep most people and who here has ever used a bridging protocol like a cross or hyperlane layer zero excellent yeah most people here well congratulations you've also used a centralized pre-confirmation because you see almost every interop protocol today depends on the word of the sequencer in order to bridge funds Bridges rely on these pre-confirmation because they come fast and that's what users want and need and bridges can't wait 15 minutes for the ethereum L1 to finalize and so if we're in a world with many l2s and many transactions happening across them and if all of those transactions rely on centralized pre-confirmation a new threat has emerged that one of these chain sequencers will be compromised Maybe by a party like Lazarus or maybe it will be controlled by a malicious actor to begin with and this creates a vulnerability that can result in loss of user funds hacks inconsistent States across roll out this is what it looks like now centralized infrastructure gets hacked all the time make no mistake it's not always on the core protocol of ethereum it was not in the case of bibit but that's why we have to be vigilant about the whole stack again from the front end to the DA layers to the l2s to the core protocol itself because hacks occur when there is money to be made and centralized L2 sequencers are no different so this is my call to double down on a strong ethereum double down on the infinite Garden to secure your app your stack your sequencer and this is what we're spending all day on at espresso we've introduced a confirmation layer that sequencers post to and that confirmation layer backs the sequencer word with bft finality and Economic Security making it reliable and it does all of this in a few seconds it's designed differently from ethereum it's designed to complement ethereum it's designed to be secure enough for anyone to trust and fast enough for everyone to use it's designed for cross-chain composability whereas ethereum as it should be is designed to survive World War I espresso is live today we've been live with a permissioned m net running since November we currently have an arbitrum Nitro integration that is ready to go for any developers looking to use it and we'll be rolling out an OP stack integration the next couple of months and the espresso foundation will be facilitating an upgrade to proof of stake starting on test net in April and Main net shortly thereafter a confirmation layer is key to composability Shared sequencers help keep ethereum Unstoppable and I want us to think about this because last week when 1.5 billion in eth was lost out of a centralized exchange the first thing people said was that we should hardfork the chain ethereum's very Integrity is at stake when we let cracks enter into our security and so we need to stay motivated and we need to keep our eyes on the security of every part of our infrastructure we must defend ethereum is the home to permissionless composable and Unstoppable applications if you'd like to learn more about espresso please check out our docs and you can always find me as many of you know on Twitter thank you [Applause]