Fireside Chat with Kartik Talwar & Tomasz Stanczak at Pragma Prague 2025

[Music] For this one, I'd like to bring on Timas, who is the co-executive director of the term Foundation, and we're going to talk about some interesting things that are top of his mind and some things that I'm curious about. So, please join me in welcoming Tamas on stage. [Applause] just put that I saw that with two microphones I would be able to say two more two times more things. I think that's how Yeah, that's how exactly it works. Uh this is scaling, right?

Um so we got 20 minutes and want to talk about a lot of things. So let me start by asking you uh what did you get done this week? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's why it depends on how we count when the week starts.

Uh because it's kind of like weekends are missing recently. Um we we've been working a lot on the major changes at the at the EF and for Ethereum. So it's still it's still finalizing the strategies and delivering those. Uh you know big part of the changes at the EF were communication. We had uh like the EF-wide town hall this week with the open questions.

So it was like two three two hours run when when finally we found this time after after previously meeting two two months ago we want to do it every month and make sure that everyone is set for deliveries and I think that now is the time for for deliveries. So you know being being here at the event and answering uh answering lots of nice questions and making sure that we sharing the direction that we share the strategic goals is very important because big part of the I guess leadership is making sure that everyone hears what we want to do and that we repeat the same things scale L1 scale blobs and uh improve interop and UX. Um and now I see also like the five tier strategy of winning. we start talking about it probably more and uh well it's a lot of meetings and confir ideally every single person who comes to have a conversation says like this is an actionable item that that you can deliver so each each time I have the conversations here and someone says like let's let's do this thing um I think this is thousands of small things that we delivering every day and hopefully it will continue but everyone has to have the same mindset now like shipping on Ethereum so probably we start asking this question what you've what you've done this week. What have you shaped uh shaped it or it's just talking?

Uh and we've been talking a lot. That's awesome. Um not to put you up on the spot here, but uh any any interesting things you're willing to share from the town hall that uh are active themes that give people a heads up. Uh from the town hall, yeah, sure. People are asking mostly about the confirmation of those discussions that talk that go on Twitter, on the conferences, on the podcast.

they want to have clarification how this translates to tutoring foundation uh actions. So mostly we are now finalizing like the structuring both of the major clusters at the foundation the ecosystem development and the protocol research uh and development. So because next weeks in Berlin we'll be meeting for the interop with multiple clients client teams. So the preparation for that we want to be just properly uh properly pre prepared and and ready to discuss the delivery the schedule. So uh lots of discussions about the structure of the teams how exactly they will look and that's also where the questions were also the culture uh questions of like what what does it mean what we've discussing in the uh on Twitter on forecaster and people want to hear it.

So there's 200 people at the foundation and the conversations one-on-one don't happen. So the town hall is needed and I I think in the past that was uh that was missing. Amazing. Um I think we'll just jump right into some of the the interesting stuff. Um who do you think Ethereum competes against?

Who Ethereum competes against? So uh well Ethereum that's maybe that's the five stages of win. I think the at the moment I think that we were pushed to look at the Ethereum versus alternative L1's but uh I see that Ethereum is really delivering the platform for L2s to compete against the alternative ones. I would like the I would like the uni chain base arbitrar and all of all of the different L2s to to simply keep winning with the all the alternative L1's. So I wanted it to be very clear that if you're on Ethereum and building layer 2 then you'll be just beating everyone who has decided not to go with Ethereum and delivering that for the platform for Ethereum mainet is is the most important goal.

So uh in this way as the ecosystem we competing with anyone who decided to to build their own chain solution and not join the network effects that Ethereum uh is generating and will be generating. uh and then the next stages I think for us is first of all make sure that as we as we clearly say that uh the L2s on Ethereum beat other L1's that then we can also show the very strong the the hub of Ethereum for all the chains so that we start showing this inter interchain connectivity very strong interrup and we also deliver like the strongest base so here you have the solutions like Celestia like uh DA so is it competive ition. It can be partnership or competition. We have to strategically uh design it with uh with those players. Then you look at the interchain solutions whether it's layer zero or any other bridging solutions how they should play into the interrupt.

Um and then I think that we should just come back to talk about the uh Ethereum as a as an asset as a story of value like how it how it plays in the world with Bitcoin with reserves and uh that's that's probably a big question of the large enterprises large treasuries um the the big finance asking of how they how they allocate and how they feel that uh atrium is the like the most globally neutral secure store of value for the future. uh and and it matters now in the perception of uh of many people in the in the industry. uh why it matters because it strengthen the network a lot like it it shows the strength of the that comes back to that to the competition in other levels shows the strength of Ethereum as a network secures it on uh on all the levels make sure that the uh that any deployed and we we talked about this like this trillion dollar security initiative that we announced recently and next week tell people more about what what the initiative is exactly so we say that um on if you launch on Ethereum you should be feeling safe if you launch a trillion dollar fund in a single set of smart contracts and you can operate them on the network and you feel okay I'm I know exactly how to operate every single aspect of the stack uh and how to secure it and it's um it's how to educate anybody who manages the keys how to maintain the connectivity on the even like the web two layer like the are there possible attacks on the data centers or the particle like DNS replacements or and so on so on uh so all this we collect feedback from the ecosystem on where they see potential attack vectors risks and we say look Ethereum is already showing us the most secure network and how we go beyond that how we say that even now as you run like 10 billion 100 billion contracts and and funds on Ethereum how do you go to this $1 trillion at the same time we said look trillion dollar also means that it's uh that it's a billion users at $1,000 each that it's uh has to be the network that is globally trusted and feels is globally safe because uh for for millions or billions of users around the world, this uh this place to safely store assets of like $1,000 value is extremely important and that's what we deliver. Uh so they almost created this like security northstar for uh for Ethereum to say that we both go wide and also we care about this large funds. So we want to always be connector of the the large finance but also individuals that feel that they can go entirely independently and privately.

