First Impressions at an SF Blockchain Event
This article was written collaboratively by first-year members Alexis Gauba, Ravi Jotwani, Sara Reynolds, and Maaz Uddin, about their recent experience entering the blockchain community and volunteering for Consensys.
Walking into an unassuming building, we excitedly ventured into our first blockchain meetup. Unsure of what to expect, we were greeted with pulsating enthusiasm on all ends. Community members formed a waitlist hundreds of people long, networking in line, all in anticipation to hear about Ethereum’s path forward.
Volunteering for Consensys, we checked attendees into the event, allowing us to interact with both veterans in the space, and newcomers like ourselves, giving us insight into this unique community. Filled with incessant discussion on startup slacks, animated reddit threads, and a penchant for collaboration, this space is open, intelligent, and ready to push boundaries.
This openness pervades at all levels, from the mild enthusiast interacting with others around them to Vitalik Buterin himself, who simply walked up to the check-in desk and engaged with us without any pretension prior to his talk. Vitalik, Joseph, and Jun seemed to really care about the knowledge present in the room and about the community in general. Staying after their talk to engage with individuals on the merits of their presentations, they emphasized that in this space, all that’s necessary to be successful is strong initiative and a desire to learn.
Surrounded by bright minds on all ends, we realized that in this space, knowledge is truly power — both in understanding technical details and in the people we interacted with.
OmiseGo — Jun Hasegawa
When Jun Hasegawa took the stage, we didn’t know what to expect, but from his poise, we knew that we were about to have our eyes opened to a whole new world. Jun introduced OmiseGo as an Ethereum based project that Omise is currently working on. The goal of OmiseGo is to provide a digital solution, via e-wallet, to people in Southeast Asia who may not have access to a conventional bank account or who might run into large fees when trying to send money to their home countries.
Offering a fintech solution to help underprivileged and migrant workers with remittances was a huge advantage that blockchain boasted. And here we were, sitting in the very same room as a pioneer in the field we were newly engulfed in. Hearing Jun speak about how viable and scalable OmiseGo is, especially compared to the likes of Visa, sounded almost like a fairytale. He even went on to talk about the future of decentralized exchanges (crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto) and where we can expect them to go in the upcoming years.
Plasma — Joseph Poon
Our growing excitement for blockchain flourished as unfamiliar jargon echoed effortlessly from Joseph Poon, a young and vibrant blockchain enthusiast… or should I say creator, entrepreneur, and innovator. Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin have reimagined Ethereum with a platform called Plasma, a hierarchical network of blockchains which will ultimately allow for more scalability on the Ethereum network. While still very theoretical, Plasma presents an ambitious leap in taking Ethereum to the next level. If execution on these concepts is plausible, we could be looking at vast opportunity in this space.
The Data Availability Problem — Vitalik Buterin
As soon as Vitalik walked on stage, the demeanor of the audience changed from one of calm to one of intense anticipation. Everyone was itching to hear what he had to say. From our place in the audience, we were astonished at the level of respect people had for the 23-year-old developer.
Vitalik started his presentation by explaining the fundamental problem with creating an “ideal” currency. He put three words on the board: decentralization, scalability, and security. He showed us that creating currencies which fit 2 out of the 3 descriptions was relatively easy, but one which fit all 3 was almost impossible to design. A decentralized currency that is scalable will inherently include security tradeoffs. A secure, scalable currency is only achievable with the oversight of a governing body (with our current technology). Also, a secure, decentralized currency will not be able to incorporate enough network throughput to be scalable. Vitalik dubbed this problem “the Scalability Trilemma.”
After highlighting this problem with modern currencies, Vitalik went on to describe Merkle Trees and how awesome they are (meme). His explanation of them led right into his presentation of the data unavailability problem. The basis of this vulnerability is the inaccessibility of one of the branches of the Merkle tree. It leads to miners not being able to verify or invalidate the authenticity of a block.
Dishonest miners can utilize this vulnerability in 2 ways. In the first instance, a dishonest miner publishes an incomplete block, which makes an honest miner raise an alarm. The dishonest miner then has to include the remaining information for his block to be validated by the network, or the miners will avoid that block. This instance does not present an unfixable issue, but the second instance does. If a dishonest miner creates a false alarm for a complete block, there is nothing the publisher of the block can do to make the network accept the block. The block will not be recognized and its transactions will not be completed.
Even though the data unavailability problem has the potential to pose such a large threat to the Ethereum blockchain, Vitalik managed to propose a solution. He encouraged random sampling of accepted blocks on the client side to check whether they contain all the data they are supposed to. This approach would serve to eliminate the possibility of false alarms. It may move closer to a centralized, trust-based system, but it serves as a preliminary fix to an intimidating new flaw.
Final Thoughts
The four of us learned an incredible amount of information in the span of only a few hours. We were exposed to technologies and ideas far out of our grasp, only tangible to the most experienced in the audience. For a first blockchain conference experience, this one will be hard to beat. It served as a great start to our journey into this nascent industry. There’s a sense of excitement that comes with infancy, and in all the opportunity that lies ahead for this space we’re excited to be a part of its seemingly boundless growth.
