Uncommon Core 2.0

Hasu and Jon bring on Ansgar and Caspar from the Ethereum Foundation to discuss the ETH staking endgame. 

Ansgar and Caspar recently published two controversial research posts which included a proposal to change Ethereum’s issuance curve. They are concerned that the current ETH staking economics could lead to nearly 100% of ETH being staked, with much of that in LSTs. They propose reducing issuance and targeting a lower stake rate.

We go deep in this episode on PoS economics, liquid staking, restaking, economic security, centralization concerns, and much more.

__

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:25) Possible Changes to ETH Staking?  

(00:49) Overview of Current ETH Staking

(16:32) LSTs & Staking Rate Increasing        

(21:36) Nominal vs Real Yield

(23:22) Tax Implications of Staking

(27:57) Staking Demand & External Revenue

(35:33) Stake Ratio Targeting

(36:21) Is 100% Staking Bad?

(40:05) Can ETH LSTs be Money?

(55:24) Would Any Changes Make a Difference?

(01:04:05) Stake Targeting

(01:10:20) Will Targeting Centralize Validators?

(01:22:53) Fiat Money Parallels         

(01:25:16) MEV & Restaking Revenue          

(01:30:52) Electra Proposal to Change Issuance

(01:46:01) Security Budget & Economic Security      

(01:53:40) Validator Set Quality         

(01:55:10) Incentives to Maximize Validator Decentralization

(02:19:00) PoS vs PoW Political Complexity

__

Twitter:

Hasu - https://twitter.com/hasufl

Jon Charbonneau - https://twitter.com/jon_charb

Uncommon Core 2.0 - https://twitter.com/UCC2_xyz

Ansgar - https://twitter.com/adietrichs

Caspar - https://twitter.com/casparschwa

__

Referenced Materials:

Endgame Staking Economics: A Case for Targeting - https://ethresear.ch/t/endgame-staking-economics-a-case-for-targeting/18751

Electra: Issuance Curve Adjustment Proposal - https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/electra-issuance-curve-adjustment-proposal/18825

Properties of issuance level: consensus incentives and variability across potential reward curves - https://ethresear.ch/t/properties-of-issuance-level-consensus-incentives-and-variability-across-potential-reward-curves/18448

__

Disclaimer: The material and information presented in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and are not the views of any entity or other person with whom the speaker is affiliated, including, without limitation, DBA Crypto, LLC. The “DBA Crypto” name and all forms thereof are the sole property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.

Hasu and Jon catchup on what’s new in the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) worlds.

For the EVM, Ethereum has pushed vertical scaling efforts to other chains. This includes Monad, who is building a new EVM L1 with fundamental optimizations to improve scalability.

For the SVM, the Solana ecosystem continues to gain momentum across the board. Meanwhile, Eclipse is gearing up to launch their SVM Ethereum L2.

DBA is an investor in Eclipse Laboratories, Inc. and SOL. Jon has material personal investments in SOL, JitoSOL, ETH, stETH, and TIA. Hasu has material personal investments in ETH and Monad.

__

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:25) Catch up

(00:56) VM Performance Improvements

(02:32) Solana & Eclipse

(04:26) DA vs Execution Bottlenecks

(05:53) Rollups & Parallel Execution

(07:10) Breakpoint

(08:29) Solana & Eclipse – Competitive or Complementary?

(12:48) Ethereum & Solana Funds

(13:33) DBA Research Club

(15:01) What is a VM?

(16:33) Optimistic Parallel Execution vs. Access Lists

(23:45) Solana Resource Pricing

(25:03) Local Fee Markets

(30:48) Liveness Failures

(31:58) A Bottleneck vs. *The* Bottleneck

(35:39) State Growth

(41:29) Weak Statelessness

(45:33) State Expiry & State Rent

(51:10) Solana Un-merklizes State

(51:55) Client Level Optimizations

(53:45) Optimizations for New vs. Old Chains

(57:17) Will Everyone Converge?

