Milos - A Day in a life of a core dev

Today is not going to be a typical workshop. So what I have in plan is maybe short presentation 15 to 20 minutes of highlevel aspects of what core devs do and how we communicate how to become one etc. And then I plan to the rest of 20 another 30 minutes basically interactive discussion like people whatever of the topic that I covered or maybe what I didn't cover but it's related to the topic we can dive deep into people can ask questions and we can go into details about any specific thing. So I didn't want to dive into all of the details because I didn't know what audience will show up. So I basically left a bit of everything and then we can dive into details of specific topic that are the most interesting for the audience.

Um I think we will then figure out how it goes from there. Um so first um so core devs what do core devs do? How many of how many of you here heard about core devs and core devs work or or core devs calls? Okay. So when community or people in general refer to Ethereum core devs usually implies the group of people that are working on improving the Ethereum protocol itself adding new upgrades adding new improvements scaling etc of the core protocol um and a bit of semantics.

So in short a core developers work on maintaining and upgrading the core protocol of Ethereum. So who are core devs? Um some people don't really like this definition because there are a lot of people who are not developers in that category per se but they would consider core protocol contributors but somehow didn't stick. So most community refer to them as core devs even though they are maybe researchers or testing or infrastructure or something like that not necessarily developers but who it is. So plan developers obviously people writing code on the Ethereum clients they are core devs researchers which includes protocol researchers, cryptography researchers, networker researchers like all kind of research that happens for the core protocol.

We also considering core devs coordinators there are a lot of people involved in coordinating all the communication between all involved parties organizing all calls again they are core devs even though they're not developers but we consider them core devs um people building infrastructure for testing purposes of devets test nets etc uh spec and testing team security we consider all of them core devs even though they are not maybe devs and some people don't like to be called devs in that regard but I think community wise it's the most recognizable term so that's why I kind of used it um so what core devs do in short well obviously develop implement the code researcher research and try to figure out what are the next things that needs to be implemented how they should be implemented what are the core properties they want to have etc uh publish their work regard if it was successful or not from research point of view imple all the development is in public uh open source. So all of that's considered publishing the work participating meeting. This is where all of these different aspects come together. Discuss how the process is going on, what to focus next, uh where needs to be like help from different teams to get more involved, resolve the issues etc. And uh some of them are happening on the calls.

Uh all call devs calls are the most known. They're all recorded publicly available. Anybody can join them. Anybody can voice their opinion. I will talk a bit about that.

Um and then later a lot of discussion is happening offline not during the calls and in live but offline discussions etc. And then and what they don't do is the core devs usually don't build defy applications or any application on top of Ethereum or interact so much with it. uh they don't do wallets, they don't do uh language for writing the codes on the Ethereum like solidity, Viper etc. They don't necessarily do layer twos. So this is not what core devs do but we usually take input from other teams and other people working on this.

They can come and they can propose changes that would be implemented on protocol and then cordz would consider those changes etc. But they don't directly work on the layer 2s but they will consider layer 2 needs and improve the blob scaling etc. They would consider languages solidity etc. And they will add features to the EVM then solidity can then use to improve their language and add make an easier life for developers. They would consider different applications and what kind of use case and needs they want to do but it's very difficult for them or not efficient and how they can improve better.

So they will improve protocol to satisfy the needs similar for the wallet. We consider all those inputs but corders usually don't build those things per se. They consider inputs from the others who actually work on that area. Um in short for development uh we have two types of clients execution layer clients and courses layer clients. Each of them we have around five or six of them that are actively developed and supported.

Um they are written by different teams. That's one important thing that maybe many people don't know. Uh for example, Ethereum Foundation is actively developing only one out of these 10 11 clients. I don't know how many I put here. Everybody else is done by various different teams.

Um so Ethereum Foundation is not the only one that is developing and do this core protocol. There are many organizations involved in the core protocol development. Yes, there are some stuff that is mostly done by the Foundation. I'll cover a bit of bit later but many other stuff are done by other teams and in fact anybody can contribute to the core protocol development by making proposals contributing to discussions voicing their opinions etc. Um so that's the main development part.

Uh research so research is basically anything that is focused on improving the core protocol and there are like different stages of the research. uh some are very early level ideas like down the road in couple of years. Some of them are somehow related to the protocol but not necessarily maybe more related to cryptography or related to ideas that are related to the blockchain in general maybe even with defi applications. Most of those research ideas or early ideas that are not maybe even went fully speced out they go first usually to the east research. Um yes I will be posting a lot of QR codes with all of these links.

