Why Ethereum Classic wants to become more interoperable with Ethereum and more
Messari hosted a public AMA with Bob Summerwill, Executive Director at the ETC Cooperative, and Kevin Lord, Ethereum Classic Community Manager at IOHK, in the Messari community group. Below is a transcript of the conversation.
You can find all of Messari's historical AMA's here
Bob Summerwill: Hello everyone! Bob Summerwill here. Executive Director of the ETC Cooperative and long-time blockchainer. (You can see Bob's blog and bio here)
I went down the rabbit hole in February 2014, reading the Ethereum white paper then, meeting Vitalik IRL in July 2014 and getting actively involved as a volunteer in July 2015. Then EF, then ConsenSys and EEA and Hyperledger and ETC since 2019.
Messari: I like it! Off to a hot start. Thanks for the intro Bob. Really glad to have you here. So since it looks like we're good to go, I'd like to introduce Bob (bio is above) and Kevin Lord, the ETC community manager over at IOHK! Kevin could you also share your background and what got you interested in crypto?
Also, a question for both of you, what was it about ETC that made you want to work on this specific project?
Kevin Lord: Hello as well! 👋🏼
Sure! So what got me interested in "crypto" was bitcoin. This magic internet money that had the potential to disrupt traditional financial systems really peaked my interest. Unfortunately I was naive and did not pay too much attention to the project until a few years later. Then another event really pushed me into the ETCLand which was the DAO hardfork which I equated in my mind to the bailout of the financial institutions in 08.
Short bit about my background. After the DAO hard fork I began lurking in the ETC slack and subreddit, then eventually began connecting with then etcdev advisors and other contributors. Soon after another person and I began a campaign of sorts called "ETCisComing" to raise awareness among other things. This was all the social media for the most part and subsequently lead to "ClassicIsComing" and me joining IOHK.
Bob Summerwill: I was working at the Ethereum Foundation at the time of the DAO fork, and my immediate reaction was "of course we should not intervene" but over the course of that month I came to understand both sides of the coin better, and so I continued by work within the Ethereum ecosystem. Despite that I supported ETC's right to go their own way from Day 1 and interacted with the really volunteers bringing that chain to life.
I offered birthday best wishes each year. Then in April 2018 I met Anthony Lusardi (my predecessor at ETC Coop) at EDCON where he was speaking at the invitation of Virgil Griffith. We got on great. Anthony invited Virgil and I to speak at ETC Summit in Korea and we both did. Then in January 2019 when I was job hunting Anthony asked whether I would be interested in working at ETC Coop and I took the opportunity and it was one of the best choices I could have made.
I have learned to really understand and love the principled stand which ETC took and to appreciate the value proposition. Happy to have spent by 2019 helping in the massive revival of fortunes of ETC!
It has also brought me to LOVE Bitcoin :-)
Anthony and others have tagged me as "bi-Ethereal, with the ability to EtherWalk between chains". I like that analogy
I also like "ETC-curious" for Ethereans just starting to look at ETC and wonder "What is going on here? That is interesting. But isn't it "forbidden"? 😂
Messari: The subject is definitely known to ruffle some feathers. But in recent months, ETC has implemented a couple of forks to remain compatible with Ethereum. We have a couple of questions related to that:
- With the Agharta upgrade live, ETC is now more compatible with ETH. What is the reason for or benefit of maintaining a high level of interoperability with ETH?
- Last year Vitalik Buterin proposed using ETC for data storage - do you oppose this or agree with using ETC in this manner?
Bob Summerwill: So - the value proposition of ETC to me is very clear.
ETC = "Bitcoin with smart contracts and rich statefulness"
ETH2 = "World Computer"
Those projects are entirely complementary but have very differing goals and priorities. That manifested big style at the time of the DAO fork, because for the former group the answer was OBVIOUSLY not to intervene. This is money. You do not mess with it. For the latter group the answer was OBVIOUSLY to intervene, because there is a bug in the application platform (and ETH is not money, it is just gas for the machine).