(01:00:36) Outro

__

Hasu - https://twitter.com/hasufl

Jon Charbonneau - https://twitter.com/jon_charb

Uncommon Core 2.0 - https://twitter.com/UCC2_xyz

Ethereum - https://twitter.com/ethereum

Solana - https://twitter.com/solana

Eclipse - https://twitter.com/EclipseFND

Monad - https://twitter.com/monad_xyz

__

Disclaimer: The material and information presented in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and are not the views of any entity or other person with whom the speaker is affiliated, including, without limitation, DBA Crypto, LLC. The “DBA Crypto” name and all forms thereof are the sole property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.

Hasu and Jon bring on Mike Neuder (Ethereum Foundation) and Chris Hager (Flashbots) to discuss the design philosophy of proposer-builder separation (PBS). They first dive into the past and present implementations of PBS, including MEV-Geth and MEV-Boost on Ethereum. Then they discuss the future of PBS - whether PBS should be enshrined, protocol-enforced proposer commitments (PEPC), PBS on L2s, how to prevent censorship, and more. 

__

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro 

(01:12) What is PBS?

(05:37) The History of PBS

(08:43) MEV-Boost

(10:18) Block Production in Proof-of-Work 

(11:31) Benefits of PBS

(14:17) PBS Makes Based Rollups Viable

(16:21) PEPC & Proposer Complexity

(17:46) Other Builder Services

(19:49) PBS & Regulation

(22:48) Regulation & Encrypted Mempools

(24:38) Division of Labor is Inevitable

(26:15) Risks of PBS

(29:03) Development of COre Protocol Software

(33:31) PEPC, POB, & Alternatives to PBS

(41:53) Decentralization vs. Usefulness Tradeoff

(46:30) State of PBS in MEV-Boost

(50:51) Optimistic Relays

(52:09) Enshrined PBS (ePBS) 

(55:55) PBS on L2

(58:47) PEPC

(01:05:25) Proposer Commitments & User Intents 

(01:09:03) Concluding Remarks

(01:11:05) Recap

(01:12:06) PEPC, PEPC-Boost, & MEV-Boost+

(01:18:44) PBS From First Principles

(01:21:41) PBS is a Philosophy, Not an Implementation

(01:25:44) To Enshrine, Or Not to Enshrine?

(01:35:12) In-protocol vs. Out-of-protocol Development & Funding

(01:50:16) Censorship & Proposer Agency

(01:58:15) Outro & Disclaimer

__

Hasu - https://twitter.com/hasufl

Jon Charbonneau - https://twitter.com/jon_charb

Uncommon Core 2.0 - https://twitter.com/UCC2_xyz

Mike Neuder - https://twitter.com/mikeneuder

Chris Hager - https://twitter.com/metachris

__

Relays in a post-ePBS world - https://ethresear.ch/t/relays-in-a-post-epbs-world/16278

No free lunch – a new inclusion list design - https://ethresear.ch/t/no-free-lunch-a-new-inclusion-list-design/16389

Payload-timeliness committee (PTC) – an ePBS design - https://ethresear.ch/t/payload-timeliness-committee-ptc-an-epbs-design/16054

Notes on Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) - https://barnabe.substack.com/p/pbs

PEPC FAQ - https://efdn.notion.site/PEPC-FAQ-0787ba2f77e14efba771ff2d903d67e4#41230925420345af84f31b50d806b8ed

PEPC Open Problems - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12kpwAXbZqUA0fu2HnZKSesVwO31ICbgIiacHd0EQ_fk/edit#slide=id.g2401d3821ec_1_0

PBS Guild Proposal [v3 WIP] - https://collective.flashbots.net/t/pbs-guild-proposal-v3-wip/2223

MEV-Boost+/++ - https://www.blog.eigenlayer.xyz/censorship-resistance-with-restaking/

__

Disclaimer: The material and information presented in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and are not the views of any entity or other person with whom the speaker is affiliated, including, without limitation, DBA Crypto, LLC. The “DBA Crypto” name and all forms thereof are the sole property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.