If anybody is interesting to something specific and want to follow up you can scan the codes. If you need time you can tell me and I will stay on a slide a bit longer but presentation will be full of codes and links to main different sites and we can dive into discussion on specific topics as I said later on but the presentation will be a bunch of QR codes. So it research primarily various research ideas not necessarily protocol related uh some very early on many of them don't actually survive and get implemented but that's where people post their ideas and then a lot of people ask questions then discussions etc. Um, if magicians is more focused on the protocol improvements related idea in a bit maybe mediumterm distance that they are usually a bit more formed with a concrete idea of how something can be how how something can improve the protocol. Now whether that idea will actually be accepted or not that's different topic but all of those ideas that are more concretely and more directly for the Ethereum protocol they go there also all the calls that I will mention later all of discussion threads and people discussing before the call what are the topics that should be discussed during the call providing more context for people to do pre-all reading and information will be posted there etc and the Ethereum improve EIP the Ethereum improvement proposals so EIP P is short for Ethereum proposal.

I will be mentioning multiple times today. That's basically where it's a concrete proposal of how Ethereum protocol can be improved and all EIPs have numbers and a lot of core devs if you first time start joining some calls they will be referring to the certain improvements by their number and if you are first time joining you'll be like what what is the EIP I don't know 8141 something like that everybody there who is constantly will know exactly what they're talking about but if you're joining first time you'll be like I have no idea what they're talking about and you will be in the meantime googling a bit okay what is this about and then you will maybe recognize the name like oh I heard about it I know what it is and over time you also learn the numbers yourself um but all the proposals the concrete proposals are on this website you can follow you can learn about all of the ideas the coordinators and coordination happens primarily during uh one of the four type of calls ACDE and ACDC see all core devs execution and all core devs consensus. They are two calls that are I would say historically and now the most popular and the most attended calls. Almost everybody who is call developer and a lot of people from community attend them. They happen uh every Thursday they alternate.

One Thursday is one call, the other Thursday is the other call. They are all recorded on YouTube. Everybody can everybody can also join and follow them in a live. So they also live stream on YouTube and there also recordings available historically so you can go and watch any of the previous ones. Uh core developers come there discuss there is agenda of what is supposed to happen.

Uh you can follow up up front you can see what is on agenda if something is interesting for you or not and etc. ACDT is basically being split at some point uh from ACDE and AC/DC meaning there was a lot of discussion that was focused on concrete implementation and testing which wasn't very relevant for majority of the people that were in those big calls. So they basically spin out and now on Monday every Monday there is ACDT call which is focused on more on the work that is currently being implemented and what clients are currently working on testing and developing and etc. So it's more focused for more core devs and their current day-to-day work rather than planning what is happening in the next fork etc like less planning and more actual testing and implementation and in-depth kind of things. And then breakout rooms is even more topic specific discussion like some specific improvement proposal that only people who are directly working on it and developing it that only they would meet.

So there are even smaller calls and more topic specific and some of them when that proposal is active for a couple of months will happen regularly maybe once a week maybe every two weeks. Some of them would happen once when there is needs to it like they would during one of these calls they will figure out okay we in the breakout room to discuss just this topic for half an hour one hour let's schedule a breakout call and go there and discuss this so that we don't waste time of having other people of something that they they don't care so much in detail about so those are the main calls that are happening live and uh you can if you scan this big QR code you will find the calendar Google calendar event and you will basically see all of these calls. I took a snapshot of how that looked like for me, I don't know, two weeks ago or something and you can find every single call there. Um, usually in the calendar they might have a link for like a YouTube or a zoom call if you want to join during lifetime. Uh, if they are not there then I will come to where you can actually find all the links and all the information for these specific calls as well.

Um yeah other links so if R&D is the main discord where the follow-up discussions and also sometimes pre-all discussions are happening where people share information ask question discuss directly that's where the some of the links that are not public in the calendar are being posted usually half an hour 1 hour before the call they post like a zoom link or something like that um and so that's the main I would say offline communication channel for like frequent discussion and chat with everybody else. It's a is R&D discord channel. The execution spec and consensus specs it's they are the they're the GitHub repositories where the spec of how Ethereum protocol works. One onensor side, one execution side and you can see there find information how things change from one fork to another. What are the changes how it's been being implemented?

