Ethereum's Next Upgrade Could be The Most Bullish One Ever

Derek Chiang (0:00)

The reason why ETH will dominate is because Ethereum has the best, I just say, digital infrastructure of all the blockchain.

John Gillan (0:06)

The Clarity Act is dead, the Federal Reserve is hiking rates, and crypto is carrying on anyway. Back in July, we asked if ETH Labs could help make Ethereum the root of global finance. Today we are asking, can they make Ethereum faster? Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the podcast that's here to remind you that clarity doesn't come from Washington, it comes from the consensus algorithm. I'm your host, John Gillan. Today is Thursday, September 17th, and today we are joined by three friends from ETH Labs, Benji, Derek and Julian. I'll let them introduce themselves in a second here. We've got a lot to cover today. ETH Labs is publishing a collaborative article on the case for a faster Ethereum. There's been some drama between Ethereum and base. Are they getting divorced? What does it count abstraction? What does this all mean? And we're going to talk about tokenization a little bit in this episode too. I hope if that all sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. As a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our partners at Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you trade, earn and borrow all in one place. So keep an eye out for more information on them later in today's episode. But for now, welcome back to the Milk Road Show ETH Labs. How are you gentlemen today?

Derek Chiang (1:12)

Hey, Dylan, Jason Bebant.

John Gillan (1:14)

Thanks for having us.

Binji (1:15)

It's my first time. I'm excited. Thank you.

John Gillan (1:17)

It is your first time. Welcome, Benji.

Derek Chiang (1:19)

Benji, Derek.

John Gillan (1:21)

This is always a little bit overwhelming for me when I have multiple guests, but I like doing these group check-ins with ETH Labs. Gentlemen, I thought a great place to start this conversation would be with the recent news from this morning. You all published a piece titled, It's Time for a Faster Ethereum, What the Ecosystem Has to Say About EIP 8198

This is all about something called quick slots and making the case for that. For people who maybe haven't read this piece yet or who aren't familiar, what are quick slots and what are you saying with this piece? Who wants to kick us off with this one?

Binji (1:56)

Yeah, I can try to take a stab.

Quick slots, essentially, Ethereum has walk times and they're 12 seconds today. Quick slots is a proposal for the next upgrade after Glamstradam called Hegotta, which is currently being scoped. Quick slots essentially is an EIP that is suggesting this approach in which we can reduce that time incrementally over time. It's actually a mechanism that allows for us to make Ethereum faster. Right now, this mechanism does not exist and 12 seconds is hard-coded. Everyone who's building on Ethereum is stuck with that today. People might try to do workarounds around it, but at the protocol level, you're stuck with the 12 seconds. Quick slots enables that to be tweaked over time and for the reductions to take place. The initial proposal is to reduce it to 10 seconds and evaluate over time if that is worthwhile. Regarding the way I think ETH Labs thinks about these sort of things, generally, there's an EIP written by Carl Beek and then championed by Barnevay from one of the founders of ETH Labs.

He shared in the All Core Devs in August, in the 6th of August. Essentially, since then, has spent a lot of time, and massive shout out to Barnevay, who's not here, unfortunately, that to speak to hundreds of people, this is the kind of upgrade that encompasses everybody. A faster Ethereum encompasses everyone who uses Ethereum, from the user to the builder to everyone on the L1.

One of the things is ETH Labs doesn't necessarily need to be the one that is like, hey, this is what the faster Ethereum is like, and here's why it's good to coordinate that alone. Instead, if ETH Labs can help build feedback loops across the broader ecosystem, here are the needs of all the different people who may be affected by a faster Ethereum, who may want a faster Ethereum, who may not want a faster Ethereum. That's a helpful feedback loop, and that's something that ETH Labs generally wants to do. I think if we can walk out of this and be like, we helped establish a better feedback loop for these performance-related changes, and we're able to advocate for them in our own different ways with the ecosystem that might need it, then that's a good benefit. And so this piece was less about the full technical breakdown. I mean, there is, if you scroll far enough. But largely, let's hear from the ecosystem. This change exists, it can exist. It's time to prioritize it for Hegotah. We believe strongly that it's an S-tier prioritization and it should happen. And we essentially want to help the broader ecosystem, maybe understand it, learn about it, and also share with the other core devs of Ethereum what exactly the demand looks like for it. So the article is very much around us and the 20 plus ecosystem teams and people that we spoke to that are advocating for QuickSlots.