Vitalik's speech at the Hong Kong Summit: Ethereum is pursuing the limits of cryptography

2024-04-09 14:32

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Ethereum’s competitors look for answers in Ethereum, but Ethereum finds answers in cryptography. This is the real difference between first-rate public chains and second-rate public chains.

Original author: 0x_Todd, Partner of Nothing Research

Editor's note: Today, at the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered a keynote speech entitled "Reaching the Limits of Protocol Design" at the "Web3 Scholar Summit 2024" hosted by DRK Lab. Nothing Research partner 0x_Todd participated in the whole process on site and shared his insights and thoughts after listening to Vitalik's speech on X. BlockBeats reproduced the full text as follows:

Today, Vitalik made a low-key appearance at the Wanxiang Hasheky Hong Kong Summit. V God's speech was really neat, without red tape, and he started with $ETH dry goods broadcast, straightforward. In conjunction with this speech, let me talk about my understanding.

All blockchains are rooted in cryptography. It can be said that cryptography is the real bottom layer. In recent years, the theoretical frontier of cryptography has been developing. The current goal of Ethereum $ETH is to convert the theory of cryptography into engineering practice.

Friends who have done development know that the more cutting-edge things in academia are, the more challenging it is to use them directly in the industry, and cryptography is no exception.

The cryptographic frontiers that Ethereum is most concerned about now are:

· ZK-SNARKs

· 2PC, MPC, FHE

· Aggregate signatures

· Improve P2P networks

For example, aggregate signatures, in fact, Bitcoin has already made similar upgrades in Schnorr upgrades. The BLS aggregate signature upgrade that Ethereum prefers and Schnorr each have their own advantages, and can also make it very smooth to aggregate multiple signatures into one signature.

A cryptographic achievement can actually be transformed into:

· Make the blockchain more private (multi-person co-signing is conducive to privacy protection)

· Save gas fees (co-signing takes up less space)

· Further reduce the requirements for equipment (easy to verify)

At the same time, V God also mentioned the two elements of "academic theory → technical practice".

First, efficiency.

For example, a very practical problem is that the blocks of the Ethereum main network are 12s intervals, but it takes at least 20 minutes to do ZK-SNARKs Proof.

If there is a lightweight ZK Proof solution, and every block can be fully ZK-ized, then Ethereum will be very private, secure, and censorship-resistant, and even faster.

Secondly, security.

As long as you are human, you will make mistakes.

No one can guarantee that there are no bugs in their code.

Now, debugging relies on the naked eye, such as the "Safety Committee"

But in the future, it may rely on multi-provers, and in the more distant future, it may even rely on AI

On the premise of both security and efficiency, more cryptographic achievements will be absorbed, and Ethereum's goal is to reach the upper limit of cryptography.

After listening to this, I was very excited. It is the truly cutting-edge technology that drives the development of ETH and all other blockchains.

Now, all the public chains ranked behind ETH are desperately comparing with Ethereum, and are trying to find the answer from Ethereum, a competitor.

But Ethereum found the answer in cryptography. This is the real difference between first-rate public chains and second-rate public chains.