If you are core dev or you are interesting to learning more of the the actual protocol spec and how it works, it's there. Uh it's the spec, but it's also kind of implementation of the spec in Python. It's supposed to be readable, so everybody can easily read and understand what it does. It's not supposed to be performant or anything like that, but it's supposed to be Python implementation of the protocol spec. Um, and it's also like supposed to be somewhat documented so you can easily like read it and understand how how it does.

It's not the client code because it's not very performant but it should do the work. It it is passing all the tests and uh there are different GitHub repos where you actually have test to test if you for example if you're writing a client you can test against the set of test suits that all clients supposed to pass. Um, yeah. So that's roughly about what core devs do. Usually if you are a developer you do a lot of development.

If you're researcher you do research every now every week or depending on your type of work you go you have a call with other people who are working on a similar thing you discuss you share your findings you learn from what they did uh you write a post on each research or somewhere where you share people give their opinion you keep discussing you did some discussion offline some discussion online and you keep shipping. Now if you want to get involved how to actually get started well first I will say that probably get to this discord first that's the most important thing um other ideas other other stuff um how to learn about protocol how the protocol itself works if you are new to the core protocol development maybe not new to Ethereum you understand how Ethereum works but if you really want to understand in depth uh ethereum.org work not really great source for in-depth knowledge but it has a lot of highlevel knowledge on everything I would say theorem related and it has a links to where you can learn more in-depth knowledge on pretty much anything and that doesn't cover just core protocol what I what I'm talking about here it covers also like app developers wallets L2s clients like pretty much anything Ethereum related you can find some information.org network and then links to where you can find more in-depth information about specific topics that you care about. So great first step for finding any information regarding uh Ethereum uh it protocol fellowship which I will be talking extensively a lot more in the next slides is basically it's a let's say community um of um of people who are new to core protocol development like you that's where you can learn I would say in depth about various different topics uh and I will cover that area bit a bit later because it I think I think it's the best resource for somebody who is just starting with the core protocol development and wants to get more involved I would say it's the best topic first who here would be interesting for me to spend more time on that um okay cool there there are some people that's enough for me so I will talk about that in the next slide because I have some slide prepared for that but because there are like multiple different things that they are doing and offering that you can find there.

Um forecast.org is a website where basically you have great summary and again with the links to more in-depth but great summary of what is happening on um in the next forks and the previous forks on Ethereum like what are the changes that are happening to the protocol uh in the in the next fork that is being scheduled you will see like okay these are these proposals are being scheduled for inclusion these proposals are being considered for inclusion these are declined for inclusion. So they were maybe considered at some point but they're no longer considered. And then you can look that for usually like two forks ahead like one that is more already rounded up and you we know what is going to get there and the next one that is still being discussed what is going there what is not going to go in the protocol. Um you can find all that information and again for historical stuff you can see about every proposal you can see you can have a links to the detailed spec to the discussions about the topic etc.

great source if you want to know what what changes happen at what uh fork and the strummap.org is I would say longterm high level idea of where core devs or at least not core devs but uh researchers at the ethereum foundation this was not like representing Ethereum foundation this doesn't represent the all core devs it represent basically a research team from the ethereum foundation where they see a road map for the entire ethereum for the next uh I would say around five years or something like that obviously the closer period is a bit more well defined but like the whole longterm a bit longer term period what are the changes that they see in mind and how they connect to each other and when did they come in the future. Uh that's just basically one chart they and each of those improvement proposals has some link for like a future readup etc. Um, EPF. Okay, so EPF, which stands for Ethereum Protocol Fellowship, it has a couple components.

One is a study group. It's a great source if you want to learn about how clients work, how certain features within the protocol work and uh they basically organize I would say once a year for like around 10 sessions uh that's that year where basically one of the core devs or researchers comes and talks about specific topic and then they do a recording. So by now there are like I don't really know but more than 30 40 topics. Some topics get recurrent. Some topics are obsolete because we now ship the improvements that changed how previous one works.

So it's no longer active. But there are like a lot of topics about various stuff of the protocol and pretty much I think you can find almost anything that is important. You will find a video there somebody going for like one two maybe three hour talks about the details of how they do stuff. Um and they also have the protocol studies discord channel where they discuss stuff and people get get connected with the rest of the community. Uh this year this already happened.

