Thanks for the follow @ethereumJoseph $SBET and $ETH to the moon.

Ethereum Mainnet turns 11 today. The next chapter is already shipping.

Two weeks ago, Ethereum researchers met in Berlin to continue charting the protocol's long-term trajectory, following along discussions with client teams in Svalbard in April. The updated strawmap is at strawmap.org, and I attached a picture of it to this post. My own high-level takeaways: * "Lean Ethereum" is not a single one-shot upgrade, it is a collection of improvements that will come online to the Ethereum network over the course of three or four years. But make no mistake, this IS the third major iteration of Ethereum in the same way that the Merge was the second. Almost every major piece of the protocol will be replaced: - Verification through recursive STARKs, rather than direct re-execution. Recursive STARKs become an enshrined first-class core component of the protocol - Replacing everything quantum-vulnerable with quantum-safe alternatives - Consensus: decoupled available chain and finality, one or two-round finality. Theoretically optimal security properties, simpler than today, and faster than today - Multidimensional gas - State: not just tree structure, but what *types* of state are available - Changes to client architecture ... At the same time, simplification, cleanup and future-proofing. And this will all be done in a way that minimizes disruption to existing application. We've done this before (the Merge), we can do it again. * H-star (aka Hegota) is probably Ethereum's last thematically "pre-Lean" fork. Starting from I-star, most of everything we do will have a very strong "Lean" feel to it in one way or another. * Privacy is no longer an afterthought, it is a first class goal. When designing Frames, the mempool, additions to the state tree, we explicitly ask the question "okay, how do quantum-safe, intermediary-free privacy protocol transactions go through this, and what is the overhead?" * Formal verification of everything for security. * FV also makes us much more comfortable with canonicalization (having pieces of the protocol that are directly defined as a piece of bytecode expressed in some language). evm-asm is being written in part to become a canonical proof system for the EVM. * Quantum safety has shifted up a LOT in priority. This adds a lot of work (eg. finalizing a quantum-safe blobs design has become urgent; this work has already been ongoing for months) * Probably the single most disruptive part of the plan is the changes to state. There is growing consensus around leaving present-day-style "dynamic state" mostly unchanged, but scaling it only a medium amount, and adding new types of state that are more scalability-friendly (eg. no need for builders to sync/store all of it) but more restrictive, and that will scale a large amount. eg. possible Ethereum in 2030: 2 TB of present-day-style (dynamic) state, and 100 TB of new-style (scalable but restrictive) state This "new-style" state would work very well for ERC20s, NFTs, many defi use cases, but not eg. highly "central" objects like Uniswap contracts, or onchain order books, or other complex things (which are crucial for Ethereum but which only take up a small percentage of state) Hence, it will not be *necessary* to rewrite any apps, but it will be *very cost-effective* to eg. rewrite an ERC20 token into a newer design that uses a new type of UTXO storage that is currently being explored, so that it will have >10x lower txfees. Design of these new state types (current ideas: keyed nonces, ring buffers, UTXOs, statically accessible state, temp state) is an area where we will need a lot of feedback from application developers (incl. privacy-friendly application developers) and probably several rounds of rethinking and iteration. * In the context of a much larger total state size, we need to figure out the incentive issues around who stores this state and what motivates them to. Even saying "each node stores 1%" is not good enough - why do they store that 1% and why are they willing to serve it? This is being elevated as a first-class research area. * Ethereum will need to have a "VM" other than EVM in one form or another - at the very least, we need something like leanISA for recursive STARKs - and the gains are large in exposing it to users so that we support programmable privacy and better scalability. Right now, the most likely contenders are leanISA and RISC-V. My own ideal is that in this world, we adjust the protocol so that the EVM becomes a high-level-language compiler-level feature, and the protocol only "sees" RISC-V / leanISA directly. But this is still far away. * Gas limit increases, blob increases and slot time decreases will happen many times over the next ~5 years. We expect a large gas limit increase with Glasterdam. Each step of increased scale or decreased slot time is a matter of getting to the point where it is safe to do it, which comes from a combination of client optimization and protocol changes. Ethereum is CROPS. Ethereum is scaling. Ethereum is reinventing itself. Onward.

