AMA with RIG (Julian & Thomas) | EPF5 Office Hours

thank you so much Josh yeah awesome um yeah so thanks again uh julan Thomas thank you so much for joining us today I really appreciate it because it's the first time we have someone from rake at this AMA in the cohort 5 um I was asking barnab before he couldn't make it and few weeks before the cohort ends we finally get you so thank you so much for being here uh appreciate it and um uh so this is AMA uh the follows will have opportunity to ask you any questions about your work or ethereum uh the current research and so on but uh before we jump into that I just wanted to uh get some introductions uh if you can maybe tell us a bit about yourself uh maybe how did you start uh working on ethereum uh how did you how did you uh get into the rck in the first place what what brought you here yeah uh whoever wants to start how should I say Julian yeah go ahead um we can figure this Dynamic out as we go um so maybe I can introduce rig a bit uh first so we're the robust consensus group and we research the economics of ethereum uh very broadly so it goes from for example um economically incentivized attacks on the consensus system to the issuance um that validators or consensus agents receive uh to like block construction which is what tomma and I have been working on mainly i' would say uh which is for example how our blocks created with meth boost or proposer Builder separation uh and how are uh how do we ensure that we uh achieve the goals that ethereum has of for example credible neutrality so ensuring that all transactions eventually make it onchain um so that's I think uh a bit of an introduction to the robust in sensus group um for me how I go involved with etherum was um uh I did my undergraduate in econometrics uh I was a bit interested in in crypto and so I um volunteered at death connect in Amsterdam uh that's where I met most of the layer one R&D people at the layer one R&D day and also barnay who's the team lead of the census group and after that I stayed on for an internship uh and continue to full-time uh after that um so yeah my main focuses on I say credible neutrality so this is about how do we ensure that validators are not capture by big Financial motives so how do we ensure the validators stay decentralized even though there's a lot of value going around in the ethereum ecosystem um and how do you ensure that transactions do end up on chain um even if there is some centralization in certain parts of the ecosystem and yeah I guess that's like a very high level introduction of my work yeah awesome thank you so much uh coming from defon Amsterdam that's really cool uh yeah uh same same way uh Josh joined by the way that's that's awesome uh Thomas do you want to share your journey yeah maybe a bit just of additional info about R is that we also go from quite formal or like theoretical work and and we work with the academics and we write papers but all the way to more practical maybe protocol upgrades uh and and data um so it's it's quite Broad and wide and so a different uh range of profiles can uh join rate because I would say we have we are like quite a broad team and we we weely quite a lot on each other to to make progress on different fronts uh and then yeah other topics that are like worked on quite a bit are so block construction is one but uh you still have a lot of work on Insurance uh so the insurance policy of of ethereum uh staking um me all of these are are like topics we we like to to spend more time on uh and then for me uh so the I mean I was uh so I I I did a PhD in a very different domain uh in computational Neuroscience that was completely outside of of crypto um while I was doing my PhD I was still interested in crypto for I've had been for a while but like just kind of on on the side uh and then I got involved and doing yeah I don't know random work for random DS for for a while uh and the idea of when I started was like okay can I apply the skills I acquired during my PhD of analyzing networks which were brain networks at the time and try to analyze blockchain networks using kind of the same techniques uh so I tried to do that uh and I worked kind of yeah around that for a while uh mostly like staying Anonymous and in those and then yeah after I finished my PhD I said okay I don't know whether I want to keep going in Academia or whether I want to just do something else and and take a break so I gave myself a one year to do something else and see whether I would want to go back or not because after one or two years it's hard to actually get back to Academia you haven't published much and stuff so I worked uh at I got a job at Dune analytics um which is very much data blockchain oriented and and there I was like looking and mostly um was more yeah I was recruited as a data scientist but ended up being quite data engineering stuff looking at uh Spellbook which is a I don't know GitHub report that is public and everyone is kind of contributing and and sharing their own data structure uh which was nice but then I got very I missed research a lot uh because I was doing most mostly like software they kind of data engineering stuff which uh I mean it was interesting but I I missed research so I was like looking for like opportunities in research and that's I saw some TOS by barnab reached out to him we got talking uh not necessary for J at first and but then it it led to to me awesome yeah thank you so much for for sharing that and uh it's it's interesting like I think rig is one of the most like academic uh parts of EF or you guys have a strong academic background