In this episode, we explore Jon’s journey into crypto and our mutual passion for research and the writing process. We then give an overview over the key areas of crypto infrastructure today. Finally, we zoom into rollup decentralization roadmaps, and Jon shares a controversial new thesis about sequencer decentralization.

__

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(02:42) Interview start

(03:44) Jon's work week

(08:04) ChatGPT & writing

(10:57) Jon's start in crypto

(14:45) How to pick things to work on

(17:08) Outsider's perspective on crypto

(19:05) Jon's research process

(22:00) Jon's proudest moment in crypto

(23:06) Crypto Infrastructure overview

(29:58) Why crypto infrastructure is interesting

(35:57) Rollup decentralization overview

(42:44) Challenges decentralizing the sequencer

(47:46) Ethereum vs Cosmos approach to governance & decentralization

(53:35) User ability to opt out

(56:37) Staking vs. governance deciding sequencers

(01:08:31) L3s

(01:13:34) Superchain

(01:16:38) Summary of rollup decentralization

(01:21:08) Outro

__

Hasu - https://twitter.com/hasufl

Jon Charbonneau - https://twitter.com/jon_charb

UCC2 - https://twitter.com/UCC2_xyz

Website - https://ucc2.xyz

__

Disclaimer: The material and information presented in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and are not the views of any entity or other person with whom the speaker is affiliated, including, without limitation, DBA Crypto, LLC. The “DBA Crypto” name and all forms thereof are the sole property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.

Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles.

In this episode, Hasu continues the conversation with Danny Ryan and Tim Beiko, two researchers from the Ethereum Foundation. The three are joined by Stephane Gosselin, co-founder of Flashbots, who makes his podcast debut and stands in as Hasu's co-host. 

Together, they discuss:

SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast

FOLLOW your hosts

Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles.

In this episode, Hasu sits down with two Ethereum Foundation researchers, Danny Ryan and Tim Beiko, to explore Ethereum's upcoming transition to PoS. Topics discussed include:

00:00 Intro and guests 03:02 Proof of Stake since 2017  08:18 PoS - Idea to production  12:24 Why do Blockchains need consensus? PoW & PoS Basics  22:21 Why switch to PoS?  37:03 The Merge - How does it happen?  45:14 The Merge - Unbundling of the Consensus & Execution layer  1:01:45 How do you test for such an important upgrade?  1:09:55 End

SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast

FOLLOW your hosts

Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles.

In this episode:

FOLLOW your hosts

In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down with Eli Ben-Sasson of Starkware. If you listened to my last episode with Su where we talked about the scaling approaches of different L1s blockchains compared to Ethereum, I argued that L1 blockchains do not scale and that the only way to create true scalability is to perform all of the computation off-chain and only post the results of that computation on-chain. STARKs are a technology that allows huge amounts of computation to be compressed into succinct proofs that anyone can easily verify.

Our goal for this episode was to create the most approachable and comprehensive audio resource on how STARKs work and how they will scale blockchains in the future. We start by explaining inclusive accountability and the true meaning of scalability. Then we dive into STARKs, how proof systems work in general, and where they fit into the context of unbundling blockchains. Next, we use DYDX as a comprehensive case study to learn about the StarkEx system, before diving into StarkNet and its tradeoffs to StarkEx. Finally, we talk about StarkWare’s programming language Cairo and how the different costs of proving, verifying, and storage are going to scale into the future. If you’re a developer, you should also gain a very good idea of the tradeoffs between building on a regular L1 blockchain, the general-purpose StarkNet blockchain, and a StarkEx application-specific chain.

Enjoy!

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast

FOLLOW your hosts

FOLLOW the guest

In this episode

Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services.

SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast

FOLLOW on Twitter

With BTC and ETH making new ATHs, new and old investors are asking themselves the same question: How do you value cryptoassets?

Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services.

SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast

FOLLOW on Twitter