BETA SEASON IS OVER. $GIGACHAD

Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test. Ethereum is meant to be a home for trustless and trust-minimized applications, whether in finance, governance or elsewhere. It must support applications that are more like tools - the hammer that once you buy it's yours - than like services that lose all functionality once the vendor loses interest in maintaining them (or worse, gets hacked or becomes value-extractive). Even when applications do have functionality that depends on a vendor, Ethereum can help reduce those dependencies as much as possible, and protect the user as much as possible in those cases where the dependencies fail. But building such applications is not possible on a base layer which itself depends on ongoing updates from a vendor in order to continue being usable - even if that "vendor" is the all core devs process. Ethereum the blockchain must have the traits that we strive for in Ethereum's applications. Hence, Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test. This means that Ethereum must get to a place where we _can ossify if we want to_. We do not have to stop making changes to the protocol, but we must get to a place where Ethereum's value proposition does not strictly depend on any features that are not in the protocol already. This includes the following: * Full quantum-resistance. We should resist the trap of saying "let's delay quantum-resistance until the last possible moment in the name of ekeing out more efficiencies for a while longer". Individual users have that right, but the protocol should not. Being able to say "Ethereum's protocol, as it stands today, is cryptographically safe for a hundred years" is something we should strive to get to as soon as possible, and insist on as a point of pride. * An architecture that can expand to sufficient scalability. The protocol needs to have the properties that allow it to expand to many thousands of TPS over time, most notably ZK-EVM validation and data sampling through PeerDAS. Ideally, we get to a point where further scaling is done through "parameter only" changes - and ideally _those_ changes are not BPO-style forks, but rather are made with the same validator voting mechanism we use for the gas limit. * A state architecture that can last decades. This means deciding, and implementing, whatever form of partial statelessness and state expiry will let us feel comfortable letting Ethereum run with thousands of TPS for decades, without breaking sync or hard disk or I/O requirements. It also means future-proofing the tree and storage types to work well with this long-term environment. * An account model that is general-purpose (this is "full account abstraction": move away from enshrined ECDSA for signature validation) * A gas schedule that we are confident is free of DoS vulnerabilities, both for execution and for ZK-proving * A PoS economic model that, with all we have learned over the past half decade of proof of stake in Ethereum and full decade beyond, we are confident can last and remain decentralized for decades, and supports the usefulness of ETH as trustless collateral (eg. in governance-minimized ETH-backed stablecoins) * A block building model that we are confident will resist centralization pressure and guarantee censorship resistance even in unknown future environments Ideally, we do the hard work over the next few years, to get to a point where in the future almost all future innovation can happen through client optimization, and get reflected in the protocol through parameter changes. Every year, we should tick off at least one of these boxes, and ideally multiple. Do the right thing once, based on knowledge of what is truly the right thing (and not compromise halfway fixes), and maximize Ethereum's technological and social robustness for the long term. Ethereum goes hard. This is the gwei.

The Fusaka upgrade is today. Ethereum is securely scaling.