and um and so I want to ask about you have cryptography as well yeah of course of course uh but like it's it's very interesting because like uh all the fellowship uh that we do here is a lot of self-learning but some people are also working on the their phds and so on uh so my my question is like um uh how do you how do you see this connection of ethereum in Academia because um of course there are papers and so on but like I hear from a bunch of people working at universities that it's uh uh that like ethereum uh kind of maybe likes some some uh overlap in in the academic sphere and uh uh it's also it's also like like very Dynamic what's happening in ethereum compared to like you know the uh Old School academic approach uh so yeah uh how do you feel like uh comparing from your academic experience to your ethereum experience uh yeah if you have any thoughts any of you uh yeah maybe I can start uh for this one uh so you have different things uh it's like what is it to work at ethereum with academics and the differ between working for ethereum and working in Academia uh maybe so to start with the letter it is very very different um Academia is only focused on very deep topics um well it also like depends a lot on the field for me Neuroscience for example is like you spend like three years writing papers maybe two more years writing one paper maybe two two more years getting reviews from rev viwers until you actually get to publish uh eum is much more a space you get you have e research uh you have you know conference papers um all of those are like very much like like kind of uh yeah it's just a much faster space and you're also exposed to actual real world challenges a lot more at least at least for me um so yeah it's it's a big difference I I think if you want to work on very academic topics on etherum only it's it's possible but like then you are a bit disconnected to what's happening at the protocol level um whether in Academia it's like it's freak like you can work on like something very theoretical forever and like no one is going to be like why how does it connect to anything so like it doesn't really matter like there's no requirements for this so I don't know pros and cons uh and in terms of working at BF or in in rig uh with academic I think for me it's been really cool because you get to collaborate with people from with a lot of different expertise in different backgrounds like computer science or economics and stuff and they're interested in blockchain and one of the first people they contact is usually thef because ethereum is quite well known and and it has like a quite strong research uh Community um compared to other blockchains even like Bitcoin or like other ones uh um so yeah being like the kind of first point of contact for like a lot of academics in in different fields that are just interested in in in blockchains uh I think it's really cool uh and uh so yeah for me it's been very nice to just collaborate with a bunch of people uh yeah awesome thank you so much it's it's very interesting Julian uh you want to add anything or um yeah so for me I say it's very different so I've never been in Academia so it's it's harder for me to speak to that uh I guess for me decision was whether I would go into a PhD or or join the E uh and my reason for joining the E I think is stuff moves very quickly and this is very interesting uh you have a lot of freedom to work on problems but these problems are very applied and they they do matter which is very nice um I think my experience with working with academics uh has been very very good and very interesting um so sometimes um it it does feel like some acads are more removed from the protol which makes sense of course because uh it's our daily job to to look at it very closely um but then I think it can be very valuable to to work together with them and to get like an outside look on how to approach certain problems uh from a very uh yeah different different area um so I think um there's there's a lot of similarities between the two uh some differences are um maybe in the way that we we um end up with problems so um R does lots of academic things where we publish paper papers and academic conferences but then there is also lots of blog posts where we build up to a more U sometimes maybe even a more opinionated stance so um what should the protocol do there's a great post from barnabe about seeing like a protocol uh that addresses like what are the responsibilities uh of ether the protocol and I think work like this is very interesting because it's um it it has an academic stance in in how it Reasons from uh assumptions to Da data maybe uh but then it it doesn't necessarily take uh academic approach I think it wouldn't work there you need to have some view of of of what ethereum wants to do um so yeah I enjoy working on that as well nice awesome thank you so much for sharing that um yeah it's it's it's very interesting it's a very different experience I think from like researcher to the developer and uh we mostly had uh people talking about the developer experience here so I appreciate you sharing that and uh maybe like more um uh so you already mentioned uh about the rig uh you gave us some overview about what uh what Rick is working on maybe we can maybe zoom in a bit more about on your work I'm curious uh What uh uh what your current research current work is you mentioned the uh the sensorship resistance the neutrality uh so yeah give us some Alpha on your research um sure so what's nice is Julian and I work work a lot together um so like you know different parts of the team we