I think it's usually in period of like February, March, April. Uh so it kind of finished uh but you can go and watch all the previous recordings and sessions etc. um and this is usually uh uh this is a bit out of order. I come back to that. Usually this is uh done couple months before it Ethereum protocol fellowship uh program uh which basically what initiated the whole thing.

Uh this year we start cohort 7 uh and here are some links of what you can read about the previous one. This is the recap of the seventh one. The application for the seventh are active. I think if you go to this thing you will see like a form and some information about application process etc. application for the seventh cohort.

I think on their website says the last day of application is either today or tomorrow. I don't remember but I talked with people who are doing that and they say I I asked them say they said they will leave the applications open until the end of the week in case somebody here is interesting and that's the first time they heard about it. So you have until probably the end of the week even though website says differently you might have until the end of the week to submit application. Um and cohort 7 town hall which happened last week you can go and watch on YouTube uh what they discussed basically what the what the cohort is how everything is organized all that kind of stuff you can find a lot of information on the town hall in short what is the EPF uh what is the Ethereum protocol fellowship it's a program that is uh around four five months long maybe six months long program in the beginning It's supposed to be like first let's say one month you learn about protocol. It's already expected maybe you know some something about the protocol but um you learn more in depth about the protocol uh and you learn about upcoming changes and maybe upcoming work and you try to select some project that you've been working on.

There will be many proposals that you can pick that client teams maybe say like oh we would like somebody to work on this or this because it's not high priority for us but if somebody's working that we were going to help them. So in those cases you might have somebody who is a mentor who is going to guide you and help you. Now again how much help somebody would get to that it depends on the developers that how much time they have etc. So it's not like you know there is no like a strict like it's not like an internship with the company. It's more like somebody is going to be there and point of contact if something but maybe they're not going to responsive if you ping them every day or something but if you reach to them like once or twice a week or something like that they will be maybe more responsive.

So it kind of like depends. Um so you select some project uh multiple people of the EPF can work on the same project together. uh then you spend another couple of weeks writing a plan what you want to do and then the next couple of months or you actually work on that idea. You iterate, you test it, you share ideas and usually it ends um during the devcon or devconnect. People who actually did some work and they are like have some results uh they usually all come together to devcon or devconnect and they all share their ideas and progress with the with the rest of the people from EPF and the community etc.

So it's a really nice experience for somebody who just wants to get started with a core protocol development, get some idea, meet people. I think it's very good for somebody who wants to get a maybe full-time job as a core developer because it helps you learn something. It helps you get connections with people that are working and you can actually progress. And if you do a good job, it will usually be recognized with the people that you collaborated with. And if they have an option for hiring or something like that, they would probably first consider somebody they already worked with and they're happy with how they perform.

So maybe they will offer you a job rather than interview a random person from the internet or something like that. So it's a good opportunity in that regard. Uh so application process so usually uh during application process there's one question that says will you be able to do this like do you will you be able to do this with funding in regards to the funding. So basically an options are something like I don't really remember but something like if I don't get funding I cannot commit to this somebody like funding would helpful but maybe not be mandatory or uh I don't care about funding I don't need funding for this and the application basically they will be selected now I don't know for this year but some people not a lot will be selected to receive some kind of money from the Ethereum Foundation for the work that they're doing everybody else don't even need to fill application Even though application helps them because then they have more information about you etc. they can plan better but everybody regardless they feel application regardless if they started later or not uh they can just contribute and get engaged like they have calls everybody accepted everybody can work regardless of the application process anything application process is more to collect some information about people work who wants to work and maybe selecting couple of them that uh they want to support financially during all this process because some people who are maybe students or something like that they cannot afford to spend half a year working on this without any finding.

It's not going to be much funding but for some people it it helps. So that's the main purpose of application but even if you don't commit to application if you uh are not sure you want to join and in a month from now you figure out oh maybe I want to join you can still join. For example, last year uh in June again it was roughly the similar schedule application. I think finished in May and soon afterwards they started. In June somebody approached me at a conference.

We discussed about this and I point him to that application. Everything was over but he joined late compared to the most people but he did a lot of work and it he was very happy with the progress and then later he basically joined them as he was there from the beginning. So uh it's not really strict flow that you have to go application you have to get approved anything like that. No anybody can permissionlessly contribute and work. Um no issue on that.

