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Dankrad Feist: Ethereum Foundation – An Eth2 Progress Update #2

Episode Summary

We were joined by Dankrad Feist, who heads the sharding and statelessness research at the Ethereum Foundation, for a second update on Ethereum 2.0.

Episode Notes

Ethereum 2.0 is an upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to improve the network's security and scalability. Recently, we chatted to Danny Ryan about the Merge and switch to Proof of Stake. As a follow up to that episode, we were joined by Dankrad Feist, who heads the sharding and statelessness research at the Ethereum Foundation.

We dove deep into the technical infrastructure of how Eth2 addresses scaling through sharding, the pros and cons of data shards vs. execution shards, and how this links up with ZK-rollups. We also talked about the Ethereum state and how the state can be altered for protocol improvements.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Dankrad's background and how he came to work on Ethereum
• An overview of potential protocol updates and where they’re at right now
• Data availability shards and the overall concept of sharding in the protocol
• How shards are maintained with validators and Proof of Stake
• How Rollups work and the vision for their future
• The role of execution shards and what they provide that data availability shards don't
• Composability across data shards
• Statelessness; what the Ethereum state is and how it is used
• What is state rent?
• EVM and parallelization
• Dankrad's views on the future of Ethereum and what it will bring to the blockchain space

Episode links:

• Episode 393 with Danny Ryan
• Eth Research
• Ethereum Blog
• Ethereum Community
• Eth R&D Discord
• Ethereum on GitHub
• EF on Twitter
• Dankrad on Twitter

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/397