all kind of like review and everything um like pretty much everything everyone publishes I think uh which is very nice uh but um we focus or like our interest differ uh in what we focus on like uh most of our time and uh so I've mostly been focused on uh inclusion list and some s resistance um so we've been iterating on designs that would improve the sensorship resistant properties of ethereum uh and we we together with other people at rig and and and in DF came with a design we think is good and will work um so basically where we went from like proposing different designs kind of iterating on on different approaches on more like a research over uh and now like the whole past few months for me I've been like trying to transition that towards more of implementation and specifications um trying to converge towards ANP like proposed it to CVS and everything so it's been like for me it's been a a big effort of like trying take that research uh proposals kind of stage and and try to move it towards like more of a specs and implementation kind of phas uh so that's been I think most of my time uh and then academically I think like around inclusion this you can work on like very different cool things um one thing I've been working on quite a bit is um Anonymous inclusion list and how can people participate in in protocols in general in a without revealing their identity which I think is interesting in more generally like and relevant uh for what we do uh and then I don't know trying to follow up with uh everything around blood construction and me so what is the future of PBS going to look like uh Julian has well he he will talk about it but Ebbs uh is on it lot and I've to to follow that as well um but yeah I would say mostly sensorship resistance and and a bit of work with some cool um EF cryptography team members on on anous broadcast and anous um yeah julan if you want to uh add something before we jump into more questions uh no need of course um yeah sure um so I I work together with TMA on the inclusion list proposals um and uh so I worked a bit before on this on andrine proposer Builder separation um and this was very applied work so trying to like iron out some some details um so like what specific otion mechanisms should we choose and and why and are there any um issues of people not actually wanting to use um proposed build of Separation uh um because maybe they're incentivized to do something differently um so I guess this is like the very applied work and then there's like a line of some longer running U more theortical work that's related to Market micr structure so this is about how um um agents in the market system interact um so for example i' I've lately been interested in um selling speed technology um as as a protocol so for example time boost on arbitrum is a proposal how that allows people to um uh get their transaction included faster than others and we've been interested in how this uh induces different applications uh and what the impact of it is on the protocol um yeah I guess there's some long running stuff uh as well some other stuff but we can talk about that more day too uh yeah thank you so much uh it's super interesting super important research uh and thank you so much for all your work guys I mean it's uh it's exciting to hear all of that uh and I'm sure fellows have ton of questions and I've been uh I've been holding them off so feel free to raise your hand we have done already yeah go ahead hey guys uh I've been working with uh barnabi as a mentor uh for uh for EPF project which is operator delegator separation so it's introducing delegations and protocol and I've actually actually been uh chatting a few with uh Tom on I think on inclusion Leist channel so my question is uh if we would ever have delegates enshrined in protocol which part of of the inclusion list provision or uh would you see uh you know bringing the most uh the most value for as a service Prov as a protocol service provider from the delegators uh being El committee I reckon yeah before ATT testers like which role could we abstract uh from uh from the current uh validator action set into a light a light validator if ever the the El committee you know part or the attestations thank you um so I uh yeah than great question so how I see this is um so there there could be a separation between operator and delegator but this doesn't necessarily mean that there's all separation in duties that these operators do so um what you were referring to as for example light operators this is like another separation I would say between the like the heavy and light operators uh so there could be uh delegators for heavy operators heavy operators delegators for light operators and light operators and each of them in principle could have different um tasks and duties uh and this is I guess barnab rainbow staking view um which is very interesting although it's it's definitely still uh far out and needs a little of research um so uh in my mind also I I don't necessarily see um um tasks being carried over to specific participants now uh so for example validators now do basically everything from proposing a testing and creating inclusion lists uh and I I don't like to frame it as uh okay validators now have these new rules I think if we were to approach uh as big of a change as Rainbow's taking uh it needs like a holistic reframing um so then uh I would just look at the separate duties that are there and and see um who would like create new entities that would then be assigned these tasks so uh for those Li operators so these would be people who don't for example have