Progress toward real-time proving for Ethereum L1 is nothing short of extraordinary. In May, SP1 Hypercube proved 94% of L1 blocks in under 12 seconds using 160 RTX 4090s. Five months later Pico Prism proves 99.9% of the same blocks in under 12 seconds, with just 64 RTX 5090s. Average proving latency is now 6.9 seconds. Performance has outpaced Moore's law ever since Zcash pioneered practical SNARKs a decade ago. Today's Pico Prism results are a striking reminder of that exponential curve. Beyond performance, zkVM diversity is remarkable. At least nine zkVMs are racing toward real-time proving: Airbender, Ceno, Jolt, OpenVM, Pico Prism, R0VM, SP1 Hypercube, Ziren, ZisK. That diversity is strength, similar to CL and EL client diversity. Fusaka, expected in December, will simplify real-time proving. EIP-7825 caps per-tx gas usage, enabling more parallel proving via subblocks. MODEXP, a prominent "prover killer", is being repriced with EIP-7823 and EIP-7883. By year's end several teams will prove every L1 EVM block on a 16-GPU cluster, drawing less than 10kW total. The 10kW target—about the same as a Tesla home charger—matters for on-prem proving in garages and offices, eliminating reliance on cloud proving. gigagas frontier L1 throughput has grown 100x since genesis ten years ago, from 20 kilogas/sec to 2 megagas/sec. With zkEVMs we can 100x again, in half the time. The key is to bypass validators as Ethereum's current scalability bottleneck. Lean execution proofs also decentralise validation. Goodbye 4TB NVMe, 8 cores, 64GB RAM recommended by EIP-7870. A Raspberry Pi running statelessly, or even a phone, will soon suffice. The scalability vs decentralisation dilemma is dying. Zooming out, the lean Ethereum vision is gigagas L1 and teragas L2. Gigagas L1 (10K TPS) means high-value payments, trading, and social apps directly on mainnet. Teragas L2 (10M TPS) means welcoming the entirety of finance onto Ethereum. Nov 22: Ethproofs day demo Behind the scenes teams are preparing a special Devconnect demo. In 38 days my home validator will run on zkEVM proofs. My mighty Geth node will go dark—no more execution client. Devconnect Argentina is Ethereum's world fair. World fairs unveiled the lightbulb, running water, cars, refrigeration, phones, escalators. Real-time proving is Ethereum's lightbulb moment. Ethereum's future is bright. Believe in something :)

ethereum is for privacy, here are just 11 things you may not know exist today 1) confidential tokens (ERC-7984) there’s a proposed wip token standard that hides balances and transfer amounts. same ERC-20 interface, but encrypted data instead of plain numbers. AKA: you can send someone money without the whole internet knowing how much. 2) encrypted data standard (ERC-7995) lets smart contracts process encrypted inputs (things like bids, votes, or secret values) and still verify them correctly. AKA: imagine a calculator that can add two numbers without ever seeing them. it just knows the math checks out. 3) fheERC-20 + fhEVM (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) running contracts that compute entirely over ciphertext. even the contract itself never sees your data. AKA: your data stays locked in a box, and the blockchain still does math on it. 4) stealth addresses (EIP-5564) lets you receive funds privately through a one-time address that only you can link to your main wallet. AKA: it’s like having a burner mailbox that automatically forwards to your real one, but no one can trace it. 5) private governance (MACI) used in DAO and grant voting. you can vote anonymously, but everyone can still verify the count is fair. AKA: like secret ballots but onchain and provably correct. 6) anonymous actions (Semaphore) enables you to prove you’re part of a group and signal or vote without revealing who you are. AKA: you raise your hand in a crowd and everyone sees a hand, nobody knows it was yours. 7) selective disclosure (zk) zk-badges let you prove something about yourself (like “I donated to X” or “I’m over 18”) without revealing your wallet or identity. AKA: show the bouncer you’re old enough without showing your whole ID. 8) private layer-2s Many of the best researchers in crypto are building full rollups where smart contracts run on encrypted state. you can do DeFi privately and share viewing keys if needed. AKA: scalable versions of a scaled ethereum where only you (or people you choose) can see what you’re doing. 9) private orderflow routes your swaps privately so bots can’t sandwich you. your transaction is encrypted until it’s safely in the block. AKA: like whispering your trade to the cashier instead of shouting it in a busy market. 10) compliant privacy (eg privacy pools) lets users prove their funds didn’t come from bad actors without revealing who they are. AKA: you show that your money is clean without showing where it came from. 11) web2 proof bridges (zkTLS + TLSNotary) you can now prove something from a website (like income or identity) directly to a smart contract, without exposing your personal data. AKA: prove “I am not a twitter user with 500 followers” without showing your account.

Low-risk defi can be for Ethereum what search was for Google vitalik.eth.limo/general/202…

"almost none of the major projects create meaningful value accrual for ETH" is just blatantly wrong 🤨 Uniswap has burned more than $2.5b worth of ETH since the merge Opensea and tether have each burned over $1b ETH Another 10-15 projects over $100m

Had this been 2021–2023, it would have made sense. Today, though, L2 fees are already near zero and have 200ms block time. some, L2s like @StatusL2, are even gasless. Since L2s also inherit Ethereum’s network effects and with the forthcoming Fusaka upgrade likely pushing fees even lower. So, launching a new L1 no longer makes much sense.