So I guess maybe just to finish the the thought here, we kind of start off by talking about what does it mean for Ethereum as a store of value. What are kind of these five uh layers that uh kind of gives us a good picture for like what the end goal is and where we are in in that journey right now. Uh where we on the journey I think that we were in the last maybe one one and a half year we were pushed to like just competing with L1. So, so like where where we where we should be soon is like just to keep talking about Ethereum globally as the global economy and and go even beyond this comparison with Ethereum Bitcoin and say look the global economy in the future should be built on Ethereum because that's programmable. All the all the BTC when it enters the economy and is traded it should be traded on Ethereum chains.

Um this is the direction I think we are below that because we started simply listening too much to the voices that try to create a bit of uh of disagreements between like the L2's vision L1 vision and uh and strong statement that no this is this is the Ethereum vision of this like L2's customization and very very broad outreach very strong call one with lots of high value activity uh there's lots of engineering and research challenges for this for delivery on the on the mainet to to show strongly this is the platform for all the L2s for all L1's to become L2s on Ethereum that's where we are now and uh and that's why this next year is so critical so look we we inviting now all the engineering excellence and all the brave ideas of uh we open to uh any changes well I'm open to onward between you and uh getting that actually to happen yeah yeah so speaking of I guess what are some uh crazy things that uh could be up for uh Sure. I think that like um anything that uh asks questions about the major rewrites of the networking networking layer like the P2P um any any like the automated approach to like AI for the community, the the building the ecosystem, the hackathons, the meetups with with AI. Uh coming back to protocol like any significant changes to consensus layer that say oh this is something that we never thought about but actually delivers the the same guarantees but moves us to the next generation like so you see now this beam chain but also maybe something totally different. Uh so I guess maybe just to help everybody in the audience understand this. So when you say we may be open to a change of the consensus, what exactly are some of the features that we're trying to optimize or what are kind of the measurable things here like hey this becomes from I don't know 50% efficient to this gets cut down by 100x.

Yeah. So what what I care about is for sure to make this like strong promise that the uh layer 1 mainet gas limit is keeps growing and probably over time it should be easily doubling every every year. uh now Dunkret suggested this like 3x for the next two two years so it's 10x together and then like 100x over four years and uh I think that the change of thinking at the EF and in the ecosystem should be we we set this very clear goal like we have to grow uh we want to be strong base for layer 2 and now we start thinking of what the IP should be and what the design of the of the chain should be while also remembering that the security and censorship resistance are like absolutely important for for every user for every institution that comes to us they keep asking for it. So it's it's not like oh we we were right we change everything and and suddenly it doesn't work. No, but it I think there's lots of innovation that we should not be afraid of using in Ethereum to say, you know, instead of just thinking of a change and EIP and then checking then start implementing it and then checking how it affects the how affects the protocol, think of like what the goal is like what people are asking for like what's what the actual speeds levels order because even if you said oh 10x 10x on the protocol maybe if we go to all the enterprise and say like imagine the world in the future everything that you have to execute on a on uh and everything that L2s will have to use for the interrupt for the L1 hub how it translates to the exact gas limits that we have to achieve and when we know it like when we can calculate okay so is it just a handful of EIPs is the major rewrite of the P2P layer we we uh we just like started building the P2P team uh well we started a few months ago and now people are joining so I think now we have three people on the team building the new P2P layer and just to just to understand this means we already know what needs to be done and now we're in the engineering phase of it or this is a open problem that also needs a solution.

Yeah. So we we know what to do for the next 6 to 12 months. So this is uh on scaling there's still still the question of showing showing everyone like why. So because in the in the decentralized ecosystem it's it's one thing is to say we have clear goals and we go there but then everyone has to say all right that's that's why and we're moving there and and we delivering that. So this 300 million gas blocks and the eight times the blob capacity and further improvement of the blob capacity and the wallets that that can connect to all the L2s and all the L1's and just like move liquidity freely.