the loss of Hardware uh don't need lot of um of delegated stake um they could for example make the inclusion list I think as you were referring to but then a tricky question is how is the inclusion this enforced which is for example via the attestations um and uh as part of the rainbow staking Vision as it's U clear to us now but of course this is not certain uh attestations would be part of heavy operators mostly I think because um attestations would require execution uh and uh because solo stakers now are not large enough uh part uh of the at station Set uh that they indeed have like a very vital role there um so how I would see it is mainly um light operators would probably make inclusion lists they should have some way of signaling that the testers are not doing their duties properly which could maybe be um like some certificate based thing as is describing rainbow staking or maybe like facilitating a social Fork if ever necessary but I think that's very speculative but a very cool subject okay but if if they make if they create the the inclusion list then then the testers as you said will be heavy validator so the light the light consensus could be provide provisioned by light Val the light validators could actually propose the inclusion list and APS would would APS affect that so sorry or just maybe one cool thing because we just talked about like about that with with barab like a few hours ago I feel like the delegating kind of framework can also be thought of as a way to select uh people to fulfill certain tasks so in in an APS world you could imagine I don't know um I proposals are like light validators delegating stake to select who execution proposal will be um um and and I think stuff like this is kind of interesting because with APS right now we are like encountering problems in in trying to figure figure out like mechanisms like free market mechanisms to just like um have execution proposal Pro participate in an auction or whatever like just kind of stuff like this but like it all converges towards like centralizing forces or like one in one way or another we can't really figure out a good like safe way to do it that way yet so considering like an alternative of okay we can't have like a nice distribution across like a wide a wide range of of people actually participating and being execution proposal on APS uh maybe we can use like a delegate delegate system to actually elect these people uh rather than having the market forces converge to towards like a monopoly or analo so yeah just thought I will say sounds very interesting that even even the idea and the I'm I don't want to hold the the fellowship too much with my uh subjects uh if I read the timing games uh paper I think you guys had a big uh part of that now if I'm not mistaken uh the one that's been published on arches yeah uh yeah uh so the main author of that paper was casar but I had when I joined right after I joined uh on the mostly on the data part of things uh but yes that was an interesting G that means that theoretically a delegator could choose to delegate to validators that only work with uh with uh blog producers that do not censor or do not play timing games if you would ever have such a rating system Implement yeah for sure I think the value of having such a system is like it can be much more value aligned in a way like if we consider the ethereum community or like State like clients have values that are like non centering um diversity and like maybe a kind of good distribution across many players and stuff we can use like this delegate system to actually kind of enforce this rather than just relying on on Market forces that are if we can handle like the centralization for forces that come with it so yes I think that's uh that's the idea behind it thank you sounds very interesting okay thank you guys uh Dan likes to open with tough questions uh I'd appreciate the answer uh anyone else feel free to raise your hands uh Bon was first so go ahead uh hello hi guys so there is this uh web page called the uh rig open problems uh this is the link um I understand what's the purpose but is this updated and because it doesn't seem like it is and there seems to be something called the r open problems meet up but that also uh I don't know if that happens or not so like my question is uh how do people get involved in the research process and can people get involved and if so how and yeah thanks uh yeah thanks your question um so we have this uh rig open problems um which is meant uh for for some problem statements that we maybe don't have uh time to tackle or somewhat outside of our field of expertise to involve other people in there uh and uh it's also meant as a as a a surface for people to create their own problems uh so people that are interested in working with us are free to submit uh problems uh that could be facilitated via this system um so please don't feel constrained by just the problems that I listed on the website because indeed um we we haven't been too active on this front so I've created uh a new open problem uh somewhat recently around enshrine propos buer separation which is r13 uh which is the only one setus open currently on the uh on the screen and then there are a bunch of uh closed on or matched ones um so um in principle um we try to update this but uh it's quite time consuming to write out um like well specified problems and this is actually I think quite a bit of the job um of like applied research people is specifying the problem so that other people can understand what what actually the problems are um and yeah so also feel free to submit