Ansgar Dietrichs

In other proof of stake chains,

While in principle, that should be the same thing, what in practice happens is that because any non-validator user of the chain is just a light client because you can't just participate in the chain, basically any user in those chains just trusts the majority of validators.

So in practice, those validators determine what the rules of the chain are, right?

Like in a chain that does not center verifiability, validators de facto control what the rules of the chain are.

Like if the majority of validators want to run a different set of rules, they can do that.

In Ethereum, that's not the case.

Validators can't accept or reject a fork.

They can just make a fork of their own.

They just get handed the rules by the community and the ultimate power always lies with the community, right?

So that's why verifiability, auditability is so core to Ethereum.

And that's why we have been historically slow to embrace scaling because that would endanger that property.

And now with CKVM, we have this magical way of getting the best of both worlds, getting the full verifiability and the full performance.

Although I will say, all of this is a bit too black and white.

Actually, what's been happening, so for example, I'm not actually, like I'm personally, while I'm involved with our ZKVM work, we have experts, we have Justin, who's been on the podcast before many times.

We have Kev, who's doing absolutely amazing work there.

We have many people there that full-time work on this.

And I'm actually focused much more on short-term scaling.

And so,

While it is true that with traditional scaling, there's like a limit that you can reach and otherwise you basically have this fundamental trade if you can't escape.

Ethereum historically has been very much in this mode of, well, we're working towards this eventual end state, you know, and we know we want to eventually do ZK.