I am 100% aligned with almost all of what Tom @fundstrat says here. Yes, Wall Street will stake because they currently pay for their infrastructure and Ethereum will replace much of the many siloed stacks they operate on (e.g. JPMorgam probably operates on several siloed stacks from all of the banks they've acquired and absorbed over the years). They will need their heads fully in our game, because our game will be called ... Finance. They will need to become a TradFi company that operates on decentralized rails, and that means staking, running validators, operating L2s/L3s/etc, participating in DeFi and writing smart contract software for agreements, processes and financial instruments, etc. This will be a relatively easy transition for JPM because they've been exploring and using Ethereum technology for their private blockchain networks since 2014-2015. And many other financial institutions also have solid Ethereum experience. The narrative of L2s cannibalizing L1 will very soon be shattered. See @lineabuild and Proof of Burn at github.com/ETHCF/beth for an example of how this will soon pick up momentum. Yes, ETH will likely 100x from here. Probably much more. Yes, Ethereum/ETH will flippen the Bitcoin/BTC monetary base. Yes, Tom and I are friendly and get on calls intermittently to discuss elements of the strategy and ways we can collaborate in the general furtherance of the strategy even while we compete in highly differentiated ways over time. The one quibble that I have with what Tom has been saying, and I keep telling him this: he is not nearly bullish enough. But the real problem is that it is not possible to be bullish enough. Nobody on the planet can currently fathom how large and fast a rigorously decentralized economy, saturated with hybrid human-machine intelligence, operating on decentralized Ethereum Trustware, can grow. Trust is a new kind of virtual commodity. And ETH, the highest octane decentralized trust commodity, will eventually flippen all the other commodities on the planet. Decentralized trust is all you need.

Tom Lee made his market open debut today on the show and we discussed a variety of topics including Ethereum & Bitmine: - Why $ETH could be the biggest macro trade of the next decade - How $BMNR is growing the NAV & ETH per share at an accelerated pace - Ethereum end of year targets Thank you to Tom @fundstrat for taking the time to join the show, we all deeply appreciated it!

Literally all L2s including @Base, @Arbitrum and @Unichain are now faster than Solana. He is still stuck in 2023 when Solana’s only selling point was speed. Today, Solana is not competing with Ethereum itself but with Ethereum L2s. Ethereum has maintained 100% uptime over the past 10 years because of its decentralization, which AWS based chains can only dream of. That same decentralization is why it runs on 12 second blocks. L2s are simply a better option than Solana now. They are faster than Solana, and Even if an L2 goes down, users can always withdraw their funds back to Ethereum, unlike Solana.

btw the reason why solana coins seem to 10000x more is because they have incredibly thin liquidity this means on paper it will make you seem richer than you are, but in most cases there is not enough liquidity to exit the full amount. remember liquidity = the size of the exit door. if you look at eth coins however, you’ll see they usually have 2-3x the liquidity of sol coins.

This is expected from a fund manager like @stevenmcclurg, who also runs HBAR fund and whose fund is down over 25% in 2 years when the market is at its peak. This pattern is common in almost all of these so called fund managers who publicly fud ETH, their fund is down atleast 25-50%yoy. None of them expected ETH to make this comeback so now they have to work overtime and go on public channels to fud ETH to save their bags before it goes to zero.

Permissioned enterprise chains were tried and failed years ago. Why? Because nobody trusted the central controller of those chains enough to set up shop on those chains. We've seen the deplatforming story over and over for decades. There might be ways to make some of these work, but that would involve achieving credible neutrality and rigorous decentralization. Doesn't seem like that will be the plan, or even achievable, for most of the corporate L1s projects. From @tian_ling84099 (Paul Brody, EY): coindesk.com/opinion/2024/12… youtube.com/watch?app=deskto…

The name of the animal is Eth

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JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Publicly traded Bitmine Immersion buys another 317,126 $ETH worth $1.32 billion.