Gulu x Arbitrum founders (Steven/Ed): The potential of Layer 2 to the Ethereum ecosystem

Introduction

With the recent hype around the launch of Arbitrum and the huge potential surrounding Layer 2, DeGate had the delightful opportunity to speak with Ed Felten and Steven Goldfeder, the Co-Founders of Offchains Lab. In this AMA, we had the chance to dive into insightful topics such as Arbitrum’s current focus, future roadmap and the community.

Description

At 8 pm on Monday, October 18th, let’s welcome the experts of Ethereum Layer 2, Steven Goldfeder and Ed Felten from Offchain Labs, who are the founders of Arbitrum. We will discuss the development and future of Ethereum together with Bihu founder, Gulu.

Introduction to the Speakers

1. Ed Felten: Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Offchains Lab

Background: Computer Science Academic at Princeton University (28 years of experience, beginning with a research project back in 2014). Later, Felten connected with Steven and Harry, who are PhD graduates. They did an academic research on Bertram and spun it off to form Offchains Lab. Felten has since left Princeton and been full-time at Offchains for almost 2 years now.

2. Steven Goldfeder: Co-Founder and CEO at Offchains Lab

Background: PhD student in Princeton back in 2013. Heavily involved in blockchains and together with Ed Felten and others, they co-authored a textbook on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and eventually got interested in Ethereum. His academic work centred around securing digital assets custody, secure signing and threshold signatures. Arbitrum was started towards the end of his time at Princeton. Since then, Arbirtrum has been through many successful developments and they are really excited to continue building it.

Transcript

Welcome Ed and Steven to this AMA!

Gulu: Before we start with AMA, can you please give a brief introduction about yourself?

Ed: Sure thanks. I’m Ed Felton, the co-founder and chief scientist at Offchain Labs. I’ve spent most of my career as an academic teaching computer science at Princeton University. I was there for 28 years and began as a research project at Princeton initially back around 2014. Later on, I connected with Steven and with our third co-founder Harry, we spun it off to form the company. I have since left the university and have been full time in Offchain Labs for almost two years.

Steven: Good evening everyone, very glad to be here. I was a PhD student in Princeton starting from 2013, which is when I got involved in blockchains. Together with Ed and a few others, we co-authored a textbook on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and eventually got interested in Ethereum. My academic work was very involved in securing digital assets custody, secure signing and threshold signatures and Arbitrum was something we started towards the end of my time at Princeton. The company is actually over three years now.

Gulu: Before the event, I’ve actually consolidated a few questions from the community. The first question is what is the current focus of Arbitrum. And the next question is, what is the future technology roadmap for Arbitrum.

Steven: I’ll start and share about our current focus and Ed will share about what’s installed for us. Currently, we are very focused on building our technology and ecosystem. Arbitrum Mainnet was launched about 6.5 weeks ago and has since received promising usage and adoption. Arbitrum is working with many top projects to build our ecosystem. We are strengthening our Chinese community by engaging some of the greatest projects and investors. Arbitrum aims to understand different landscapes and be financially inclusive through lowering transaction costs. Ultimately, we want to welcome everyone within the Ethereum ecosystem. Let me pass the time to Ed to share our future roadmap.

Ed: For our future tech roadmap, the thing that is coming next is what we call Abitrum Nitro. New architecture and a new approach to building the arbitral stack which offers much better performance in comparison to the current scalable technology. Furthermore, it has even closer compatibility with the theory. Despite being very technical, it will be deployed as a seamless upgrade so that users of the current chain will be able to benefit without the need to redeploy or move anything.

Some advantages of Nitro includes:
1) It is built on WebAssembly technology hence developers are allowed to write smart contracts in any language that can be compiled to Amazon. Securing almost any high-level language.
2) Reduces cost by using other data available. Nitro is able to service the same transactions at a lower cost which translates to lower transaction fees.
3) Moving towards decentralizing systems for fair sequencing to resist front running or minor extractable value.
4) More capacity and is able to support more transactions without congestion.
5) More compatible with a lot more tools that developers use which allow for smoother interaction with other chains and technology.
6) Lower gas cost.
To summarise, the technology roadmap is well thought and planned out and we will not get rid of the chain or raise the chain. Instead, we will continue to upgrade and make sure that this is not only the best scaling solution today but the best institution in one to three years from now.

Gulu: In three years, what do you think the Ethereum infrastructure will look like? I am curious, what are your thoughts on that?

Steven: I think there are a few things that we’ll see over the next few years and to be clear, I will give my thoughts and predictions but this space moves at the speed of light so no one really knows. Do take it with a grain of salt, but there are a few things that are pretty clear to me. Firstly, 3 years from now, the majority of the users will not be transacting on Ethereum Layer 1. Layer 1 will become a settlement layer for Layer 2. Next, our costs will be reduced. Arbitrum’s Nitro cost will decrease substantially. Users will experience a much better and cheaper experience on Abitrum. I also believe that there will be much more focus on multi-chain bridging. It will give rise to a trend on deeper bridging that authorises liquidity sharing and conducts cross chain in a much faster and integrated way. In contrast to simply moving assets over from one to the other.

Gulu: Appreciate the great insights. Now, let’s welcome questions from our audience here with us today. Do drop your questions on the chat and I will pick from there. First up, how will multiple shots on Ethereum Layer 2 work together with Arbitrum?

Ed: The biggest source of cost in roll-ups in storing data on Layer 1 due to the congestion. Vitalik emphasized in his roadmap post that providing availability to larger amounts of data is exactly what roll ups need in order to drive down the cost and increase the capacity. Hence, this amplifies the importance of technology being focused on executing large transactions and ensuring correctness and compatibility. This is in line with our roadmap in order to drive down costs in future.

Gulu: The next question from the audience is will there be new depth for Arbitrum in future?

Ed: One thing that we know about Layer One is that in theory, it’s a very powerful idea but very limited in capacity. As we drive down the cost of the transaction and increase the amount of computation, we open up new categories for applications. This parallels the early history of personal computers and the internet where each time there was an order of magnitude increase in capacity, new classes of so-called killer applications are generated. A similar scenario will happen in this space. For example, gaming experiences that require cheap transactions. Next, some of it will be taking existing applications such as Defi and making them accessible to more people since lower value trades become feasible. However, some of the advances will be things that we don’t anticipate now just like scenarios in the history of the internet. For Arbitrum, it is to really focus on driving down cost and driving up capacity. As Steven mentioned, our focus is improving what layer two can offer as a platform and for the community to innovate. Therefore, we’ll see innovative applications in a lot of different areas because of what we’re doing.

Steven: Add on NFC support to ensure security derived from Ethereum. Assets that are bridged over are secured by the core properties of the roll-up. This is a huge part of Arbitrum protocol and we have an excellent and talented team, with a few of them in China that is building the bridge. Arbitrum is focused on providing the protocol layer tools that allow users to build from Ethereum to orbit securely. More projects will use their bridge in the back end and build really good experiences that not only use Ethereum to arbitrate bridges but also build direct experiences of arbitration to other layers and broader networks. In essence, the focus is on the core technology, to build up an excellent network and rely on the community that facilitates creativity and innovation.

Closing

Gulu: Thank you for the great interpretations. Arbitrum is a great product and has a wonderful ecosystem. Personally, I appreciate what you guys have been doing for the Crypto and Ethereum’s ecosystem. Big applause to Ed and Steven and thank you for joining us today.

Steven: Thank you so much for having us, we really appreciate everything you do and the entire Chinese community and we’re excited to build those ties deeper and deeper in the future. We look forward to coming back again soon.