Devcon #3 - Dankrad

Welcome back, Bankless Nation, to DEF CON 6, the DEF CON 6 experience. In this interview, I'm talking with Dankrad Feist of Dank Sharding fame. Of course, Dankrad is the guy that is leading Dank Sharding for us all, EIP 48404, which is proto-Dank Sharding, and then later Dank Sharding itself. I asked Dankrad about the layer two wars and how 4844 will impact all of these things and what Ethereum will look like under a 4844 paradigm and really just why we should be excited about 4844. I also asked Dankrad about his experience in Bogota, what it's like to be at all of these DevCons and how Bogota is different, and what Dankrad gets.

It's up to after DEF CON is over and the sun goes down. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dank Radfeist from the EF, Mr. Dank Sharding himself.

Bankless Nation, I'm here with Dankradfeist here at Bogota, DevCon 6. Dankrad, have you been to every DevCon?

No.

No? Okay. How many DevCons have you been to?

Uh my first DevCon was Prague, so 2018.

Okay, 2018. So that's three DevCon. So this is your third DEF CON. How does this one compare to all the other ones?

I think this one's really, really great. Yeah. Yeah. Great shout out to the organizers. I think like it's I think the best Dev CON so far in terms of organization and how everything like just works smoothly. Yeah.

This is my first DEF CON, but I've heard of the chaos of previous DEF CONs. And it also seems to kind of correlate with the general chaos of the Ethereum ecosystem. Now we're a little bit more like we're post-merge, like we've shipped some stuff, we got our coordination down, and that has also extended itself into the DEF CON layer, if you will. What are you enjoying the most about Bogota and about DEF CON? What's really like uh gotten your juices flowing here?

Um, I think like yeah, it's the mood of like Ethereum now. Like I think there was a long time where it felt like progress was really slow and was tough and like research never actually made it into the protocol. And I think we are at an inflection point where that is actually changing with the merge. And I think like you can feel it in the community that this like people see this optimism and are very happy that like over the next few years we'll actually scale and we'll actually be able to do all the things we wanted to do.

Certainly, yeah. And you know, as all the listeners will know, we all feel like we're in a bear market, but you don't really feel that energy here. And I want to ask you about like developer morale now that we are post-merge. Like it's probably the biggest win in the crypto space and definitely in the Ethereum space that we've ever had. So, how is developer morale now?

Hmm. So I think I mean I always think like I don't know, I can't speak for everyone, but I think like many developers feel that they're actually more productive in a bear market and it's actually a better time to ship things because you're distracted by fewer things. There are not that many people who maybe like are only in it for the money and calling you all the time and all and all that. So I think people are still very positive and optimistic. I think it was a stressful time for many of them. But I think many of them will probably at some point want to take some time off as well. But I think like the mood is optimistic.

Certainly well deserved, but also Ethereum developers never seem to stop developing. And now that we have like this confidence of the merge behind us, I've always thought that like the merge was just the biggest training ground for developer coordination and developer shipping. And now not only have we practiced coordination, we've delivered it and had that like a great successful merge, and now we're on the other side of it. Do you think development is actually going to like speed up once everyone has had their break and comes back to the table?

I mean personally I do hope so because in a way like I think like what we are planning to do over the next few years is gonna be quite difficult. Like it will require a lot of work and a lot of coordination. So yes, like uh we definitely need to like improve our game as well on like making those changes happen.

But I think it's gonna work. Like I can see like lots of momentum in the Ethereum community.

What are the technical challenges that you see looming overhead in the horizon?

So I mean I think like yeah, I mean basically with sharding data sharding like we are attempting something that has never been done and it's also especially like so it's like a complete change in terms of how blockchain works. And clearly like some other projects are attempting this as well. I think all of them are somewhat less ambitious in terms of decentralization than we are, and so that makes it just a very hard project to deliver these things. And like doing all these on a working project that has like large scale use makes this all the more difficult.

Yeah. But isn't Ethereum always doing things that have never been done before?

Yes, I mean I guess the merge was one of these things. But yes, yeah, yeah, for sure it is. But I think like these changes over the next few years are I think like Vitalik had this nice S curve and I think yes it is right. We are this little inflection at the bottom and now we have to like deliver the rest of it.

And so the year of 2021 was like the year of ultrasound bunny. It was EIP 1559. It was the merge and like you know, testing this merge. But then now that's all behind us, and now everyone is focused on EIP 4844 or proto Dank Sharding, of which is your name, right? Dank Sharding Dankrad and also Proto Lambda. Do you feel like my vision is like the Rocky Balboa is running up the stairs and like now is your moment? Is that how you feel? It's like, oh, this is Dankrad's moment.

I mean it's certainly the things that I have been looking forward to the most in terms of what I actually wanted to do when I joined Ethereum Research a few years ago. And so yeah, I'm really looking forward to these changes making it to the protocol.

Okay, so what about dank sharding or proto-dank sharding? Why is that what your brain focuses on? Like, why is that the thing that interests you? Like, some people are interested in the IP1559, Justin Drake is interested in ultrasound money, you're interested in dank sharding. Why?

I mean all of these are important things. But clearly I mean Ethereum right now maybe can serve in its current form like maybe a million people or something. And we want to bring that to a billion. So like I feel like every like day we're spending at the current form is like a day that's lost to all the other people who could use Ethereum. So I think like in that respect, I feel it's a very urgent change.