Uh also I think it's clear and clear that we have to have short block times. Now why why is that important? Yeah. So to support Ethereum as the as the hub for all DL2s to to feel that they don't have to design the bridging layers that are outside of Ethereum outside of this Ethereum hub. uh so so that also you can have a bit more of the uh settlement trading like sentiment in a financial sense trade activity on mainet uh that feels that's okay you can build an 01 and have this uh very good preconfirmation or or simply very good block times confirmation times uh it should feel good on the layer one and it seems like more and more convincing that that's where we should go now is it is it just start with 8 seconds but should it go to 1 second or 3 seconds like where were where there are the global decentralization risks should there be some like very novel designs with geographical sharding uh I think this this some of these expressions are mine and then like the the other questions are coming from the industry saying like it has to be hub now we we know that this is a hint strong hint that's where we need to go but we will also have to ask questions of how exactly to get there and and people should start to be much more brave on on designing it I mean this is the the best form of experimentation that uh I personally uh would like to see.

So this is awesome to hear. Uh I guess maybe on that same topic uh do you have any uh thoughts on some of the talks that have been happening around uh replacing EVM with Risk 5 architecture VMs? Oh sure I mean so Risk 5 was explored as an idea by Vitalik and proposed and this is because of uh potential improvements for the ZKVMs. Um we've also seen a proposals of looking at other languages and and design. So whether it's uh no more lang for privacy or cairo kairo VM and solution as a replacement or additional support.

Uh so I think the buff paths are possible like the replacement or coexisting VMs. I think the coexisting VMs is a bit more natural. So you want to have all the all the existing smart contracts simply maybe like executed side by side and blocks and then for speed you just start deploying new protocols and the new VMs. Um what we care about is just the best developer experience. And I think that much of the developer experience now is just like being used to libraries and uh existing existing VM and and behaviors of how to deploy applications.

And it seems that the VM by itself like more and more people think like look this is not the bottleneck actually the design of the of the EVM the EVM can be super fast and it's even as we exploring this ideas and think maybe there'll be like 10x improvement in the future for the ZK just the fact that we started looking at it it just gives us more answers and for for now it feels that the answers are stay with EVM and just keep improving some other areas of the system like there some small touches around EVM will help a lot and the proving like the Ziki provers with addressing the all the provers and the if proofs uh challenge from that Justin was pushing just just already so amazing like what you see from succinct what you see the from risk zero the other players in the market and now the all the announcements around stew and uh the starkbased solutions from starknet uh all of this really places Ethereum at the forefront of innovation on zk and and you know many people see that the CK will be uh amazing answer for scaling for privacy also on the client uh client side proving so accelerating this space will be will be big part of the Ethereum leap forward I mean that's exactly what we want um the the question here is how do you get to uh enable that faster than it has been historically and um when you are kind of doing that as an orc with 200 plus people um what are kind of the challenges and kind of what are the ways you you get to uh sort of get everybody back in uh in an urgency mode. Um yeah, I mean like structuring the teams for for that. So now team and Alex and Barnaby were working on looking at the teams and structuring them more like aligned with the goals and showing like how how those three lanes of scaling L1, scaling L2 and improving interop and UX are uh are kind of forced in everyone but hopefully in positive sense that like 80 90% of work of every team should be related to this work. Sure, we leave us like some space for the more of the long-term uh solutions, but but this should be not not so visible as they are nowadays in EF like the I think that world nowadays and the and the industry they need the answers for the next one two years. the the long-term preparation from Ethereum Foundation was was there has been there and it still matters but I almost think that thinking about long-term nowadays it's exactly executing the short-term goals like this this is the time time in the in the world with all the technological shift that you have to move very fast and understand what technological chief shifts are happening now uh so so the organization is preparing for that is it is it challenging uh sure but also there are like all the other teams and I picking up the the winners, bringing also the talent to the right places also taking advantage of the talent outside of the foundation which simply like people that want to contribute like the engineering managers, strategies, the HR people from other teams that come and tell us this is how you execute super fast.

This is what you can change, this is how you can adjust. So you don't have to bring those people on board. Sometimes just like a few hours conversation and they actually are super helpful now. So we take advantage of all of this. That's amazing.

Um, and I guess maybe to to end things here, uh, you've obviously, uh, I've seen you, uh, here the rest of the week and people have been coming up to you and giving kind of their thoughts on what they think can be made better and, um, and, uh, some anywhere from suggestions to complaints. I'm sure you've seen a lot of it, but um what do you think uh you can kind of ask for here to people and uh help kind of get fasttracked on some of the things that you are you think are important or that are being um missed or underlooked and uh things that people can help the Ethereum Foundation. Did you succeed? Uh yeah, sure. We we're being asked a lot about this uh local community hubs like the acceleration places like people to to meet with the incubators, accelerators, VCs.

So uh you know there are many fantastic events organizers and people who on board developers who onboard founders organize hackathons. So well if global is a massive on boarding place and uh just just to connect all of this into a network of accelerating people together into building on Ethereum uh celebrating the applications of every single person that will be building here and during the hackathon uh picking it up and helping each other to to get funding to get noticed to to get connected helping with hiring uh all of this you can you can help us to deliver you can do that without us but also Ethereum Foundation will uh improving the tooling to make sure that you can do it very fast and efficient way. Amazing. Well, you know what to do people and uh Tomas, thank you so much for the conversation. [Music]