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 Scan the QR code above to purchase tickets and participate in the Global Emerging Technology Summit In early October 2018, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, the largest technology community in the blockchain, suddenly made a shocking statement on Twitter, saying that "Ethereum will definitely survive even without me," and that he was gradually relegated to the second line. These remarks caused a big commotion in the blockchain circle. Many people are worried that if Buterin really wants to leave, can Ethereum maintain its leading position in the blockchain industry? In fact, Ethereum, as the most mature underlying architecture platform of the current blockchain, is no longer just a one man show of Buterin, but a prosperous open source community supported by many developers. At Devcon 4, the annual Ethereum developer conference held in Prague a few days ago, many core developers brought the latest research results.  Picture | Vitalik Buterin (Source: Wikipedia)  Picture | Vitalik Buterin tweet (Source: Twitter) Far better than other cryptocurrencies! Ethereum is the most actively developed blockchain  Judging from the activity of code submissions, Ethereum is undoubtedly the most actively developed blockchain. The number of commits on GitHub, the number of stars and forks in the repository, and the number of developers far exceeds all other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, and Litecoin. Ethereum is an open source blockchain underlying system, somewhat similar to the blockchain version of Android. It provides APIs and interfaces so that everyone can quickly develop various decentralized applications (Dapps) on it. Although the current blockchain is still not as fast and efficient as the traditional Internet, according to statistics from Chain Tower Think Tank, as of September 30, 2018, the Ethereum platform has included 940 DApps, including 352 game DApps, accounting for 37.5%, betting DApps accounting for 20%, trading market categories accounting for 5%, and other categories accounting for 37.5%.  Figure | "Ethereum DApp Data Analysis Report in September 2018" (Source: Chain Tower Think Tank) The three-layer developer community from the outside in supports the activity of Ethereum To put it simply, the Ethereum development community can be roughly divided into three developer levels from the outside in, from the upper-layer application projects to the underlying architecture. The outermost layer is the development of various upper-layer application projects built on the underlying architecture of Ethereum. These developers may not be directly involved in the technical advancement of the underlying architecture, but they still contribute to the prosperity of the entire community ecosystem. From the smash hit Cryptokitties to the "money disk" game Fomo 3D that once attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in a single day, they are all DApps built on Ethereum. The second layer is peripheral developers who come from outside the foundation but are also invested in the underlying architecture. Since Ethereum is a completely open source ecosystem, developers from all over the world can participate in the underlying development work in various forms as long as they are interested. Raiden Network, Ethereum’s off-chain scaling solution, is one example. The core is "The Ethereum Foundation" headed by founder V God. It is headquartered in Singapore and currently has a research team of more than 30 people scattered around the world, dedicated to the research and development of the underlying core architecture. Many of them are developers born in the 1990s like V God. When Buterin was asked whether he would take a back seat in the future, he not only said, “It’s already in progress,” but also said, “Most of the research work now is done by Danny Ryan, Justin Drake, Hsiao-Wei Wang and others. ” For example, 29-year-old Justin Drake is one of the main persons in charge of currently researching sharding technology in Ethereum. He once built the first Bitcoin ATM on campus at Cambridge University in the UK. Justin Drake even announced the preliminary design of the next-generation Ethereum ASIC at Devcon 4. In order to solve the problem that cryptocurrency must rely on the proof-of-work mechanism (PoW), that is, mining, which leads to a large amount of energy consumption, the Ethereum community has been actively studying how to turn to the proof-of-stake mechanism (PoS) in recent years. Sharding technology is the key technology for Ethereum to shift from PoW to PoS mechanism. A major difficulty in the PoS mechanism is how to generate good random numbers to ensure that attackers cannot effectively try many random numbers at the same time to achieve the goal of the attack. This part must rely on cryptography such as Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) led by Justin Drake, as well as hardware research such as special ASIC (application specific chip). In the past, the ASIC mining machines discussed in the currency circle were mainly for PoW calculations. The purpose was to quickly calculate PoW and gain the advantage of block generation. The ASIC discussed in Ethereum today is specifically designed to calculate VDF. Justin Drake's purpose is to design an ASIC so that attackers cannot simply rely on performance and powerful computing power to crack its random numbers. In other words, the possibility of the entire network being breached can be reduced to a level where there is little need to worry. The main developer of Casper, another key direction of Ethereum, is Danny Ryan. Casper is the key to Ethereum's transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. It is expected to solve the inherent shortcomings of the PoS mechanism such as the joint evil of nodes, so as to smoothly replace the PoW mechanism. Not only does he shoulder the key to the future development of Ethereum, Danny Ryan is also known for his strong communication skills within the foundation. Internal developers told DT that at the regular Ethereum weekly meeting held every Thursday, Danny Ryan can always integrate several research teams and development teams to communicate on development and research. Many times a difficult question is raised in meetings and no one knows how to answer it, but Danny Ryan can often respond quickly and then define and clarify it.   