So yes on the protocol wiki again on that website which is there you can find links to this protocol fellowship program. You can find links to the study group. You can find links to all the previous like information about how protocol works from prehistory architecture why certain design decisions were made that way execution layer spec architecture uh EVM block building like all of the stuff you can find there. uh consensus layer like all of these topics and more you can find there in not maybe grand grand details to be able to implement everything but to understand how it works and uh where to find more information on the topic and all of that kind of like belongs to the EPF program mostly led by the foundation. Um and yeah so if you want to get involved um other ways to get involved other than EPF and just starting like that is you can contribute to open source projects like client research most of that is fully open source and you can just go there.

uh the the link there basically each of these are pro most most of them I think all of them are on GitHub and this one is a list and they have like an issues either bugs or something like that that are open there and they have a tag called good uh first issue basically for new contributors if they want to start with something some of the issues are tagged with that and you know this should be something simple you don't need to understand how the entire thing works to get started and With that link, you can basically see all of those GitHub repos and all of the issues that are tagged with that. So, you can basically see all of them in one page. Um, internships, certain um certain uh companies uh organize internships. um Ethereum Foundation Restorships application for that is usually during October to December time and then it starts next year from May, June, July depending on the availability. It's usually for students.

Um and yeah, the next cycle will be in October, November if you want to apply for that. Um, Nethermind, I don't know much much details about it, but Nethermind is again one it's a team that implements one of the execution clients. Uh, they have from my understanding internships all year around. Basically, you can apply at any point. I don't really know how that process works, but it's not as itodation that you apply at some point and then it's usually next summer.

They have it kind of like all all year around. I don't know much details. You can search Nether my internships. You can probably find it. Um and grants this is another way you can get involved.

Usually if you have like a bit more experience and you are familiar with the protocol you can find something that you feel uh there they there would be potential that maybe the foundation or somebody else wants to uh they are not working on it but you feel that they would be willing to sponsor give grant for somebody to work on it. For example the link there is the Ethereum support program page from the Ethereum Foundation. They do a lot of grants. Um application is uh kind of straightforward. First you write a bit of your idea.

Then you will have a call from some FL from the team and then they will tell you whether that makes sense or not, how exactly that would work, how much money you can expect from that. It depends on the complexity of the depends on how long it takes, depends on their fundings, etc. Um sometimes they would say like we already have somebody maybe who works on exactly the same idea. maybe work together with them that you not even know that somebody works on something similar or stuff like that. So basically the first step is you just do some writing relatively short about the idea and then they will reach out to you probably schedule a call and then you can figure out if there's potential for that idea and how the next steps would work.

Um, but yeah, that's another way to to get uh involved. Not necessarily if you are beginner because I assume you might not really know exactly what needs to be doing and what who who who in the ecosystem might be already doing something like that. But if you're already experienced, you already know what you're doing and you want to get more into core devs, that's maybe one way to do it as well. And that's pretty much it in a high level idea. Now, as I said at the beginning, now the the rest of the another let's say 20 minutes or maybe a bit less.

I think I took a bit longer. Um any of these topics, we can dive a bit deeper into any of them and discuss like how it works in practice or more information, more things. I can open some of those links to see exactly what is on the page and discuss it. So, yep. Looking at the EPF, I especially since it seems so flexible, it probably has been a lot of people join and then aren't as productive or they simply drop out along the way.

So, I was curious about what you guys have seen as being the ideal profile of somebody who joins the APF and is successful maybe any hard skills that they come with. Uh who do you see succeeding effectively in that?

Um I didn't work directly on DPF. I don't have many contacts of people who are there and stuff like that. It's not directly my work uh that I do. So I cannot say like oh this type of person succeed this type of doesn't succeed. I would say I would say you probably don't get a lot of support like you will get some support but I think a lot of have to be self-driven.

So you have to be like there is nobody checking whether you're actually working or not. There is nobody uh following through with your work. Like there is nobody controlling what you do. So you have you have to have either some selfm motivation or some self-control to actually contribute in work and I don't know I didn't again participate in those but from my understanding is that if you put work um it's going to be recognized it's going to be actually worth it like sure you could be clueless of what you're doing you put work and it's useless right but assuming that you put work and you kind of like are doing something good it's going to be recognized and it's going to be worth like for example let's see Uh so this is from last year and I think these are all the all of them that at least came to Buenosis to the um dev connect last year and uh so these are the projects for example just from last year and short what they were working on and those are I think all the projects some of them have probably one person some of them maybe have two person working on them I'm Not sure if these are all that were started and being progressed. Maybe some of them weren't finished at the end.