Sure, okay. And I'm sure you've explained what proto dank sharding and dank sharding is, but have you ever done it in like can you explain dank sharding in like one sentence or less? How quickly can you explain dank sharding?

It's basically the rollup booster. You've heard about rollups, they make Ethereum much cheaper and more efficient. And basically it's like putting an afterburner under them and making them work even much more cheaply and allowing them to serve a lot more users.

And why? What is the big technical lift here? Like when you look under the hood of the Ethereum protocol, what's the technical lift that we've never done before?

So, in terms of like the current change for 844, there is no fundamental change how technically the blockchain works. There are some new things that we introduce that will prepare it for full sharding, but those are not strictly technically necessary for what we're doing there. What the big change we're sharding will be that we're building a blockchain that maintains the full security as we are used to and designalization from Ethereum, but does it by providing a data availability that scales beyond what the individual node can process. So far, all blockchains are built in mind with like, okay, like we can never do more than your individual node that you run at home can process. And we are going beyond that. We are building a blockchain that is as secure and decentralized, but can go beyond that scale.

Okay, beautiful. And of course, having accessibility is a core pillar of Ethereum. And this is how we, uh, allow Ethereum to be accessed by everyone in the world. Now that we're post-merge, there was, I'm assuming, a lot of previous developer talent that was focused on the merge that is now no longer focused on the merge. And so now n is that now it's being diffused across you know all the other EIPs. Is it like how much of EIP 4844 is now the focus versus people focusing on other things like account abstraction or other EIPs?

I mean, so these are discussions that are going on right now. And clearly, like I'm a big proponent of like making 4844 happen, even in the next hard fork. There are definitely some other things that will compete with that, like withdrawals need to happen. Lots of EIPs want to get in, of course. I would say like getting 4844 done is very, very urgent. I hear that from many like roll up teams and other teams that like they're literally making the case that they have business cases they want to deploy and they cannot happen if they don't have 4844. So I I'm making the case that this should be a very high priority, but the discussions on that are not finished.

Certainly. And the way I kind of think of four eight four four or denk sharding, you called it an afterburners for roll-ups. I think that's a great way to articulate it. It's also just like unlocking a ton of new use cases on roll-ups that we wouldn't be able to have otherwise.

It's mainly just because we're lowering the fees down to almost the theoretical minimum.

And it's also like this question like often like people have these use cases in mind but they just know that at the current scale they can just never work. So they don't even try to deploy them. So I think these can now happen.

Okay, so we ship dank sharding. Layer twos become super fast, super cheap, super available. What are some of these use cases that your people are talking to you about or other use cases that you're excited about that would be unlocked after 4844?

It's a permissionless system. So like I think we probably can't even imagine what people are gonna build on it. Like I mean I think five years ago we wouldn't have known what people will build on it now. But I think they're great many. I mean clearly, like I'm always like, okay, like think about the simple things as well. Like, I mean think about payments, like it is an important use case, and we can't probably support it now. But I think like many other cool things, like maybe more social media apps, that sort of stuff can happen. I don't have a great imagination for everything that could happen.

Sure. And it's of course it's a hard question when you just don't know. Because we've never the blockchain world has never seen this availability before. We haven't had these opportunities because we haven't had secure block space that is super cheap. My take on this is that the Ethereum layer one is heavy, heavy finance. You know, NFTs that are super highly valued, a lot of DeFi stuff. And Vitalik, of course, is obsessed with non financial use cases of a blockchain. And I think that we don't really get non financial use cases of a blockchain until we get transactions that are basically free. Right. Because the only transactions that we can really afford are the super expensive ones, and those are going to be finance transactions.

Well there are some exceptions. There are some high value non-finance transactions like yeah, ENS, key revocations, things like that.

Yes. Right, but it's very limited, right?

All it's true.

Yeah. And so if we want to unlock non-financial use cases of the blockchain, we need transactions that aren't financial, as in like basically free. So I'm sure Vitalik will be super happy to see all these new use cases that come about.

What else across the Ethereum developer space are has captured your attention or are you just like tunnel vision on 4844?

But I definitely do have like most of my attention is focused on the technical stuff. And particularly L1. So like my other big project is statelessness, which I also think is like an important change to the blockchain. Yeah, I don't know. Like I mean I can see many things happening, but often I don't have particular time to look very deeply into the applications.

So right after this interview, I'm about to interview Bartek right over there. And the layer two wars are hot. Uh and yeah, I mean you're at the EF, so you kind of just get to watch them all happen in front of you. Do you have any like hot takes about the layer two wars or just like any observations? Because there's a ton of announcements that happened this week.

Right. I don't think I have any hot takes. Um I'm no I'm really glad that it happens. And like I don't know. I couldn't have imagined like even one year ago how many teams would be and really high quality teams would be trying to do this. Clearly there's so many problems, right? Like I mean most of them, almost all of them, aren't proper L2s yet, and that's really the big challenge that probably you're also gonna talk uh about with Bartek. Um but I don't think all of them are gonna make it. But I'm pretty certain that within a year we will see like fully decentralized, proper, secure L2s on Ethereum, and that's amazing.

Well, Dankrad, this certainly seems to be the golden age of Ethereum building. And so thank you for being a shepherd, a pioneer of that age. Uh and I hope you have a fantastic time the rest of your time here at Defcon Bogota.

Yeah.

Cheers you.