Don’t just use Ethereum: help shape it!

Transcript

[music] So my talk is about don't just use Athetherium, help shape it. I'm Yam. I am from the prototyping team of the EF. And [music] one of the things which I really like to do is reviewing EIPs. So what I do is um when I drink some coffee like this one, I will open up the EIP repository. I will see if there are new EIPs and then I will check out this EIP and think okay is it like a great idea? Is it not a great idea? Um and well maybe this EIP itself is not very clear. So then I will

leave feedback and maybe just to check like who of you in this room is an Athereum magicians user. So Wu has an account there. Okay, that's great because that's actually more than I expected. And Wu of also knows W of heard about a magicians. Okay, that's almost the same people. So that's that's interesting. So the APA magicians uh forum it's like the place where the discussions go where feedback goes. Uh we currently have 9,000 users and well as you all know we have like tons of daily athereum users but only a handful of them participate in

improvement discussions. So imagine this I have like an great idea. I want to build a coffee bar. So I have this uh well I have created this EIP EIP uh 9 well 9 * 9 and uh well I create this idea and it's also really nice because Pua just mentioned about the coffee at Devcon connect. This is also like some part of feedback how we can improve like the venue or like the event for everyone. Um and uh well what I'm doing with this proposal I want to create like this coffee bar and what is happening now is that there is no feedback on the proposal itself. So I think okay great this uh this my idea apparently looks good. Then I go to ACD

we do like a temperature check there and well just like you know how you should drink coffee you should drink coffee hot. The ACD says well great idea let's do it. However then we actually start to build the proposal and well you can see like on the right what what happens and you can also see on the left my proposal. Uh build a coffee bar inside the desert. Well, that's an interesting idea. Uh, we use a great coffee machine. Okay, which one? And the roof says T. Well, that looks a little bit weird and it looks wrong to me. So, there are like many problems with this EIP.

So, the result is that people are actually going to start building this thing and this is like a sunk cost. So, people start building this and uh then they realize well this this idea is not very good. Um and for me like as an offer I get somewhat irritated because I did not get any feedback and then later on in the process people say hm yeah okay but like you sort of have done this and this and this and I think okay but but but why because you did not give me any feedback so the end result is that we do not get a coffee bar that's not nice uh and we might also demolish the coffee bar so we have started building this thing and then uh we demolish it so we have like this sunk cost so this like an analogy with the EIP

process. EIPs work the same. And then the question is why is there so much silence? Because as I just mentioned, there are like well 9,000 EMA magicians users. We have like tons of daily daily Athereum users and there is like almost no feedback. So I just checked like last week on the uh Ethereum magicians forum there were only 20 posts in the EIP category. Only 20. And this includes new threads about new EIP. So this feedback is not there. So what I am also seeing is that like discussions about EIP they are there but they are not at the magicians forum. So we see them on telegram, we see it on signal, we see them on discord and this

is maybe like also one of the well problems because if you want to discuss something then you need to know like where are these discussions actually hap uh where are these happening. So what we really want is that like a summary of these discussions like it is logical that you uh when you talk to people that you don't do this via a forum but what we like to see is that these uh the summary of this discussion end up ends up at a magician because um when we do that then people know that people have discussed this thing and also what the outcome of this is. So we don't have to do the same discussion again and then we also know

like okay this discussion is happening there or you should talk to these people. So also about like the discussion point itself like you could also point like yeah we have this thread on discord or we have like this this uh channel in telegram or we have like this signal or whatever like no one is going to come to your channel and then scroll back 1,000 messages and read it again. People are also not going to rewatch like a a breakout call or like whatever. That's not going to happen. And like we really want like a summary to uh that people can like quickly get up to date like what's actually going on, what are we discussing.