Kevin Lord: Re: ETC data storage - I oppose this completely because in my opinion ETC shouldn't be used in that manner. However ETC is permissionless and anyone has the freedom to do nearly anything with the network as we've recently seen with the GasToken project "mining gas" and bloating the chain. But just because I oppose it doesn't mean it can't happen. That's one of the benefits of having a truly decentralized network. One person can't call the shots.
regarding value proposition. to quote Donald McIntyre "The value proposition of ETC is its sound design and talent behind it."
Bob Summerwill: "Reason or benefit for Ethereum compatibility" is pretty obvious! Ethereum is by far the dominant smart contract platform (something like 90-95% of all dapps are on ETH). Compatibility means that such dapps can trivially be deployed on ETC as well.
It has been the case for long spells during 2016-2019 that you had to be a "true believer" to bother trying to build on top of ETC. The protocol was far behind. There was objectively inferior tooling. Missing basics like a good block explorer. You had to do "special tricks" to get things working on ETC which just worked on ETH.
So all that is already pretty much rear window and will be completely untrue at Aztlan with "just works" deployment to ETC and complete byte-code compatibility. Exact same tools. Everything "just works". Just point at ETC vs ETH, no different than moving between ETH and Gorli testnet say.
We are also seeing numerous projects adding "ETC support" or being interested in adding it - though at Azlan you won't even need "support". Because there will be now difference.
Kevin Lord: Exactly it allows ETC developers to use the tools already available on eth.
Bob Summerwill: That is not to say that ETC and ETH will be 100% compatible forever. That is not the highest priority goal for ETC. Security, sustainability and ALSO immutability and not breaking existing smart contracts will always be highest priority.
ETC and ETH might diverge on compatibility again if that is for reasons of sustainability or addressing malincentives in ETC which affect sustainability, with a prime example being the state trie bloat crisis which affects both ETH and ETC.
I have proposed a hard-cap on gaslimit in-protocol as one answer to that. We are also seriously looking at SELFDESTRUCT and gas-refund mechanisms and whether those are also bad for sustainability.
And Wei Tang has proposed removing the observability of GAS within the EVM. That would also be a change which would make ETC incompatible with ETH but would likely be better for forwards/backwards compatibility. It would only happen together with adding EVM versioning
Our goal is to get to a place where changes to protocol can slow RIGHT down. To gain social scalability. If we get to a place where "we can all die tomorrow but the ETC chain can keep trucking with that protocol for decades (caveat DOS vector emergency fixes) then we will all be very happy.
Messari: I guess that leads into this question
- Why is absolute immutability important?
Bob Summerwill: "Absolute immutability" is not desirable.
As much immutability as possible is INCREDIBLY desirable, though, because it is the fair basis for a very sound economy to be built on top, with all participants knowing that they are building on solid foundations and that it will not be yanked from underneath them at the whim of "the mob".
Something which is commonly said (especially by Vitalik) in the Ethereum ecosystem which has always mildly horrified me is that "Ethereum will be whatever the community want Ethereum to be".
To me that is completely rudderless and useful as a statement. So no guiding principles? So hard lines in the sand? No fixed goals? That is just "American Idol" and is completely gameable and malliable. That is two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.
Kevin Lord: regarding the immutability question: Immutability is important but “trust-minimization” is more important. The valuable features of ETC such as: significantly minimizing trusted third parties, allowing only owners of private keys to control their tokens or contracts on the network, having no freezing mechanism, and is open for anyone to use, These features are enabled by trust minimization which makes ETC immutable and censorship resistant.
Bob Summerwill: Simple example of ETC not having (or desiring) absolute immutability is the application of the emergency gas repricing which happened after the "Shanghai attacks" on ETH in 2016. So there was a significant known DOS vector which had been utilitized to bring the network to a halt, because some operations were mispriced and you could bring the network to a halt.
Should ETC have refused to make the same changes "Because Immutability", "Because Code is Law"? Of course not. That would be insane.
