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let's talk about the future of etherium

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hi there it's Jackson thanks for

watching and welcome back to another

episode I've been getting a few requests

for this so today I'm gonna talk about

aetherium and its future what does the

roadmap look like for the next one two

three or five years but before we dive

into that if you do like these videos

make sure you hit that subscribe button

below and if you want to support their

creation go along to patreon.com/scishow

I'm Jackson where you can become a

patron and get access to all sorts of

exclusive perks like early access to

these videos but the topic of the day is

aetherium so let's dive right in 2017 as

most people know was a massive year for

aetherium it was the year that really

put a theorem on the map not only

because of its exponentially increasing

price but also just usage through smart

contracts being leveraged for the ICO

but it's really only early days for

aetherium icos and kind of digital

assets still remain it's one primary use

case right now and we haven't seen

mainstream adoption just yet but thanks

to the prevalence of thousands and

thousands of these ICO smart contracts

and tokens that are operating on top of

the etherium main net the etherium

network is now processing over half a

million transactions per day for

comparison's sake if you look at

something like Bitcoin it's currently

only processing around 50,000

transactions per day on its network so

that's pretty crazy if you think about

it a theorem is powering around 10 times

the amount of transactions of the

Bitcoin network it's pretty busy but as

a theory I'm started to grow it wasn't

without its growing pains people started

to see some slowdowns in the network

congestion and increasing gas costs

making it cost upwards of $2 just to

send a token to somebody in parallel to

this concerns are being raised about its

use of proof-of-work as a mining

algorithm and how wasteful that is in

terms of electricity as we face climate

change and lastly the security of the

whole protocol was just thrown into

question with a multitude of smart

contract hacks occurring resulting in

the loss of hundreds of millions of

dollars so a theorem has a long way to

go but they do have a roadmap to address

some of these concerns and that's what

I'm gonna cover today if there is

interesting in comparison to something

like Bitcoin core in that the etherium

team aren't shy about making huge

changes to the underlying protocol if it

means scalability or the addition of

much-needed features as such in the past

new releases of a theorem have actually

been hard folks of the entire network

there

two upcoming releases that will follow

the same kind of pattern the first being

called Constantinople and the second

being called serenity and some of the

features or changes I'll be talking

today will work their way into those

releases but we don't have a lot of

clarity yeah that's still to be seen so

the first thing that a lot of people are

talking about when it comes to the

etherium roadmap is something called

Casper as I alluded to earlier aetherium

relies on proof-of-work for consensus

this is exactly the same as Bitcoin in

that you have a bunch of people with a

lot of computing power pointing that

computing power at the network making it

costly if they wanted to try and be a

bad actor but the etherium team

including vitalic the creator himself is

very aware of how wasteful proof of work

is proof of work burns a lot of

electricity because it's this constant

arms race to get more electricity and

more hardware trying to mine the stuff

and start from the very beginning

vitalic and the team were very clear

that at some point in the future a

theorem would need to migrate to a proof

of stake based system now I recommend

you go back and watch my video about

proof of work versus proof of stake as I

said in that video proof of stake really

hasn't been nailed in a way that doesn't

introduce some severe points of

centralization and sort of a certain

degree that's what drove the initial use

of proof of work in aetherium as the

proof of stake just wasn't there yet

Casper is simply the name of aetherium

--za proach to solving the proof of

stake problem so there's actually two

types of Casper implementation that have

been outlined the first is called FFG or

friendly finality gadget and the second

is called cbc or correct by construction

the first being proposed by vitalic

himself and the second by a researcher

called flat Zamfir by telex proposal for

Casper which is FFG is essentially a

proof-of-work proof of stake hybrid

solution so it's not a purely proof of

stake play and this is kind of the first

stage of Casper and that it's meant to

wean people away from proof of work

mining it's acronym stands for friendly

finality gadget because while there's

still proof of work mining going on for

every block every 50 blocks as a proof

of stake of voting quorum that basically

writes in a check point to history so

FFG still has just regular proof of work

but every 50 blocks there's a proof of

stake voting mechanism and when they

write this check point they're basically

voting on something which is finality is

something that is a historical

representation of history that can't be

changed this kind of hybrid middle

ground that we'll have for a little

while in aetherium is already running on

a test net and I anticipate that we

might actually see it coming on the

Net later in 2018 is part of the

Constantinople for I believe

Constantinople is scheduled for

somewhere around summer in the US or

maybe a little bit later if FFG just

isn't ready by then and we don't see it

in Constantinople it'll likely get

pushed out to the Serenity fork which we

don't currently really have a timeline

on I'd imagine it's very late 2018 if

not early 2019 but again FFG is just

that initial phase to try and win people

and move people away from proof-of-work

mining as a reliance for consensus ii

and full approach being researched is c

bc or correct by construction this is

