Bob Summerwill ~ What is Ethereum?

[Music] foreign we'll kick it off with our first presentation everyone um day two of each Denver it is my distinct honor to welcome Bob summerwell to the stage Bob is a long time member and contributor of the ethereum community and the broader crypto ecosystem I can't think of a better person to give you a overview of what exactly ethereum is so hand it over to Bob thank you [Applause] so uh we're just gonna have a nice easy start today I'm just going to ramble a little bit nothing nothing too taxing so hi I'm uh I'm Bob some oil for anyone who doesn't know me uh I've been involved in the community for well good four years now uh I was at the uh at the ethereum foundation I worked at consensus Enterprise ethereum Alliance and now I'm executive director at the ETC cooperative so welcome to Denver um I hope everyone's enjoying themselves here it's a lovely place and uh and I was thinking it's it's kind of an appropriate venue as a as a sort of a Frontier Town um for where we are in uh in blockchain which is very much at the start of uh of a new wave of of Technology so we are in the very early days everything's very emergent everything's very rough uh do not panic here's a buffalo and a lovely Buffalo coat so this was at the uh Colorado History uh Center I went to yesterday so what is ethereum um many different analogies people have drawn you know a world computer a a Singleton platform that we can build things on web 3.0 lots of themes of sort of personal freedom and privacy um the community and the people are obviously very important um but what I would say the most is is think of it as a as an operating system for for human organization you know lots of people have come here dreaming of a of a better future and I think um to me one of the most important elements is is an end to zero-sum thinking that really throughout the history of of humanity we've we've been uh in a very sort of resource constrained doggy dog kind of uh place and uh and and many hierarchies have come from that and uh and I think we're we're really we're really past that and uh an ethereum and other blockchain Technologies are already an opportunity for us to to look at different models um which are not zero sum most systems have engineering trade-offs which they need to make I mean that's another thing to to remember with with blockchain technology there are no silver bullets blockchain and ethereum are not silver bullets either they are just Tools in our toolbox and uh trade-offs May lie in different places depending on what you're trying to build one of the books that I've enjoyed the most in the last year is sapiens is that anyone else red sapiens so I'm not really going to talk about technology um today um because many many other people are going to talk about technology so I'm going to talk more about ideas and really about humans yeah so here's some of my favorite quotes from this book there are no Gods no Nations no money and no human rights except in our Collective imagination because really I think what we have with ethereum is the opportunity to dream and to build new models first you never imag you never admit that the order is imagined you always insist that the order sustaining Society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature people are unequal not because humor RB who was uh one of the uh one of the Great Kings of the past not because you said so but because those those Gods decreed it people are equal not because Thomas Jefferson said so but because God created them that way free markets are the best economic system not because Adam Smith said so but because these are the immutable laws of nature so that's a common pattern that you'll see throughout human history is um is these Collective uh beliefs Collective delusions shared beliefs um which are presented as Universal and self-evident where they are no such thing and he also talks really about this social scaling mechanism so how did so homo sapiens managed to cross this critical threshold eventually founding cities comprising tens and thousands of inhabitants and Empires ruling hundreds of millions the secret was probably the appearance of fiction large numbers of strangers can cooperate look and cooperate successfully by believing in common myths any large-scale human Corporation whether a modern State a medieval Church an ancient city or an archaic tribe is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's Collective imagination people easily understand The Primitives cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits and Gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire what we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis take for example the world of business corporations modern business people and lawyers are in fact powerful sorcerers the principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger Tales and just finishing up here so homo sapiens you and me are basically the same as people 10 000 years ago the next Revolution will change that we are probably one of the last generations of homo sapiens we do it's best to forget the fact but we're animals um and a quote here about money for thousands of years philosophers thinkers and Prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil be that as it may money is also the apogee of human tolerance money is more open-minded than language state laws cultural codes religious beliefs and social habits money is the only trust System created by humans that can Bridge almost any cultural Gap and that does that does not discriminate on the basis of religion gender race or social orientation thanks to money even people who don't know each other and don't trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively and I think this is really where um where blockchain and and ethereum have give us the opportunity to to make some real change to the world because money or value transfers are one of the very few things which are nearly entirely Universal so values so from the ethereum white paper um some very simple um sort of values or or goals Simplicity universality modularity agility non-discrimination and non-censorship or fairly uh uncontroversial there this was in edcon so I are the uh the executive director of the foundation talked about her values so she said I care about world imbalance and Injustice hunger obesity energy shortage waste lack of educational rights gender inequality poverty human trafficking domestic violence unfair trade and we all have our own things which are important to us but this is where it all started for ethereum was three guys on computers hacking away and uh and here we are at a build-a-thon carrying on from what started in a very small way with