But honestly, that is how naive a perspective many people outside of the ETC ecosystem have of the philosophy. "Code is Law" is about not breaking social contracts, not breaking smart contracts, not moving funds without private keys. Not about never changing anything in the protocol ever. Of course will make improvements if we can. Of course we will optimize gas prices if we can do so without breaking anything.
But that is the hard line. So for Aztlan we will be taking everything EXCEPT the repricing which broke 680 Aragon smart contracts. That is NOT how ETC rolls.
RE: ETC for data storage.
ETC is a permissionless platform. Participants can use it in whatever way makes sense for them, as long as they pay the transactions fees.
Be aware - though. While ETC gas prices are super-cheap compared to ETH right now that is not a "feature". It is a time-sensitive fact at the time of writing. I anticipate that as ETC gains popularity (and we it #10 on CMC the other day), those prices will rise to get much closer to ETH at which point "dumping data" onto ETC will not look such a good "cheap scaling option" anymore. I think there are better solutions.
Also, if we do cap the gaslimit, there will be less capacity for that and fees will likely rise even faster. Having said that, if ETC does switch to Keccak256 for mining hash algorithm then Zac Mitton's work on FlyClient will become much more viable, so that "data availability" will become possible.
I doubt this will ever come to fruition. It will be possible but undesirable for both sides.
Messari: Makes sense, change is welcome to a point, as long as it doesn't cross the line of trust minimization?
Speaking of trust minimization and its impact on what code changes are considered acceptable, we had a couple of questions on how ETC development decisions are made
- How are the development decisions made in the ETC ecosystem?
- How does ethereum classic make changes to the network? Like how does it avoid a network/community split like the DAO hard fork bailout?
Kevin Lord: RE: change is welcome to a point, as long as it doesn't cross the line of trust minimization? It’s trust-minimization that enables immutability, and censorship resistance in blockchain systems. Changes of any kind are allowed to any point, but whether or not they are agreed upon and added into client implementations by respective client developers and whether node operators choose them is what makes the difference.
changes must also be proposed through the ECIP process
Messari: Like Ethereum's EIP process, but does it differ in any way?
Bob Summerwill: Decision making on ETC happens via the ECIP process (Ethereum Classic Improvement Process) which was modelled after the EIP (Ethereum) which was modelled after the BIP (Bitcoin) which was modelled after the PIP (Python).
See this and the web-view onto active proposals
Anyone the planet can make a proposal, and it will be merged in Draft status as long as it is well formed and is not counter to ETC goals and philosophy (ie. has no chance whatever of ever happening).
Then we go through a phase of gathering human consensus (Github, Discord, Twitter, polls, face-to-face talks, whatever is necessary). Final decisions on moving ECIPs out of Draft into "Final Call" and then to "Accepted | Final" are always made on calls (which happen with voice on Discord) and the decisions recorded on the ECIPs themselves, so we have a papertrail of decision making.
Main difference from EIPs is that the calls are open to everyone. The calls for Ethereum are actually "Core Developer calls" and the participants are only developers working on client teams.
The Ethereum calls are live-streamed with a public "read only view" with a Zoom call on the inside.
Kevin Lord: Yes the ECIP process was modeled after the Bitcoin BIP and Ethereum EIP processes. I think they may differ slightly in regards to how BIP and EIP proposals are submitted.
Bob Summerwill: Both ETH and ETC are effectively run by an "altruistic technocracy" but non client-devs have more of a voice than they do on ETH.
On ETC we also do not shrink from the fact that decision making on what goes into hard-forks is a deeply political process. This is effectively like politicians in parliament (but without voting - just judging rough consensus).
Some of the Ethereum Core Developers "don't like politics" and pretend to themselves that EIP is just a "technical specification process" and that they are not public figures with deep responsibilities and accountability - but that is the reality.
You cannot hide behind your keyboard, refuse to talk to the press (Coindesk have repeatedly been excluded from ETH meetings) and pretend that you are just a developer writing code. Not so when it comes to these decisions which are deeply impactful.
