State of the Stake with Superphiz #47: An Analogy for the merge and client diversity

Transcript

hey superfizz here i can't tell you the number of times that i create a video but i don't record it um it's a little bit stressful for me and so i'm like putting all these things together and i just exercise uh and my mind is like focused on what i want to talk about uh and then i get home my setup isn't great like it's all wonky and you know shit's here and there so i'm like pulling it together and i'm ready to record um but i have to do a state of mistake i have to i have to make my voice heard um the community is at a very complicated point uh where if we don't change something now the consequences will be grave and the best way that i've

been able to imagine this is as an analogy funny story i just recorded this analogies eight minutes ago oh wait no i didn't record it i forgot to press the record button so i'm gonna go through it again uh first time for you uh and hopefully it kind of gets a point the seriousness of the issue that we're facing um so i call myself the beacon chain community health consultant uh and in that role i want to imagine that i'm stepping into a family um and kind of looking at the systems within this family and we have a father named daniel um daniel is a hard-working guy he's been raising a family he has a son named ethan ethan is 17 years old uh let's call him 17 and a half in about six

months he's probably going to turn 18 not probably he's going to turn 18 because he's 17 and a half um and it's tradition it's custom in this this culture when a son turns 18 to give him uh a car is he's not really giving him the car daniel and ethan have been working on this car together for years uh they've both put a lot of time into it it means a lot to both of them and it's a really special thing and so ethan is extremely excited to get this car he feels like he is uh you know he's an adult uh and in this analogy ethan represents the community he has invested a lot into this car

and he he really feels like he's ready to take the keys but there's a problem and that is that ethan has a drinking problem he uh is known to consume large amounts of alcohol behind daniel's back and he will essentially look at daniel and say no man i'm not doing that um but daniel finds evidence he finds bottles he sees evidence in ethan's behavior that ethan has a drinking problem in this case the drinking problem represents the majority client uh and so daniel has has kind of been having these these talks with ethan like hey you know it's not really a great idea uh it can really you know put you at risk um i'm

afraid to give you the car uh if if you have this drinking problem and ethan is like hey dad no man i'm over that i don't have that drinking problem anymore daniel continues to see evidence of the drinking problem though uh and the biggest evidence came a couple days ago michael sproul released a report um showing that one validator on the beacon chain who i just switched years uh has 68 percent so uh we know that there is a problem that that ethan continues to have a drinking problem uh but ethan is so excited to get this car uh he's he's pushing daniel can i have the keys can i have the keys i'm ready i'm ready i'm ready and daniel doesn't want to say no to his son he knows that when his son is of age

that it's time to give the keys um but he's really worried and so what daniel does instead is um he realizes that he can identify where ethan is getting uh this alcohol it's a small community there are only a few possible places he could be getting it from uh maybe it's a liquor store maybe it's a neighbor um and so daniel thinks if he can just identify where it's coming from then he can put a stop to ethan's problem i wanna as an aside this is not really like healthy dynamics you wouldn't really cut off your child's liquor supply in order to stop them but in this analogy it works

so so daniel hires a private investigator there are two private investigators in this case and they are working to identify the source of the problem and the idea being that if we can find the source of the problem we can have a side chat with them and say hey look uh ethan's turning 18 and we want to turn over this car to him uh he's really eager to receive it but if he has this drinking problem there's a good chance that he could wreck the car uh and and maybe cause injury to himself and we really don't want that to happen that's kind of where we are in this analogy right now that um

if we if we can identify the providers who are running the super majority client then we can have a conversation with them and say uh hey look what you're doing isn't really healthy for our chain if you make better decisions then the chain can last a lot longer if if none of that analogy made sense to you i want to wrap it up really quickly by saying right now there are four clients on the beacon chain they are teku prism nimbus and lighthouse right now prism accounts for 68 of the validators on the network it is a risk to the network uh if we were to uh engage the merge with prism having 68

of the validators we we have the potential to crash the network and that's something we really don't want to happen we can increase the use of uh primarily nimbus and teku to give a much better balance uh to the network ideally with each client representing 25 if that were the case then a failure in any of those clients would mean that the network would continue running correctly and that's really what we want to get to i i see a lot of a lot of clamor in the community for when merge when merged and i see a lot of desire on behalf of implementers and developers to turn over

the network to to get the merge going as a responsible third party we have to step back and say if there is a super majority client it's not healthy for the merge and rather than talking about i see you evan venice if if we talk about delaying the merge um we're making we're inconveniencing everyone what we really need to do is resolve this problem before the merge occurs we have about five months that is plenty of time for everyone to change their client if they need to so as we as we identify these parties or maybe you're a party maybe you are one of these exchanges who is uh running

prism and until this point you've been resistant i need you to know that we're going to come knocking on your door soon and ask you to do the right thing um if you are a client of one of these providers and you don't know what validator or what client your service is running you need to contact them and let them know that if they're running prism you need them to change and they're going to to give you excuses they're going to say well we have to have a remote signer they're going to say well prism works in a way that that that we needed to do things there are lots and lots of excuses all of this is filled with excuses and it's time for those to stop it's time for providers to take

responsibility and do the right thing it's time for you as an eath holder to make sure that your eat is staking in a way that's healthy for the network this problem is arising because people are failing to take the health of the network into account when they're staking they are focusing on extracting maximum value rather than the health of the network and i can tell you the way to extract maximum value is to promote a healthy network maybe this recorded maybe it didn't i don't know uh it's time for me to get in gear it's time for you to begin getting in gear to begin talking about this to

make a bigger deal of it i have no interest in talking about delaying the merge in this example ethan is going to turn 18 no matter what we do what we need to do is fix this problem before the merge so it's not it's not an issue then it's well within our grasp in five months to do this um it really needs to be done in two months and so it's really going to take everyone's effort everyone who has up to this point that it's not my problem i need you to know that it is your problem you need to take responsibility you need to help us help the network take care