Cheeky Gorilla - Maintaining Ethereum's Future

All right. Hello everyone. Full house. Fantastic. Thank you all so much for coming.

Um yeah, thank you for the introduction. Thank you Simona wherever you are working hard uh for inviting me. Thank you to everyone at ETH Clouge. Um it's been a real blast so far. So happy to be here.

Um, yeah, I'm Cheeky Gorilla. You can call me Cheeky. Um, I work on a little something called Protocol Guild. It's a it's a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to funding uh the Ethereum's talented core protocol contributors. Uh, and my talk today is called Maintaining Ethereum's Future.

Um, now if you're getting a sense of deja vu, that might be because you saw any of my presentations last year, which had the exact same title. Um, but don't worry if you did see my presentations last year. This is in fact a brand new presentation, but I am going to start off in more or less the same way. Clickity click. Boom.

Um, so what do we have here? This is Ethereum's core protocol development roadmap. um at the start of 2024 that was shared by Vitalik Buterine, know him? Um and it was really cool because uh it was basically the first time that we had this road map in like a visual format, but even cooler than that is that it used rhyming to compartmentalize the road map. And so you had the merge, the surge, the scourge, the verge, the purge, and the splurge.

And you know, rhyming is obviously awesome, but um at the time of my presentations last year, I did also argue that those words are gibberish, right? They don't actually mean anything to anyone. Uh and so I spent the rest of my presentations last year uh basically breaking down the road map in a non-technical layman friendly way so that my dear audience could uh could understand. Now, interestingly enough, since then, it seems that some people agreed with me that we can in fact do better than uh this very complicated flowchart. And so, I'm very very pleased and excited to share with you the uh new and improved updated Ethereum core protocol development road map for 2026 and beyond.

Bam. Lovely, right? Yeah. So this uh this got rid of the rhyming so there's no more rhyming but there are some other cool stuff. Um it basically breaks down the categories into uh these well technical categories.

Um it anchors on the planned forks in the future. So we got uh what do we got there? Glamora I JKL and M forks. So um yeah pretty sweet pretty sweet. Um I know what you're thinking.

This is all still pretty confusing isn't it? Um but that's exactly why I'm back. I'm going to break down this new road map for you in a non-technical layman friendly way. So, let's talk about what you can expect from Ethereum's core protocol development in the short, medium, and long term. But first, let's talk uh let's talk a little bit about where we are today because things do move very quickly.

So, let's get you caught up to speed. 2025 was a huge huge year for Ethereum's core protocol development. It was a uh a very hard bar, very hard bar to to to meet, I would say. Um, two upgrades were shipped starting with Pectra in the first half of year. Um, Pectra was a smorg board of of different features for so many different actors in the space.

Um, it doubled the amount of blobs on the network. Um, if you don't know what blobs are, they are basically uh like blocks but specifically for layer twos. Uh, and so by doubling the amount of blobs, um, obviously that allows for, um, more transactions on these layer 2s and in theory also to be more cheap. Um, there are also some awesome UX upgrades, including giving Ethereum wallets the ability to do cool things like batch transactions or pay for transactions uh, in another token other than ETH or even getting someone else to pay for the transaction for you. Um, there was some sweet stuff for validators.

Um so the deposits cap per validator was bumped from uh 32 ETH to 2048 ETH uh to reduce the uh the network overhead um on Ethereum. Um and also there was this consolidation feature that was shipped which basically allowed validators their uh the rewards they were earning to be reinvested back into their validator. Uh so that was the first half of the year. Uh they weren't done there. They next shipped Fusaka in the second half of the year.

And Fusaka was also a very big upgrade, but it had basically one big focus which was shipping something called Purdas. And um Pieras is interesting because remember those blobs that we talked about? Um, it basically allowed the nodes that run the network to only store a fraction of this blob data while still allowing that data to be fully reproducible uh across all the different nodes which is super cool because it essentially reduced bandwidth requirements per uh per blob which thus enabled huge scalability increases again for these layer 2s. So yeah, in a nutshell, 2025, the goals for it were to scale the layer ones, scale the layer twos, and to improve UX. And if you ask me, they exceeded all expectations.

Um, and of course, it was Ethereum's 10-year anniversary. Um, and it celebrated a very, very special milestone alongside that, which was zero downtime. Indeed. Indeed. But that was 2025.