Uh but it's very flexible. The point is the more and then the next cohort steps etc. So and for example for each of them you can go into I don't know what this is but you can go into there you can see basically what they work. Uh so for example for the last year this is the the GitHub is protocol fellows/cohort 6 and you can see basically there you're supposed to give an update like once a week I think there was like a weekly meetings where people come join and give an update of what they're doing or something like that um and each of the projects would basically have like a writes the project description work etc. They would publish stuff and you see like week seven we did this week 10 we did this etc.

They would post updates every now and then. Some would do it every week. Some would do it every couple of weeks. Uh but the way that I feel is the more you put work into that, the more it's going to be recognizable and the more opportunity you will have to connect with people and keep working on it or something like that. Now again, it probably depends a bit of luck.

Like if you have some mentor or some direct point of contact, it's probably going to be easier for you because you can connect to somebody directly and ask question, be more helpful. And it's it's probably very hard up front to know who would be more responsive and who not because some people are quite busy and they cannot commit too much time to it. Some people are maybe more free and they will be very responsive and very helpful in that regard and it's a bit of luck involved like who you get and who you connect with on the project. Um but I think you are not set like that's like you have like some peer in the beginning to explore different ideas. Maybe you can talk with the mentors and maybe you can kind of like test how responsive they are in communication and if you would like to work on them.

So maybe just don't pick a project that is just interesting but maybe do you think you can actually handle it by yourself or do you think the mentor is going to be responsive and helpful in that regard or maybe find a project I will come or maybe find a project that you work with somebody else so at least you're not alone like there are two of you working on the same project so it might be easier or something like that. Um,

yes.

Uh, there are a lot of EIPs and a limited number of core devs with a limited attention span. Um, one of the frustrations I've heard from EIP authors is that core devs uh may not uh investigate or uh analyze an EIP until the very last minute until they're really forced to make a decision about it. uh for EIP authors, what advice do you have about uh getting the attention of uh core devs and really getting them to dive into your EIP and look at it seriously?

It's a it's a very difficult question. I I didn't figure out that myself yet. Um I would say um so it's right that most core devs don't have time to look into every EIP because there are as you said so many of them so they will look into EIP when it gets uh finalized or like pretty much said okay this is getting included or this is now strong candidate now is the last chance to voice your opinion if you're against it or something like that. Um but pretty much from any of the client teams there's usually one or two people who are so from pretty much everyone there at least one or two people who are following almost everything that is maybe not every single EIP in detail but everything that is being considered even early on they would follow to that and usually there's one or two people from every team because they they need to be aware they don't have so much time then to do actual coding and actual engineering or whatever but they are basically maybe like a team lead of those teams or something like so they will be following one so probably the I mean I don't know probably the best way to increase your chance of some EIP getting considered and analyzed and you know people voicing concerns up front is to get some of those people and maybe talk with them or try to be more like try to talk about uh the opinions over over the calls. Um, and yeah, I I I would say try to get people who are actually looking at those early EIPs, try to get to talk with them and get their opinion on on something.

Uh, I would say that's and again you can uh go to ET R&D. uh you can post on the ET research and magicians ask for opinion there see who gets active on the topics see some similar EIP that somebody else is working on something similar related go directly talk with them what do they think about it they will maybe tell you more uh I I would say that's my advice but it's it's a it's a it's a slightly even political you have to know what people to talk about how to navigate how to convince them it's not straightforward it's very complicated topic because as you said there's so many of them and there's a limited like effort and manpower that uh cordes can output uh in a certain time. Yep.

And going back to the uh client slide, I know that EIP decisions are made by kind of a rough consensus of the client teams. Um, I've been on uh ACDE calls where they've done kind of a poll of the clients. Um, and all of the execution layer clients have voiced opinions or submitted their votes, but some of the consensus layer clients also voiced opinions or votes on the ACDE calls. um what's kind of the formal or informal rule regarding which clients have says in which decisions?