Figure | The entire progress report including text and voice records of Ethereum-related meeting content can be found on the Council of Ethereum Magicians website and the ethereum GitHub page. You can clearly see the ongoing development details of each team, and you can also see the latest research on Ethereum (source: Council of Ethereum Magicians, ethereum GitHub) There are more than 14,000 nodes around the world, China accounts for 13% Currently, Ethereum has more than 14,000 nodes around the world, distributed all over the world. Most of the nodes are in the United States and Europe, with the United States alone accounting for 43%. In Asia, China has the largest number of nodes, accounting for 13% of global nodes. In fact, China's Ethereum community has been developing since very early, and many early Ethereum core developers are from China. However, due to the outbreak of blockchain entrepreneurship in the past period, a large number of early Ethereum members in mainland China have left for various other projects. On the contrary, the core Ethereum development community ecology in Taiwan and Hong Kong continues to become more and more prosperous.  Figure | Ethereum global node distribution (source: ethernodes) The Taipei Ethereum community initiated by those born in the 1990s has become an important driver of blockchain development energy. In the case of Taiwan, the Taipei Ethereum community has been established for more than 2 years, and many big names in the blockchain industry, including Buterin himself and Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, have personally participated. In addition, the Ethereum Foundation currently has a global developer team of more than 30 people, of which 4 or 5 are from Taiwan. How did such a thriving developer community develop? DT Jun also conducted an exclusive interview with Liang Zhicheng, co-founder of the Taipei Ethereum Meetup, who was born in the 1990s. In 2015, Liang Zhicheng was introduced to Ethereum by a friend. He originally only knew about Bitcoin, but after reading the Ethereum white paper, he found that the latter was completely different. “Just like trying to build a computer, Ethereum will have many applications, software and services," he said. So “we started organizing some meetups, and then officially held Taipei’s first Ethereum event for developers in April 2016. ” Over the past two years, the Taipei Ethereum community has successfully promoted an active local blockchain developer culture with regular offline activities and online fan groups. It even held an "Ethereum All-Star Tech Talk" in March this year, which brought almost all the core key figures of Ethereum to Taipei. “"Taiwan has always had a good community culture." Liang Zhicheng observed that Taipei itself has many large-scale communities, including various open source communities, or even various basic communities from earlier times. This culture of technical talents actively participating in community exchanges directly contributed to the rise of Ethereum in Taiwan. Just like Liang Zhicheng, he has also joined the Ethereum Foundation as a researcher because of his participation in organizing Taipei Ethereum community activities. So, specifically, how do you participate in the Ethereum development community? The development work of Ethereum can be simply divided into four processes. The order is to study the theory, write the specifications, implement the prototype, and then implement the client. Liang Zhicheng explained that in reality, the production of software programs is of course not that simple. The actual operation method is a bit more complicated, but the sequence still remains the same: research, write specifications, and then develop and implement. At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation holds weekly meetings every two weeks to discuss various matters of Ethereum. This weekly meeting is open to the whole world through the Ethereum Magicians Association website, and everyone can participate together, fully demonstrating the open source spirit. “Sometimes some very mysterious people show up," Liang Zhicheng said with a smile. “In fact, there are many ways to start. The first one is to start by reading and understanding the code, and then say hello on the forum, ask relevant questions, and interact with other developers." Liang Zhicheng said that novices can start by helping to translate files, and when they are more familiar with the situation, they can start to join in solving problems. In addition, the Ethereum Foundation team has also produced a lazy package that allows novices to quickly understand what current development needs are. In addition to welcoming voluntary contributions from peripheral developers, the Ethereum Foundation also provides bonuses to call on more programmers to invest in solving more difficult problems. So far in 2018, awards totaling US$11 million have been awarded to 52 projects. Among them, projects that address the scalability and security of Ethereum have received the most support from prizes and projects. In terms of amount, 61.3% of the bonus was invested in scalability projects and 16.8% in security projects. In terms of the number of projects, 29.1% are expansion projects and 18.8% are safety projects.  Figure | Analysis of Ethereum development bonus distribution (Source: Liang Zhicheng) The Development Bonus application process is divided into several steps. The first step is to submit a project application. Liang Zhicheng suggested that applicants must specifically demonstrate their commitment to the Ethereum ecosystem, development capabilities, development focus and progress planning. At the same time, it must also show differences from other projects. Of course, the project must support open source. Next, the proposed project will be reviewed in writing and interviews by the Ethereum core team and the advisory team in order to gradually clarify the project goals, development path and reward amount, and guide the proposal to be consistent with the overall development direction of Ethereum.  Figure | Ethereum development reward application process (Source: Liang Zhicheng) “Vitalik hopes that everyone has the ability to participate in the operation, development, and research of Ethereum," Liang Zhicheng said. "He gradually no longer intervenes in everything, or gives opinions on everything." This is because, although Vitalik’s research and development capabilities are unparalleled, he knows that Ethereum’s breakthrough cannot be achieved by him alone. Cultivating the development capabilities of the entire community is indispensable for Ethereum and even the entire blockchain industry to prosper and grow. -End-   |
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