Let's move on to this year. uh the core core devs they took the opportunity to rethink their priorities for this year. Um and so here are the three priorities for the year. Number one, scale. Number two, improve UX.

And number three, harden the layer 1. Scale basically encapsulates L1 and L2. Uh scaling. Improve UX is self-explanatory hopefully. Um but number three, harden the layer 1.

That one is worth double clicking on just to make sure that you are all aware of what it means. Um, and it basically means that if we want to keep Ethereum's 100% uptime, um, then we need to do really important things like making sure that Ethereum has the necessary testing infrastructure in place uh to make sure that no bad things hit mainet, right? Especially now in the age of AI exploitation, we really need to make sure that things are tested um that they're as bulletproof as possible before hitting mainet. Um, obviously it also means going postquantum as fast as reasonly possible because the quantum age is upon us apparently. Um, it also means making sure that censorship resistance um or rather that censorship is not something that can happen on Ethereum L1.

Uh, because obviously censorship is not very credibly neutral. All right, so that's today. Now you're all caught up. So let's talk about the short term. what you can expect from Ethereum's core protocol development in the next six months.

And that's something cool called Glamsterdam, which is by far the coolest uh upgrade name we've ever had. Um, we were hoping for this to ship in the first half of this year. That's been uh pushed a little bit. Uh, my best guess right now is September, but don't quote me on that. Um, so let's unpack what's in Glamsterdam.

There are two headliners in Glamsterdam. The first is something called enshrined proposer builder separation. quite a mouthful. Let's call it EPBS instead. Um, and to explain this very very simply, uh, so every 12 seconds, another block full of transactions is added to Ethereum's blockchain.

And it is the job of these so-called validators to basically propose these blocks. But the truth is that nowadays, most validators, they aren't actually producing these blocks themselves. Um, instead they're using these third-party block builders who are specialized in selecting and ordering transactions in a block in such a way that they pay the highest reward to validators. This reward is then split with the block builder. And so what it means is that all of the validators have an economic incentive to use these thirdparty block builders.

Now in principle uh that's fine. we should expect uh all of Ethereum stakeholders to um act in their own economic self-interest but you know the fact that this is happening offchain is not so good right Ethereum is about disintermediating trust um and unfortunately that's not happening in this case right um enter EPBS which enshrines everything that I just mentioned into the core protocol uh so it removes those trust assumpt assumptions it removes this dependency on third party software Um, but there's also another really really cool benefit which is that given the opportunity to kind of like uh rewire Ethereum's plumbing in this way, we can actually unlock huge scalability increases uh by changing some things. For example, the timing that's allocated for certain parts of the block production pipeline. And so um as of what week are we in? As of last week, um, because of EPBS, the core devs are talking about increasing Ethereum's gas limit from 60 million to 200 million.

And if gas limit means nothing to you, don't worry about it. Just think about the percentage increase, and it's it's pretty beefy. But that's that's uh that's the first headliner, EPBS. Let's talk about the second headliner, which is something beautiful called block level access lists. Another mouthful.

Um, like EPBS, this one also optimizes the inner guts of Ethereum. Um, basically today validators when they're verifying each block, they basically have to go through and process each transaction sequentially, one by one. Super slow, super inefficient. Um, block level access lists introduces parallelization. So they can obviously call data for different transactions in tandem.

Uh, basically doing the job that they were doing before quicker, more efficiently. Um, which is fantastic. Now, apart from those two headliners, there are also going to be some smaller features that will be included uh in the upgrade. And um the final decision for which of these smaller upgrades will be included is actually that that discussion is still happening. So, it's not it's not 100% final yet.

So, I'm not going to dive into what I think will be included. Um however, these four I think are a pretty safe bet. So, if you are interested, uh you can go check those out. Um, with all that being said, we can move on to the medium-term, what you can expect from Ethereum's core protocol development in the in the next, let's call it 12 months. Um, and that's something called Higota, which is the next upgrade after Glamsterdam.

Now, obviously, if uh Glamsterdam hasn't been fully scoped yet, you're probably not surprised to hear that neither is Glammsterdam. Um, wait, did I mix those up? The reverse of what I just said. If Glamsterdam hasn't been scoped yet, you're probably not surprised to hear that Hagod that neither is Hagota. Um, but we do know what will be the headliner for Hagod, which is fork choice enforced inclusion lists or Fossil.