still fairly deep in the research stage

and it's far from really being

implemented in a workable way it has a

long way to go because c bc isn't just

simply layering on proof of stake it

really kind of rethinks the whole way

the consensus protocol operates as such

I don't think we'll see it in 2018

probably 2019 if that there is a chance

that if FFG gets rolled out successfully

they could tweak the parameters of that

and just keep iterating on the FFG model

until the CBC approach is really nailed

because CBC essentially changes the

whole way consensus works in the

protocol it's not a change that they

want to implement lightly and so I don't

think we're just gonna see it rolled out

on a whim or quickly Casper's

implementation of proof of stake is just

like other proof of state consensus

protocols in that it does require

two-thirds of the validators to agree to

come to consensus to avoid what's being

dubbed a 33 percent attack though Kasper

introduces essentially a deposit that

people that are staking have to put down

and if they act badly then they lose

that deposit entirely because of this is

a pretty strong financial disincentive

for anybody to become a bad actor

because of the security deposit being

required in order to mitigate that

attack I do anticipate that it'll cost

quite a lot to be a proof of stake

validator on an FFG system early on

we're talking probably hundreds if not a

thousand aetherium just to become a

stake I totally understand that because

the incentives need to be aligned it

needs to be really expensive to try and

attack the network but it's gonna be

really interesting to see how many

people actually use proof of stake and

want to become a validator in addition

to laying down that money proof mistake

validators always have to be connected

to the network as well so it'll be

interesting just to see the adoption of

that it's really important to note that

Casper and proof of stake isn't being

positioned as a scaling initiative it's

really just a promise they've made since

the very beginning and something they've

been saying they wanted to do to get rid

of wasteful proof-of-work mining there

are some implications in the way that it

can make scaling easier in the future

because you're not relying on miners

which can often become centralized but I

feel like this is common misconception

that Casper

somehow gonna equal magic aetherium

scaling and that's simply not the case

so just wrapping up Casper and proof of

stake keep an eye out for the hybrid

implementation in mid to late 2018 and

the full implementation CBC in my

opinion will probably come in 2019 if

not later

and speaking of scalability let's move

on and dive into that I've talked about

this a fair bit on this channel but

ultimately there is no real simple

silver bullet solution to scaling

historically when people have tried to

scale these decentralized solutions

they've always introduced some point of

centralization as a compromise so you

can look at something like super or

masternodes or delegated proof of stake

it's all historically resulted in

delegating or giving the responsibility

and voting power back to a smaller group

of people so it can scale more so that's

been a big point of contention and a

hard problem to solve for everybody in

this space is how do you scale this

stuff without is making it centralised

again and some people will say there's a

threshold where there's acceptable

centralization like something like

delegated proof of stake but other than

I think this is the way that aetherium

and vitalic think that no we don't want

to have trusted individuals or entities

out there we want to maintain a

decentralized network but try and

achieve scaling through smart

technologies and new solutions more

recently people have moved to a

narrative where second layer solutions

are gonna be the thing that helps us

scale these second layer protocols and

things like plasma the state channels

which I'll have to do a video on in the

future it's been asked for a lot or

something like the Lightning Network for

payment channels or Braeden which does

that on aetherium these are great

innovative solutions I think there's two

problems with them first I think the use

cases are limited because there's a

certain type of payment relationship

that has to exist in these second layer

protocols but outside of this all of

these second layer protocols still rely

on the main chain for finality so if you

want to close out a payment channel and

move your Bitcoin to someone else in

Bitcoin you still have to do that on the

main chain you're reliant on that main

chain and its scalability and its costs

the good news with second layer

solutions like plasma and Radin and all

of these technologies is that they

aren't really pegged to the etherium

roadmap so they can release at their own

leisure there's a lot of work being done

on things like plasma I don't think

we'll see more than an alpha

implementation of that in 2018 because

it's such a new cutting-edge technology

we'll probably see something that's

actually working on main net sometime in

2019 just be clear I'm sure that people

experiment with stuff on main net in

2018 but I don't think it'll be

production-ready or easily accessible to

non developer users but again that

doesn't get at the root of the problem

how do we solve scaling on the mange

and something called sharding is vital

excurrent proposal for how we do that

essentially what sharding does is it

breaks the network into hundreds if not

thousands of mini block chains and

they're all independent but the cool

thing about these block chains is that

they inherit the same security model and

consensus so you're not having to worry

about independent consensus on every

single mini block chain these sub block

chains can scale better because they

exist for a specific purpose you're not

trying to do thousands and thousands of

different things on the one main chain

like we're currently doing with

aetherium smart contracts other people

have already thought about this kind of

mini blockchain proposal and essentially

having a network of these block chains