your own problems and then for the uh R meetups I would say that we had some of those earlier uh but we haven't had them in a while uh so potentially we could update the website to reflect that yeah thanks for question yeah awesome thank you guys um and by the way I really appreciate that uh you have these open problems I mean uh barab created it as a response to EPF demands as well so uh it's exactly works well for people to uh see what to work on uh here uh go ahead please uh yeah yeah hello thank you for coming um as I'm working on the implementation and testing uh part uh I wonder um what is the role of research on this testing stage uh do you follow your projects further or not if you follow what what tools do you use normally thank you yeah I would say uh it's it's been a bit of a switch conscious conscious switch uh for for for rig um to go from like a more theoretical maybe academic uh contribution to more of an applied uh kind of closer to the propol approach so it's it's it's it's shifting right now uh and so it's a bit of like a an early experimentation phase for us but what we try to do is really kind of bring our research um proposals to actual eips is like I think that would be like kind of the good way of framing this and then like work with cevs uh to to have like specs ready uh and and and then like eventually have like proof of Concepts on on like different clients and and some imp implementation there um and then that's kind of to me at least that's kind of what where R stops or like where like research stops like once it it's like in the hands of cev um you you don't like actively actively make research anymore but you you're still there to kind of uh yeah collaborate with with Dev so you you kind of make sure like the problem how you had it in in mind like is well implemented or like you also end up usually having like re research stuff that is not that can't really be applied so you have like feed feedback from from devs and you have to learn from this and and try to adapt your your proposal and then it's a back and forth to like try to make it work so that the research you had in mind is still kind of uh valid uh but um but with like the actual implementation constraints uh and for the tools I think it's there is not many tools we use it's just like it's mostly written docks and and hmd and notion dos and and then GitHub repos and and PRS uh that's I think about it um and for now for me it's mostly like yeah GitHub for the specs uh and not much else it's not very like cod heavy I would say uh we we leave you guys uh to to do that job yeah thank you I'm promoting grafana dashboards okay thanks awesome thank you guys uh do we have any more questions folks feel free to raise your hands speak care um anyone otherwise uh I will be forced to ask another question so don't take it away from you but uh okay K go ahead if you have another one yeah yeah I just have many questions you know one um you could you um uh describe a portrait of researcher like personal traits skills um because uh yeah sometimes for some people it seems maybe boring or or too hard or uh what what what skills do you need what trades do you need is a research sure okay I can I can startop to try but um I mean yeah I imagine the same question for Dev it's very very very broad um I'd say if I had to name one thing would say curious uh I I feel like without that you can't like really like keep pushing on research for too long because like if you're not like always stimulated by like what's new what exciting what you can learn and it's very hard to keep going in in in the research area I feel um but other than this it's just like as broad as the spectrum of people that exist on on on the planet I think I don't think there is a big like like stereotype of profile Even in our research team like whether you're talking to like an applied researcher or like a theoretical one or from domain to domain it varies a ton what you might like and or focus on and then maybe just to address like the kind of difficult T part of things I think it's just mostly uh jargon Jaron is that the word in English okay yeah um I think the barrier is is there in every field like the people in a given field are like usually use to use words they feel are better to communic communicate within each other because like they address like very well exactly what they want to talk about and very very specific things um so that's I think a barrier of unry more than but like I mean that's learnable like everything can be learned you can just like spend a bit of time in in one domain and you will start to to speak the same language as as as other people um feel like maybe it's a bit like some like transitioning from one language to another one uh in in in the code kind of World um but yeah other than this I I wouldn't like be able to give a good like portrait of a of of a of a stereotypical researcher uh what happens if if uh for example if your hypothesis fails do you feel like disappointed or it's just like normal work uh well in Academia you usually feel disappointed because you spent three years working on this so and positive results are always a bit more better published than negative ones which is a shame because I think we need more like negative results in in paperss generally in etherum it's it's really not not a big deal just because well first of all it happens a lot um and then the the research is so fast-paced that you just move on to another thing like it's not like you have spent years and years working on the exact same topic so if like something doesn't work out you just