I would say there is no strict rule on that topic. Um I would say obviously for execution layer changes execution clients matter most than consensus clients like they would usually be better but even there frequently it would not be that all of the clients have the same vote per se even though it's not really strictly formulated or written or anything like that but for example there's a new client that I didn't put e here um I think max e or something they are the newest client they don't have like any users they they I'm not even sure if they are passing all the test yet, but they're getting there. They're very close. Um, and their voice is not as strong as other clients. Or for example, recently REST was very active for a couple of years.

It was the newest before the Max Max Red uh or Max E u it was it was the newest and and it was very active in community and etc. uh but um now I'm skipping the mind the company that's sort of like above the the red team that is basically funding them etc. uh they are starting the competitive layer one uh uh tempo and basically the same company that funds and sponsor rest is now sort of funding and starting competitive layer one and then you know it's logical to some way to to to question whether the interest of the rest is more aligned with Ethereum and EVM or with the tempo and they recognize them themselves and They were sort of like we are not going to block decisions if you even if you are against something but everything everybody else is for something uh we are going to support it. So their vote sort of maybe over time dropped a bit in a weight in a way. So it's kind of like it's not very stable.

And regarding like cross layers uh vote power let's say um it depends on the EIP like if some EIPs some EIPs are not purely E side they affect CL in some way or or shape or form. Sometimes they can share like the opinion like we think that because community can also come and express the opinion like we we want this feature like we think that core dev should do this because we care about this way more than maybe this feature for example. We care about privacy, we want privacy or we care about scaling, we want scaling or we care about I don't know what like we want our priorities are like this and then if community votes opinion the cords will take that into consideration where they make decision is the same from CL clients they can vote their opinion their vote is not going to be as strong as the E clients because E clients are doing the things now if the proposal is more affecting CL clients their vote would matter more than if it's completely irrelevant for CL clients in that case they might not even share their opinion so I would Okay, it's not like there's no strict rules on it. It's not like base per EIP approvals and usually it would be less than and vice versa. If EL clients comment on the CL specs, it will be less than etc.

If anyone else has a question, I'll hand over the mic. If not, I've got one more question.

Anybody else?

And let's do this last question. If there are more questions, we can do them outside afterwards.

Uh so with the recent draw towards what was called subtraction of the Ethereum Foundation.

Okay.

Uh and let's say which is a result of a shortfall in funding. What do you see are the risks for the future of Ethereum? because the as you mentioned one of the clients uh is actually run by someone who runs a competitive layer one etc. So these are these are risk factors for control over the actual Ethereum project through the code.

Yep.

So what what do you think are are the current active risks in this case?

Uh I mean a bit unrelated to the core devs sure but I will take it. Um it's a I don't know it it it it is a risk as always that you have like less fundings like Ethereum Foundation is a nonprofit so there's it doesn't create profit in any way and it has a treasury and it uses treasury to fund all the research and development etc and the research and the treasury is mostly dominated in ETH and but the spendings are not in ETH the spendings are usually in US dollars so how How much money it has and how long it will be able to run depends on what is the value of ETH and if you want to run longer you have to shrink down your spending. If you want to etc. If the ETH price goes 10x then you have 10x more years or maybe you will expand how much you're spending per year and then it will still like so uh there are risk factors obviously if it goes to zero treasury will be very small and the foundation cannot fund nothing for like a year and then it's shut down then it has to ask for fundings from other sources to contribute to it or somebody else would have to step in and take the responsibility to do it. So um I think the rest and the the the the other L competitive L1 I think it wasn't necessarily consequence of that.

I think um it was maybe more of they didn't agree in some direction some decisions that Ethereum is going as a protocol and they wanted to do some other features. uh I think they were also very good at executing and it's much easier to execute if you are one client then you have to collaborate with 10 different clients and agree on how the protocol should change if you have like a full autonomy why centralized companies like Google something like that they can ship things much faster Solana can ship things much faster because they're like one company they have to agree with you don't have to organize ACDC acdep input from community something like you can just come sit in a room discuss organize and ship things much faster I think that's one of the things that maybe refra was also bothered with that everything was taking so slow for anything to happen in Ethereum and they wanted to ship things faster and they wanted to scale much more. They are like hyper scaling focus on hyperscaling. So you have like a as many TPS as you can uh for like a basic stuff not necessarily like you know super complicated smart contract but like a basic DeFi stuff to have like as many as you have.

Okay.

Okay. I think we will stop here but you can find me and we can I can answer more questions.