or participating in the same consensus

i've talked about some of these before

in my cross chain protocols video which

i recommend you go and watch but some

examples are polka dot or the cosmos

network if italic wants to implement

this natively in aetherium and i

recommend you go and watch this video

from the beyond block conference in

taipei where he basically outlined his

proposal this is all very new and a

three to five year plan that vitalic is

laying out here so I don't think we'll

even see an alpha implementation of it

in 2018 we'll probably see more written

specs and research into the idea of

sharding but I don't think we'll see an

implementation that anybody can touch

until sometime in 2019

as for what Fork that'll eventually end

up in who knows it'll be sometime far in

the future probably post the Serenity

fork

so that's consensus and scaling I think

there's some cutting edge cool

technology that's gonna solve these

problems but it's still a little ways

out I think the first we'll see is

Kasper FFG sometime in 2018 mid to late

2018 most likely but in addition to

consensus and scalability there are some

other concerns that people had and

people are working on cool solutions to

those first I want to bring up is

privacy and aetherium operates a lot

like Bitcoin today and that everything

is open and transparent and you can see

what everybody else is doing some people

don't like this and this is why they use

coins such as Z cash or manera go on

watch my privacy coin video if you

haven't already the good news for

privacy on a theorem is that most of the

legwork is actually being done it was a

hard fork back in 2017 which introduced

CK snarks so you can use that in smart

contracts CK stocks or zero knowledge

proof or a technology that are used in Z

cash to implement its privacy layer and

so all the fundamentals are actually

already in aetherium somebody just has

to start writing smart contracts which

leverage this in a smart way and I

haven't really seen an implementation of

a token or anything that's utilizing

this technology to its fullest just yet

I would anticipate in 2018 we're gonna

see some people start leveraging the

fact that ZK stocks can be used in smart

contracts and we'll see some more

privacy

focused initiatives on top of the

theorem but this will be second layer it

won't be built into aetherium natively

the second concern that a lot of people

have had is just security concerns

around aetherium smart contracts due to

bugs and smart contract code in 2017 we

saw hundreds of millions of dollars be

stolen by exploit is one of the most

notable examples of this was the parody

wallet hack that happened where

everybody that was using the

out-of-the-box multi-sig wallet the

parody basically lost their money this

included a lot of those icos who raised

millions and millions of dollars so

there's a lot of angry people the good

news is there are several initiatives

focusing on how we solve that first

there is actually an attempt to bring a

better programming language to smart

contracts right now that a factor

language for writing etherium smart

contracts is something called solidity

and while it's relatively easy for new

developers to pick up it leaves a lot of

room for these developers to make

mistakes which makes this mock contract

vulnerable is a new smart contract

language being developed called VIPRE

which is an alternative to solidity and

it has a lot more security features

limiting down the methods you can

actually access basically making it

harder for developers to unknowingly

include exploits in their code it's

actually an alpha right now and you can

go and use it that just doesn't seem to

be a lot of people using it right now

but it is being actively developed and

the second approach to smart contract

security and this is kind of the Holy

Grail is something called formal

verification I spoke about formal

verification in the past in my what is a

smart contract video when I was talking

about tezo's they're doing something

similar with formally verifiable smart

contracts and code be formally

verifiable means that code can

essentially be proven mathematically to

do what it says on the box so without

having to run that code yourself and

hunt for exploits basically you can

prove mathematically that the code just

does what it says to use formal

verification though you usually have to

adhere to a very strict syntax in the

way you write your smart contracts which

can be good because it encourages best

practices but you also often have to use

a separate coding language altogether

that is formally verifiable itself

there's a lot of research going into

this but it is cutting edge so I don't

expect we're gonna see a lot of movement

in this in 2018 but it's something to

keep an eye on it's the way I think that

all smart contracts and all code in the

future is gonna be written as well so

that you can verify that something does

what it says it does without having to

go hunt for bugs again the cool thing

about the two things that I just

mentioned is that they can be

implemented completely independently of

the etherium roadmap and any changes to

your theorem protocol itself so if you

combine all the things I've talked about

today that's actually quite a lot of

movement happening on the etherium front

so that's my roundup of the etherium

roadmap what's happening with the

protocol itself in the court

but also with the secondary layer stuff

and the tooling around it I think 2017

really set aetherium

up so that all the eyes are on its

development and now it's really up to

the development community behind

aetherium basically take it forward and

prove that it can scale in a secure way

so what do you think does the future of

aetherium look bright let me know in the

comments and also let me know if there

was anything that I've missed that's on

the roadmap that you're really excited

about if you found this video useful

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until next time I'll see you later

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you

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