Um, what is Fossil? Well, the the the hint for what is Fossil is in the name at the end there, inclusion lists, which is essentially a um oops, which is essentially a list of valid transactions that have to be included in the next block. And this is a lovely thing because it obviously improves Ethereum's censorship resistance. You know, it gives uh better inclusion guarantees to its users. And of course, it strengthens Ethereum's position as the most credibly neutral blockchain.

I'm very excited for this. A lot of people have been waiting uh for this for a long time. So, it's going to be an awesome upgrade for Ethereum. Um but it's also a very very beefy thing by itself. It touches both layers of the protocol.

Um so, there will only be one headliner for um for Hegod. Um, as before, there are of course going to be smaller upgrades as part of Hagota depending on how big a lift uh Fossil ends up being. Um, again, here's my best guess of the things that I think could be included. Um, and I'm not going to go into all of them except for one, which is the one at the very bottom there, optional proofs. And optional proofs is very exciting.

Um, because it's a very important part towards the snarkification of Ethereum. And what that means basically is that um instead of validators basically recomputing every single transaction in a block to confirm that it's valid, they get a proof that confirms that the block is valid. And verifying this proof is super easy. Can be done on the uh you know the node that you hopefully run from home. It can even be done on your smartwatch, right?

And so this proof is a zero knowledge proof or a ZK proof or a ZK snark, hence snarkification. Um, and in a nutshell, snarkification means that we can have absolutely enormous blocks on Ethereum layer 1, which are still very easy to be verified by um by node runners at home. Um, and including these proofs in protocol as an optional thing, is obviously the first step towards enshrining them as a mandatory thing, which will unlock huge huge huge scalability increases. We'll talk about that later for Ethereum. Um, but that's obviously a little bit in the long term.

Speaking of which, that covers the medium-term. Let's talk about the long term. So, the next two to four years. Don't quote me on that. Um, we're talking about the I, J, K, L, and M upgrades.

They don't have a name yet, but we refer to them uh in alphabetical order there. Um, here is a list of very delicious things that are being considered for those upgrades, but obviously, you know, they're not right around the corner. We're talking about a few years here. So many of these things are still very much in the research phase. Uh trying to figure out what are the best things that that can be included in these upgrades.

Um and so I'm not going to dive into every single one of these. Instead, what we can do is take a step back and basically zoom out and look at what is the endgame for Ethereum's core protocol development. Um and that is fast layer 1, gigas layer 1, terra gas layer 2, postquantum layer 1, and private layer 1. What does all that mean? It means very simply uh transactions being included and confirmed in seconds.

It means 10,000 transactions per second on Ethereum mainet. It means 10 million transactions per second on layer 2. It means going postquantum obviously and it means privacy as a firstass citizen. Now what's not included on this slide but a very important part of Ethereum's endgame is what happens afterwards which is maintenance mode. Um, some people refer to that as oification, but it basically means that Ethereum is done.

You know, you no longer need me to explain to you all the amazing upgrades that we have planned. Um, and so still Ethereum is built to last for centuries. And so a degree of maintenance will of course always be required, hence maintenance mode. Now perhaps you're thinking, you know, last year I gave a talk on the core protocol development road map. this year I have a different road map like when am I going to come and try to explain that entirely different roadmap and you know fair enough um but what we can do is actually we can look at my presentation from ETH Prague last year that long-term slide uh here's a screenshot that's me hello um and we can basically compare them side by side to see what's changed for the long term for the for the endgame basically for Ethereum's core protocol development and not much basically you can see here that uh snarkification was a very big that I had in the slide last year.

Um, and it's only something that I've like verbally mentioned this time. And the reason for that is very simple. Snarkification is another classic Ethereum gibberish word that means nothing to nobody, right? Except if you're like deeply in the space. Uh, and so it makes more sense to anchor two more reasonable words, which is what I've tried to do this year.

Um, but apart from that, there's only really one difference between these two slides. Um, and that one thing is privacy as a first class citizen. Now, unfortunately, talking about privacy is out of scope for this presentation. I won't have enough time. Um, if you're interested in this, uh, look at Gavin's presentation, uh, who who was right before me.