So what we want is that uh we want that we people post summaries on the a magicians. So the end result is that this decreases the total time of the community what is spent on like an ERP because you could imagine that there is like some research going on and uh that no one of these like there are two research teams they are doing this research and they do not actually know that uh some that the other team is doing exactly the same research. So at some point they find out okay great we are doing the same thing but now we have well I will not say waste time but um like every every uh like everything which is done uh two times like the time

spent on that could also have be spent on other things like for instance other ERPs or other research. So that's one of the things I want to to give to people like okay if you have like a discussion or you have like an opinion or or whatever like please post a summary on a magicians and this would especially apply to core developers because this only takes one minute of work and it saves a gigantic amount of spend time because now you know okay people are like the EIP offer you now know okay people are working on this they have like some problem uh then you can go back you and uh ask these people okay you apparently had this problem what should we do uh to uh fix this

so the optimal process that's what we want to optimize is we want to minimize the total time of everyone so you want to provide this feedback at a central place so this is uh this is then a magicians so not some telegram uh channel not some discord thread or not some signal uh channel somewhere um and this uh this feedback should then include concerns or like how should we address these concerns and the EIP itself that's like the entry point of these kinds of uh of discussions or research it should be self-contained so it should not have like some assumptions like some technical jargon like which is used in certain research groups like you

should take an EIP you should only read it once and then you should realize okay this is what's going on this is the entire idea uh and this is um yeah this is what the EIP wants. So we can also implement it from the EIP in one go. So now the question is how can you help here? Well of course this is the main message is to provide feedback because communication is key also with the EIP process. Um and I think one of the thing uh one of the reasons why there is not so many feedback uh done also on Ethereum magicians but also in general is that there might be some misconceptions. So I think to enter the EIP process people might perceive this as to have like a very high mental

barrier to enter the EIP process. So I think the biggest uh myth is that people need to be a core developer. So you need to be like super deep into the protocol uh and like have a super deep understanding of like what is Athetherium? How does the protocol work? This is just not true to help with the EIP process. So what you can do you can take an EIP you can read it and then you can provide feedback over the quality uh of the EIP. So you could say okay like uh this uh thing is defined in section two but it is actually referred to in section one. So that means you cannot read uh or understand the EIP in one go because then you first have to be at uh

well you have to basically do the search in the EP itself like it uh in in section one it refers to some constant which is actually defined in section two that's not nice um and people who have are writing this EIP they might not realize this because this constant itself is in people's head like they know oh yeah this constant like we use it everywhere so you know it's when reading this EIP when proofreading your own EIP there's a very high chance that you don't realize that that constant is defined later on and that you should actually move this before. So it's this is like a very simple thing. You can read the EIP then you go to magicians and say oh hey listen I see that uh you you have uh defi you are using this constant but it's defined in a later

section. Another myth is that uh and I think this is one thing I realized myself u well very late I would say is I was always afraid to ask like uh some question or make some uh uh make a point which I thought okay this is just like a very dumb question or like a very dump point. Um, I think that there actually are no dump questions and there are no dump points to be made with EIPs because sometimes an EIP might be confusing to read and like if you ask like this dump question like when you ask these things then an alpha might first think like wow okay this is like such like a simple question but then the offer might realize oh okay wait but I'm might actually be explaining this thing in a

very confusing way and then people will then office will go back to the EAP and make this better. So uh yeah so the the reality is like this confusion points uh of the EIP um and there might also be a question like why do you want to do this? So the EIP itself like it might be technically correct but people might think okay why would you even want this? Um and this is especially I would say especially important for uh smart contract developers and also people who use smart contracts uh like for instance well basically anyone who uses uh a smart contract. So decentralized exchanges or like whatever like if you find a problem or like you have some challenges which you want to uh to solve and one of these

EIPs solves them go to Ethereum magician say oh wow great we have this project and this EIP would like make our entire process much faster to solve and much better. Um one of the other myths is uh that people assume that an EIP is getting enough attention. So oh there's this EAP proposed and well it might have been on the agenda of ACT uh so our cool devs and uh that people assume that it has enough attention. Well, the thing is, and I would really say this also to everyone here, like people have a very uh limited attention and really gets involved into the topics you care about because usually it turns out that um either no one or like one or two persons

are looking into this and we really want to crank this up. So let's see how can you provide good feedback or well from the EIP which I proposed like how can you um do this. So for instance, this thing was like, okay, build a coffee bar inside the desert. We go to Ethereum magicians. And then you ask, okay, why do you want to build it in a desert? Because uh like I love coffee, but I'm not going to travel to this coffee bar inside this desert. Yes, thank you. The uh second thing is uh about like okay, we want to use like this great coffee machine. Um okay, but yeah, what is a great coffee machine?