some dreams and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger but it's not 2014 anymore and we're at a new phase where I think you know we really don't need to reinvent the wheel for everything and we're in real need of cross-pollination of experts from other fields from business uh looking at organizational structures governance and other scientific fields because we cannot solve all of human Humanities problems ourselves though we do have a great uh fabric for for such efforts but humans weren't meant to live in the market order of contracts money and impersonal rules never mind huge societies we were designed by evolution to live in small tribes and we still hold on to that programming and it rubs up against modernity constantly and this is something I've been talking about a lot in the last year or so is that there is an awful lot of of tribalism uh within blockchain between projects uh and seeing each other as as enemies as opposed to siblings and no matter how you are and this is a good quote from from Bill Joy of sun no matter who you are most of the smartest people work for someone else and I think there's a real need for us to uh to collaborate across the whole Space as Emin said no single coin will Moon by itself either the entire ensembler goes up together or they all mop the floor mired and regulations scams and lawsuits it's essential for the communities to work together and then a great article from Kent here who was just here a little while ago isn't there Divided We Stand the irrational Insanity of crypto tribalism distributed computing can change the world for good if we get out of our own way and uh and I do love these these characterizations so yes Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme ethereum is a centralized cult EOS is scammy vaporware cardano is scammy vaporware and Bitcoin cash is a malicious Fork led by Satan himself so yes let's get past that eh um there was an Etc talk um at edcon this may which is where I I first met Anthony lucady um and that was great says kudos to both communities for civil professional and non-stabby cooperation and I I tweeted around the same time since November I've engaged in some form with a you know a huge number of projects and I would really encourage everyone else to do that to leave your mind open to opportunity we are in the very very early innings nobody knows what's going to work and what isn't going to work you know many of these projects are just exploring different trade-offs and most people that I've seen have got much the same motivation you know they want uh they want a better world no demonization please because the competition is the status quo not other blockchain projects and that that is meant to be a Canada flag the uh Unicode things up never mind be nice Let's Build a Better World you have the power within you to do that and that's what I would encourage you to all do this weekend um we are all superheroes we all have that ability and power to change things you just have to believe it and start acting so that's a dream thank you I don't know how we're doing for time if anyone's got any questions or anything or just would like a chat have a chat I've run out I've given it all away there's none left in the country it's a shortage sorry gone boom oh God behind you um so my question is about following updates of ethereum protocols like do you plan to implement Etc 2.0 charging Beacon chains all that stuff um I I think that's to be determined um something which is definitely needed on Etc is as much compatibility as as is possible um there is a uh an ethereum classic improvement process uh point for adding um adding missing op codes for straight evm compatibility and I think I think that's that's the most likely kind of compatibility approaches is is keeping the evm aligned and and really wanting to be in a position where where tooling can work very easily you know that you can that you can move things across as to as to sharding and another at 2.0 yeah not sure I mean the way I'd characterize uh classic in general is is more conservative in terms of changes more security conscious more uh uh yeah careful so I I'd say you know lots of 2.0 stuff is is is brand new unproven researchy uh and probably quite scary to lots of people in classic so one more question do you have any bounties for hackers on the hackathon if they Deploy on Etc at this event no I'm afraid not I'm sorry you can have a hug though if anyone does um ethereum Foundation is known for be generous to give grants to the project since uh recent changes in ETC Cooperative do you have changes in your granting platform changes in what sorry in in granting like you've given grants to projects which are building on EDC um we have funded some projects yes but there's there's very limited funds um you know in in general classic is you know maybe five percent the size of of ethereum so it's quite quite Limited thank you thank you has there been a plan um for increasing security against 51 attacks on ethereum classic among the devs um there's there's been a there's a few different things that can be done I mean the the something which uh which some people maybe don't uh appreciate with with 51 attacks is that is that usually the victims of those are exchanges more than they are individual users um you know if if you have a situation where uh you know some pool or whatever has got got majority of hashing power I mean that doesn't mean they can do anything you know I guess there's this this misperception that it's like well haha send all the money to me um but you can't do that you know all of the transactions uh are assigned so the only thing that you can really do with that is is do double spends um and usually the victims of those would be exchanges rather than individuals so um you know I guess the the perception that if if something is has got 51 attacked you know all value is lost in that ecosystem that's not really true um you know you can just uh have a lot larger number of confirmations for more security um another thing which has been proposed is uh is defensive mining is that really given that the exchanges are more likely to be the victims of those um in in a situation where uh attacks are being detected it's probably in there interests to themselves mine um I mean this this opportunities as well for checkpointing some people you know would Advocate that that could be centralization in itself um but yeah I mean the all uh proof of work chains are are really subject to to 51 attacks it's just a matter of scale um but yeah I I wouldn't say it's a huge crisis per se one more question hey Bob good to see you uh what's your favorite wallet my favorite wallet well um I like my crypto cheers everyone