ECIPs and the Treasury Meeting

hi everybody this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado i wanted to make a video on the back of the community call that we had with the etc community about a treasury proposal to resolve the 51 attacks so we are going to do the following it was a nice call i think well more than 50 people showed up for it we had a lot of great community questions there were some contentions always are when you're trying to change things but generally speaking there's enough support i think to at least warrant the discussion so we're going to write two ecips and ecips are ethereum classic improvement proposals one is going to involve a proof of work with checkpoints and what this does is it's going to make the ethereum classic basically and vulnerable to 51 attacks and this is based on some work that we we've done in this paper right here securing proof of work ledgers via checkpointing and actually we tested this protocol and fully implemented it on ethereum classic already so we actually know it works so what we're going to do is write an ecip and provide some code so let me zoom in and go right here we're going to write an ecip and we're also going to include some code involving obft as the checkpointing server and we're going to do a demo where we actually stage on a piece of test net code a 51 attack and we show it being mitigated with the code so anyone whether it be geth or otherwise that wants to implement this we're available for questions comments concerns technical concerns and so forth and basically get that done i would like to see that implemented in ethereum classic because it ends the 51 attack concerns right now puts out that fire the long-term solution is to make as i've mentioned etc so valuable that it's too expensive to do a 51 attack and that's where we're going to propose an ecip for a treasury system and that treasury system really has two parts right now 100 percent of the inflation is paid to the miners that's a tax that every single person who holds ether classic has to pay and what we're going to do is propose that x goes to the miners and y goes to a contract and we're going to write a straw man contract basically a discussion contract to show how we can do something to split up those funds amongst a bunch of core infrastructure entities and those entities will then be properly funded and incentivized to be able to produce a great road map and get etc where it needs to go so it has a chance to get some of those 44 billion dollars worth of miners that ethereum is firing soon and i'd love to see a lot of those miners head over to the ethereum classic side so we're going to put all of this solidity code for that smart contract in a repo and we're going to put all of the proof of work checkpoints code with the obft in a repo as well and both of those will be public open repos in the iohk github you guys can check those out comment and so forth and we'll submit the ecips to the official ecip repo for comment and concern and we'd like to keep the treasury work here because we're going to be adding to the code based on feedback and so forth and trying to merge in ideas and people can do pool requests and so forth so this is going to be an open development process now if there is a lot of support for this and people seem to think it's a good idea the next stage is hardening and validation so what that means is that we'll have the design of the contract and everybody's checked it off and it looks good we'll then submit it to somebody like quant stamp or an outside security auditor maybe off chain labs or something like that that specializes in formal verification of contracts and we'll make sure that the smart contract is correctly written so the design will be finalized and then we'll make sure that the contract is properly written and security audited by an independent firm just so that we have our built-in suspenders and we cross all our t's and dot all our eyes and then obviously we can submit the contract to ethereum classics blockchain and it can sit there and it would only be filled if a hard fork happened to split the inflation so that it goes from paying 100 of your taxes to miners to less and more diverse government and there's all kinds of cool ideas a vote of no confidence for miners where they can burn the treasury funds instead of having it go to the contract ideas like perhaps including git coin as a fourth payout to be a community fund available from day number one and this is the process where we're going to discuss all of that and figure it out and this is an independent process the checkpoint it's not contingent on the treasury and we'd like to see that implemented regardless because it'll put out all the short-term fires but you really need something like this to get to a point in my view to get enough of those miners so you have a reasonable degree of security but overall it was a good conversation everybody had a chance to speak their mind and comment and a lot of back and forth but overall fairly positive with exceptions here and there as expected and i look forward to going through the ecip process no matter what happens my goal is for a clear vision to come out of this process so i don't particularly care if a treasury system is implemented or not and if it is implemented that i o global be the one that gets treasury funds to maintain mantis maybe somebody else is more qualified for that my goal is that we get to a point where etc has a clear vision for 2021 which is different from ethereum's vision and diverges from it it makes the case that it's unique and it has use and utility and it's something people should pay attention to and build on that's what i'd like to accomplish through this process because ultimately that's going to be the long-term solution to the 51 attacks either that or moving from proof of work and i don't think that anyone in the etc community at the moment wants to do that so if you want to keep proof of work you got to have enough vision to be able to get the value of your token high enough so that it's too expensive to attack you and the only way you're going to get vision is through a process where you really force people to say are we prepared to invest in it or are we prepared to offer an alternative so my hope is in addition to these two ecips this one and this one that there are alternative ones that come from the community and those include a vision component of where should the ecosystem go now there people are asking why do we need dedicated developers why can't we operate under the donation model well first stagnant pro progress over the last few years is a good demonstration that that model is not viable but the other issue is complexity the reality