switch gears work on something else and it's not like as much as a mental load at all no time for regrets thank you I'm curious to hear sorry um maybe later wordss I'm curious to hear your view TAA or anyone else's on how research and development could interact and if there are for example tools that would make this interaction better uh because it's definitely something that we want to improve on well I I'm just I'm working on P so I'm building the dashboards with metrics uh which probably can be um interesting for researchers uh but on the testing phase that's why I was asking are you interested in the testing phase so so you can see the results how it's going and maybe you can find some space for improvements for example to find the new topics for research that's from my side thanks that's very interesting thank you so much I I just want to chime in for the question Julian asked uh you know like in the start of the EPF I really look I looked through the website but most of the topics were already closed um so I think over there and also um uh when I was doing my masters I was really looking for uh uh out from the industry like projects so I think ethereum could could put out uh thesis topics and uh um PhD topics out so that they can get Academia to uh collaborate with them uh also I I uh I think this point has been made like plenty of times in the ethereum community already but I think um if all the information for a particular research is on one platform I think it's it's much more easier to like like the barrier that to was speaking about it's it's it lessens the effect of that barer in in general I think yeah interesting thank you uh Bon do you have any question input yes uh I would like to agree with uh chag like I myself uh like I'm looking for a master's thesis and I'm really like I'm cont contacting the ethereum researchers and trying to uh like find someone who well this is a bit uh it's not just collaboration it they have to agree to be your supervisor it's a bit uh you have some rules and stuff but it would really uh be nice to be able to do your thesis as uh on ethereum with the researchers so I would like to really uh agree on that and uh also so yeah one other thing that I like asked Mario a couple days ago that there is there some place where I can see what topics are being worked on by who and uh well he mentioned a lot of useful resources but uh none of them was very like uh it wasn't indexed by topic and like who is working on what so for example you got eth research well where like there are posts you can look through posts but uh it's not very uh straightforward to like okay see find like a topic that you like and then like contact the researchers and maybe some place that has like all the researchers and the topic that they're working on or the topics that they're working on that would be uh good because then you will see what's happening right now uh with everyone and then you would know who to contact or even uh you probably don't miss stuff that's happening and you really want to get into yeah um agree with the sentiment for sure I I do think if research needs to be a bit more given a bit more credit than it is like it's I agree it's not like perfect but like if you really scroll through the post and and and you like find the topic you like and you look at the authors and then you look at what they wrote and what they worked on usually you can like pretty quickly like arrive to who is working on what I I feel like quite quickly I mean theux is not perfect I agree but like I feel like if you really it dig and um you get a good view of what everyone is working on I feel um and then yeah about like having like a a place where like topics are updated and like who's working on what I mean it's a ton of work uh to update this and it's probably just like what that's the reason why it hasn't been done because if you work on like all the time you're going to spend like trying to update like everything you are working on in a like nice comprehensible way for everyone to follow is going to be time you are not going to spend on research um so like there's a bit of a trade-off I feel like uh yeah my my take is like we publish regularly enough on E resource that people can be quite familiar with what we are working on if they want to I Really it's not the most digestible way to do it but like I feel like at least it gives you a good idea um maybe if we had someone completely dedicated to this you know to follow everyone's work and like actually put it in in like a a nice web page that everyone can follow and and click on uh it would be good but it's I feel like it's like almost a full-time job and even for me it's hard sometime to get clarity on exactly who on EF research is working on what because you have to remember people move around a lot like uh depending on topics and what they they're interested in or what they yeah just heard heard or like someone asked them to work on like if people are like quite multidisciplinary for most of them so they can also like jump from from a project to another and it can be quite hard to try to keep track of of everything yeah thanks for your inputs uh definitely very interesting uh just add on that I think for our teams the rig uh it's fairly legible as well so I I'll link our main website uh in the chat and it's digested by uh topic um so like posts and then who's working on that or who posted the post or papers and t uh so that should be quite digestible but yeah thanks for feedback yeah thank you so much guys um yeah like uh I think like generally ethereum being open you can just