I believe Mike from Privacy Pools is presenting right after me. So, look at that presentation if you want more about this. I love privacy on the layer 1. I'm very excited for this. Um, but I'm going to move on very quickly to um, you know, acknowledge the fact that I know at the start of the presentation I joked about how we're moving from one complicated flowchart to another complicated flowchart.

But I really do want to stress that those road maps don't take us down different paths. We do know where we want to go. We've known it for a while. However, the implementation details of how to get there, that's still being worked out. And I mean, quite frankly, considering that we're operating at the bleeding edge of technology, I do think that's fair enough, but Oh, right.

And if you go to the ethereum.org website, they actually have a fantastic quote about this uh which I'm going to read out. Think of Ethereum's roadmap as a set of intentions for improving Ethereum. It is the core researchers and developers best hypothesis of Ethereum's most optimal path forward. And now that you are all well hopefully u layman non-technical experts on the road map uh we can very quickly cover one last topic which is who are these core researchers and developers right and how important are they to executing the road map well it turns out answering that first question about who they are is is very easy because it's my full-time job to uh figure out who Ethereum's active core protocol contributors are.

So, bam, there they are. Doxed. Uh, just kidding. Some of their pseudonyms are there as well. 1887 individuals, people from all over the world who are working on building and maintaining Ethereum's core protocol.

And if you're wondering, do they all work at the EF? The answer is unequivocally no. Uh, we've identified 11 different independent institutions with maybe 30 different projects or teams between them, all of whom are contributing to Ethereum's core protocol. uh and this is all thanks to Ethereum's multiclient philosophy which enables all sorts of different stakeholders to take part in building the core protocol. So going back to the second question, how important are these individuals to the road map?

You're probably not surprised to hear that I would argue that they are the single most important factor to successfully executing this road map. Uh yes, there might still be some regulatory uncertainty. Yes, there's a looming threat threat of uh World War II and some kind of AI apocalypse, but you know, barring those things, um these core developers are absolutely foundational to getting the ecosystem to getting Ethereum's ecosystem to where it wants to go. But this and this brings me to why I've reused the same title for my slides as last year because you know now you have a clear understanding of what Ethereum is building towards what its future is. But here's the cold hard truth that unfortunately that future is at risk if we cannot on board and retain Ethereum's talented core protocol contributors.

And there are some red flags. We surveyed Ethereum's core devs last year and we found that um that we know of at least 40% of them had a job offer in the last 12 months. Uh and even worse, those job offers offered them 114% pay increase. So said another way, these core protocol contributors are forgoing 50% of their market value to build the foundational infrastructure that we the ecosystem depends on. And while it is true that some of these core developers and researchers are values motivated, um that is absolutely not something that we should be relying on.

Now the good news is that we do have some uh necessary initiatives to potentially uh iron out these uh these um incentive misalignments, let's call them. Um and that initiative is something called the 1% pledge. And it's a pledge by projects building in the ecosystem to donate 1% of their token supply directly to Ethereum's core protocol developers uh vested over four years and we have been absolutely thrilled with the su the success of this program to date. Um, shout out to all of the projects who have taken the pledge, which includes Etherdow, Ponow, Tao, Puffer, Igener, Currency Coin, Shutterdow, Woo, Shutterdow, uh, Shape, Eat, Storage, Align, IMX, Yodel, and Ascend, and what's not on this slide is Aztec welcoming Aztec as the uh the newest uh pledge taker. Um, and thanks to these generous donors and more, um, we have distributed over $37 million worth of tokens to Ethereum's core protocol developers since we got started in 2022.

And I know that sounds like a a lot of money. Um, but when you consider that it's being vested over four years, when you consider that there's hundreds of these individuals receiving it, we still need to increase our funding by orders of magnitude to be competitive with the kind of job offers that these individuals are getting in this space. But we are on the right path today. 59% of these core devs would say that the funding that they receive from Protocol Guild is either extremely or very important to to their decision to continue to work on the protocol. So what we're doing is working.

Uh and we do believe that normalizing the 1% pledge is the best chance that we have to create a sustainable and robust funding stream for Ethereum's core protocol development that is backed by the projects that are building on Ethereum. And so that's why as I finish this presentation, I have one ask for you. If you know of a project that is planning a token launch, please ask them to consider taking the Protocol Guild pledge to help fund the foundational public good that is Ethereum's core protocol development and thus help secure the future of Ethereum. Thank you very much.