is that to get to a point where you can actually run defy and get to a point where you actually can service millions of customers you're going to have a lot more complicated protocols coming down the pipe so you have two options you can either regress and do less like what bitcoin has chosen to do with innovation in the layer two space and there that's a good strategy if you already have first mover advantage and network effect or you can embrace more complex protocols to deal with these needs which is what ethereum 2 is doing and what we've done with cardano and what tasos is doing and so forth okay the problem is complexity is expensive it's expensive in terms of developing it it's expensive in terms of implementing it and releasing it and also researching it and the protocols that will get etc to a point where it's competitive with ethereum 2 are going to cost millions of dollars to bring to market and you cannot do that in a mono culture or else you're a centralized project you need to have a diverse group of independent entities keeping each other in checks and balances asking questions along the way forcing people to follow the right process and if you don't have that the only other way to deal with complexity is to pick a leader a king and let that leader speak for you and just follow them to the golden mountain top i've never been an advocate for that i think that's just dressing up decentralization centralization and a decentralized clothing and pretending you are it's not honest and we need to be honest in this space so if we're going to tackle the complexity of the future we need to have a plan we need to have a vision and we need to have funding to execute that vision and our view is that a treasury is the way to go and we can get dibs on some of those 44 billion dollars worth of miners someone disagrees that's okay we're going to do this entire thing in an open process so we'll write the thing in solidity and anybody's free to comment on it discuss it add to it take from it and we'll just keep going and going and going until eventually a decision has to be made and the community will ultimately decide what they want to do and where they want to go now there's a question of can this be contentious and there's a situation where two etcs can exist etc treasury and atc no treasury and as i mentioned before it has never been my intent to split the chain have two versions exist and i hope that that doesn't happen i really do and i'm not gonna go and fight and and [Music] have an aggressive contentious split and do this bitcoin sv versus bitcoin cash thing it's it's not fun or fair worth it for anybody but i will make the argument that the community deserves better they deserve the leadership to present a clear vision of how they're going to get use utility and adoption and i can guarantee you i got to pile this thick of white papers i'd be happy to implement and they would make etc extremely competitive against ethereum too and really be something special in the proof of work world which i can't pursue with cardano because that's a proof-of-stake product and so we're doing different things there and for those who like mining and think that that's the common source of truth there's a whole bunch of things we can do there which are quite complementary and it fits into our internet of blockchains interoperability vision that we have as a company i'd be happy to provide that vision and walk through it and some of the things that we can do but honestly the best way of getting a vision is get some really bright really creative people who are independent of each other with common goals into the room and talk about it if we have three well-funded development companies that really have the freedom to dream then i can show up with a bunch of proposals they can show up with a bunch of proposals we have enough money for as much beer as people can drink and before they leave that room they can come out with a crystallized compromise of what they think can really make etc get where it needs to go it'd be a lot of fun and i think people would enjoy it and we could definitely get where we need to go i think if we start flirting with this idea of division and splits and so forth it's just ugly and there's no reason for that because honestly what is the no treasury chain actually saying we don't want to pay our developers or if we do we want to pay them from a centralized entity okay if you're making that argument well then at least you need to look to your track record of success ethereum is being developed from funds at a centralized entity and vitalik has delivered it's fact no one can argue against it so if you're going to make that argument you have to show your track record of the things you've done we could have provoked a contentious fork in 2017 2018 we didn't we said instead let's take a step back and let's just see where everything goes and let's wait a few years and if these guys are right and they have a vision and they can go do something great then we'll see ethereum classic rise a phoenix and year by year conference pie conference i saw less and less attendees and less and less attention and let's be honest as i've said before if you take a survey of all of the smart contract platforms and you ask a developer which one would you deploy on do you really think that ethereum classic would be in the top five choices the top 10 choices the top 50 choices the top 100 choices and that's the question you have to ask yourself so you resolve that not by criticizing people bringing people down you resolve that by showing up with vision and the adequate resources necessary to execute that vision we have a lot of great tech as to other people and people have been thinking about how to make proof of work systems better for a long time because bitcoin has been a big target for that as has ethereum itself and we can apply those resources and that vision to really take ethereum classic in a great productive direction but we're only going to do it if we have independent counterparties that we feel are truly independent well funded and are funded in a way that is in the best interest of the ecosystem or otherwise it it'll be a nasty situation for everybody so the process to get there is a treasury contract you build it iteratively in a very collaborative open way we can deploy it to the chain and then if the hard fork happens it'll start getting filled with funds and those funds can be put to good use and you the community can make a decision to shut them off at any time if you feel things aren't working partially or completely make a decision to remove actors or add actors to that and that's a good 1.0 prototype and then what happens is next year you can switch it to a 2.