click through the PRS and see who does what but especially the research doesn't use you know giab or so on like sometimes can be harder sometimes it happens that you on E research and you have like an on name there can point it to the person right so uh yeah it it can take some looking uh Dan you have a question quick high level question if possible do you have a perceived timeline for uh fossil I reckon epbs first no and no or is is not necessary no no I I think it bu out very independent uh proposals both proposals are very interesting and very needed in their own way but I don't think like there is any dependency between the two uh and it's not my role to say when because I I can tell you like an EAP is coming very very soon I think that's uh like that's okay to to to say but like whether like something will get accepted or whether people will want to include it in what Fork is very much up to like a lot more people than than me or us uh so yeah absolutely yeah yeah ju ju was just aiming for a high level you know answer just what's your I I think it should be included as as uh fast as possible uh but so there's everyone that's working on a proposal so we'll see okay awesome guys uh do we have uh any more questions we got 10 minutes left uh so please use the time uh chur yeah it's uh it's not a direct question per se it's more of an opinion opinion that I want to get a view on um so um I was discussing this Mario yesterday uh on the standup call as well um like the general view of the ethereum community against vpss uh in general like AWS and other things has been that it's a centralization factor you know uh but in countries like mine um like you know I if I want a solar stake I just cannot think about it uh but if I do have a VPS uh I do get access to like the high bandwidth that is required for running an ethereum client you know so in that sense uh some sometimes times what most people see as a centralization vector can also be a decentralization vector you know a lot of lot of other countries can come in and that could also attract a lot of other VPS providers to come in so it's it's it's decentralized you know in general I think that uh something like EIP 44s enables uh such vpss to come on board uh because right now there's either like uh High storage uh low RAM and low uh CPU vpss or there's just like everything uh maxed out which is super expensive for uh anyone in third world countries to go into in general yeah um yeah it's an interesting take uh uh I'm not sure if you guys have any comments like definitely like one of the uh also what what uh Dan mentioned here what we discuss the uh the rainbow staking the eods approach is interesting for me that people can have people can run a different kind of notes some sort of light operators and have uh have access to uh to some way of helping the protocol even uh even uh under different uh different requirements um yeah uh but sure if you have folks any more comments questions otherwise I'll take one from my of uh K yeah go ahead yeah I just wonder um uh because we are familiar with Spectra upgrades and upcoming upgrades but I wonder can you show us some research we we don't even know yet like which is not widely spread or widely known like maybe you work for Far Future uh it's hard because we are very transparent and everything we work on to be honest but uh I think some of the stuff might be like considered in the future is like yes allowing participants in the network to contribute to the network completely anonymously um so without revealing their identity at all um right now we did like we had a small Roop by the way on trying to geolocate validators and it was very easy uh at least for some of them to get their IP address and where they were at of course it can be kind of upated a bit with VPN and stuff but like still like it's very transparent right now uh where validators and nodes are and who is running them um which is um I mean it's nice in a way but like could be bad um eventually in the future so I think some of the research around finding cry cryptographic ways or like smart ways to obfuscate um who sends what uh to the protocol and how they contribute to it is is cool research that might gain some direction um not only in on ethereum but like in in most blockchain applications so you mean privacy for uh validators yes for their Stakes exactly like not privacy for the content of transactions or whatever but like privacy for who contributes to the network so they can't be you know they can express their preferences and do whatever they want uh without being um being accounted for to add on to that so I think we are indeed usually very transparent about what we do like everything that we do is is published on the websites so uh some stuff that you might don't know about is usually just because they're either very small ideas um or maybe just not as impactful um on the other hand there are some stuff that we want to focus on more in the future which is mainly uh execution layer uh things well not mainly but it's it's like a new topic for us um so barnab has done some work on transaction fee mechanisms for for example account abstraction um so uh he calls his embedded fee markets I think this is kind of interesting it's not clear if this will ever come to the protocol but it's at least uh something that's related to uh protol so it should be thought about um so how do people for example share costs and how should the protal pass these on so that users still have a good experience of um of just um just knowing how much devalue their transaction and getting those on chain