Like like what do you mean with this? Uh uh no did you look into the dev connect coffee for instance and the second the last thing is okay uh the roof says t well that looks uh wrong so I think that actually should look coffee uh should say coffee and uh you can also like have like some response about the entire EIP like okay um if you have like an internal discussion about it then uh the ID itself looks fine but uh the problem is that well it actually has no seats uh and there's also like no uh roof uh and that well we and that might be like well it depends but some group will not support uh this building and that they also endorse all the previous feedback.

So after we've done this feedback and all these cycles then what's happening? Well look now we have provided this feedback and now everyone is happy and we have like this very great EIP. So what to do? The first thing is that you should stay up to date with the latest EIP changes. And the best way to do this is you go to GitHub, you go to Ethereum and then the EIP directory uh sorry the EIP repository and then you you watch the uh the repository and you say all activity. Well, uh just a heads up, you will get like a lot of notifications, but you will also know when like a new EIP is being added. Um and if you have then feedback on these EIPs then post your uh your feedback or

your discussion summaries into a magicians. So the URL is also there a fa magicians.org uh create an account do it today. Um and yeah as I mentioned like a few minutes of feedback will reduce the total time of everyone spent by tons and uh also like any time uh spent on doing work done by others or in the past uh that's time which could be spent more better elsewhere. So about this EIPS like uh when you have um oh well I just you uh when you have um uh addit yourself to like watch this repository like try to at least review one EIPS per week find an EIP read it and then provide feedback and you can

also go to uh the EIP.thereum.org and then look there like okay what uh uh like what looks interesting and let's do that. All right that was my talk. Thanks a lot. Uh here are my uh handles for Telegram, Discord, and X. And uh well, hope to see your reviews very soon. Thank you. >> I can Are are there any questions? We have five minutes if there are any question

people interested in how we can participate. Yes, there is one. >> Hi, how are you? I would like to know the difference between EIP and ERC and also another question if is if I write an EIP about everything I want. >> Sorry, can you repeat the last or sorry, >> can you repeat the last question? >> The last question. Yes. um if I can write an EIP about everything I want or I have to follow some specific things or subject.

>> Okay, so the first question was um what's the difference between EIPs and ERC's? So like a very high level response or well that's that's actually I'm looking at to puja but the EIPs is about like the core protocol and the ERC's are the application layer. Okay, great. [laughter] Yes, thank you. Uh so the these are like really oriented like for instance like ERC20 that's like the the ERC20 token specification like how you should uh write this contract interface for like tokens. Uh the second question is like uh if I have like an EIP you have an idea like what how should you do this? Uh this process is an EIP1 I think. Yes. Okay. I got a thumbs up from Puja. So that's that's it is it it is in EIP1. Um so this has like

the entire process and also like the format of uh how you should how you should do this and also like if you open like a draft uh uh EIP like you will get u an uh well an Eve bot on GitHub and it will say this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong and it will help to fix fix these things. So this should not be a barrier to to write your ERP. Uh and you can of course also reach out to us like we we really love to help you. Yes, >> as we mentioned in the beginning of this presentation and in the beginning of this summit, there are so many things around and we are around to help you out. If you have any other f further question, I guess we have two more minutes before we have our next speaker.

So if there are any more question, please ask otherwise we are around and you can come and meet us at the backstage. Um so you've covered uh E3 research and Ethereum magicians and uh seeing the amount of hands that were raised about uh who is partaking in ETH research actively or ETH magicians here. Um, would you be able to maybe walk through the the reasons someone would would post on ETH research or read on ETH research versus on magicians?

>> So, this was mainly about if you're magicians and the reason for this is like the feedback loop. So really like if there's no feedback then there's no way one uh well it's an improvement proposal and there is no way to improve your improvement proposal if there is no feedback. So that will be for F magicians. Uh for EF research I would not be able to answer that now but I think also for that like it's also about feedback like okay this is wrong this is right like also a feedback loop. Yes >> actually you have covered it pretty well. So the main difference between ETH research post and fellowship of Ethereum magician post that we expect to get is ETH research is only the idea that may or

may not be a proposal at the time but eventually when it is accepted someone agrees to write and document a proposal then we want them to open up ETH research magician forum thread link for open discussion. We want to invite participation from clients from community to see whether they are open to implement this proposal. So that's where we get into ETH uh magician forum and before that we are into ETH research.