like in 1559 but this becomes more difficult if transaction fees become more complicated uh so yeah that's a uh research Direction that's maybe not so well known so probably we will have lower fees right so transaction fee mechanisms are not related to the level of fees it's just about user experience go thank you yeah thank you so much um yeah uh just wanted to reiterate thas the the uh privacy of allers is very important like this that's also very cool um because I've always always been saying like that we will have better censorship resistance with proof of stake because instead of like a huge container you have a you know little validator somewhere um but there are also other Traders on the Privacy so so with um improvements on that like could be very uh very private and also like yeah help with the overall censorship resistance um yeah yeah folks do we have any any anything else otherwise uh I might have uh some last questions uh because just follow up is it like for security reasons or why why do we need privacy uh for security reasons or just like you know imagine you want to express preferences and include transactions uh in the blockchain and you are contributing to this but the these transactions might uh be considered by someone else are as like I don't know um censorable or not compliant or something like this then we want some way that people can participate in the network without being targeted or flagged as are you are the one that included these transactions or uh stuff like this so um yeah I think I think it's mostly around censorship resistance for me um I do think um if people can express their preference is without being identified they can express them more freely and so that's kind of part of the the IDE behind the mechanism like uh the security as well like the S secret slute leader election is important because uh when you know the next validator and you can find his IP address you can D him you could potentially like you know just skip blocks so uh that's also also one thing but yeah generally like to be able to to resist the the capture right like the government can come and see that you oh we can prove that your validator here signs these tornado cash transactions or something like you don't want that so even yeah without a big container full of miners you still might have a problem um before we finish guys we have last few minutes I just wanted to ask for some general advice for our follows here uh what maybe something that like you would like to know uh few years ago when you've been diving into e research and uh yeah uh for for the people who are now working on starting to work in the R&D and spending their first few months on the project like what would you uh yeah do you have any advice any any anything uh they should know uh for me it would be probably start by working on something you feel is very very important uh it's always easier to start that way and then kind of the motivation keep going every even when it's like sometimes a bit confusing or or hard to understand like if you feel like you're working for something you really like or you think is important I feel like it's probably like a good uh good way to to start things like instead of like trying to find like I don't know yeah the the project you that fits the most with what you do or I feel like yeah I think it needs to be a big driver in what you do and like I I do feel like ethereum is a good place for this like I can be driven by some values or some um things you you feel are important and and try to work on this and it's always nice and then um try to talk to as many people as you can uh people are in the community like in thef but also like in The Ether Community I feel like quite accessible and rable and quite ready to help so in general like U just if you're interested uh on anything you want to work on U and are nice and just reach out to people and want to help like usually you'll get like positive responses or or maybe you'll get redirected to someone that is more relevant for what you want to do but like uh yeah take the opportunity like I feel like as an EPF fellow you have like already a role kind of in the in the community so it's it's a very good like way to open a lot of doors you can just be hey I'm an pH like everyone will probably have in mind what it means so it's very easy for you to just reach out to people and get in touch with them or like get like if you're interested in any thing they're working on yeah I don't want to extend the call too much uh but I I completely agree with to Tomas said and I think uh if you're interest in research it could be valuable to be very precise so when going through the East research posts or or whatever um there are usually lots of open questions that are uh either either implied in the text or referred to uh and being very precise about these uh it could be very useful if you're reaching out to people awesome thank you so much guys really appreciate it and yeah as you can see we are at a full hour so we got to WRA it up here but again uh really appreciate you joining us today I think we learned a lot get inspired so uh thank you so much for your time and again thank you so much for all the great work you do uh it's really really amazing to see the research from rake so uh yeah keep keep it up guys uh thank you so much for joining us um and uh uh maybe you're coming to Defcon um I uh we will have the whole EPF day there most of the fellows will be there so yeah I hope uh hope we can meet you there nice thank you so much for hosting this thank you yeah awesome a great day bye everyone