Another analogy - this group is like the Fed Open Market Committee. Hudson's ever word on those calls is parsed like the minutes from the Fed. That is the reality. There are billions and billions of dollars at stake. Protocol changes like changes to block rewards or ProgPOW steer hundreds of millions or billions of dollars from one group to another.
OF COURSE that is a political process.
Kevin Lord: ETC has a much more open / transparent improvement proposal process than ETH.
Bob Summerwill: In my observation, all the principal stakeholders in the ETC ecosystem are aware of that dynamic and embrace it. Yes, this is deeply political and it all about human psychology and interpersonal relationships.
ETC has been under social attack from day 1. This group of people is deeply savvy to things happening on the layers above the technical, and does pay attend to that too.
Messari: This is enlightening on the extent of the differences. Thanks for the detailed responses. For the sake of time, I'm going to dump a couple of questions from the community here. First a couple on DeFi on ETC:
- DeFi is seeing tremendous growth since 2019. Are there any notable DeFi projects coming/being developed on Ethereum Classic?
- What plans do ETC have to offer/piggyback onto DeFi solutions out there? We want to earn high rewards on our ETC ASAP!
Bob Summerwill: ETC is, to my mind, a way better platform than ETH for DeFi projects because:
- The ETC native token is hard-money
- ETC prioritizes long-term sustainability and plans to be around for decades. ETH has a very uncertain future, with ETH2 transition timing unsure, ETH1->ETH2 transition plan unsure, cross-shard communication story unsure, eWASM unsure.
- If you are building financial instruments to hold for years, then scalability is one of your lowest concerns.
So I think Bitcoin and ETC are way better base. ETC is Ethereum too and with complete compatibility DeFi projects could target ETC as well very easily. I expect to be talking to many, many DeFi projects in the coming months, giving them the "elevator pitch".
There are SOME DeFi projects on ETC - mainly DEXes and speculative tokens - but I expect a raft more to appear in 2020. Before we hit this feature parity, it did not make a lot of sense for any project to favor ETC over ETH, so we are missing lots of that dapp ecosystem, but that can change fast.
Kevin Lord: As far as Decentralized finance there are currently a limited amount of live projects deployed. One of them being Commonwealth a fork of P3WH3D which states “We use a smart contract as a digital vault for the world's savings,” and aims “An open financial instrument for saving.”
Another would be the Saturn Hodl Dapp. Very limited right now.
Wrapped ETC by POA is also another project with tremendous potential. Here’s a link to the project.
Bob Summerwill: RE: "What plans?"
I expect to be doing my "pitch" on ETC hundreds and hundreds of times during 2020. I will be at ETHDenver, ETHLondon, ETHCC and Consensus 2020. Yaz will be at those events and more. Kevin will be around. ETC Core and ETC Labs will be around.
The world is going to be hearing a lot about ETC in 2020!
Messari: And then some on the possibility of ETC layer-2 efforts
- Any update on ETC sidechains?
- Is any update regarding the Connext state channels on ETC network?
Bob Summerwill: On Layer 2, that is a beautiful story. Because ALL of the layer solutions for Ethereum will now work on ETC as well. That applies for state channels, for ZK-snarks, for ZK-Roll ups, for Optimistic rolls ups. Everything
For Connext in particular, there is no technical reason why that could not be done on ETC today, but there are funding needs. That might be the case for other Layer 2 solutions too, so they won't just "pop on" for ETC. They will appear step-by-step.
That is because there are off-chain elements for many dapps which require extra machines to run databases, websites or other infrastructure which will need second instances. And there are real world costs for that. Also extra support, extra maintenance.
ETC Cooperative in particular is a public charity with a limited budget for grants and funding. Just today it was announced that Grayscale are extending their funding of ETC Cooperative, which is awesome news
But it does not mean that we have $10K, $25K, $50K or whatever to dole out to every infrastructure project on the planet to pick up their engineering costs for adding those extra elements, or some monthly costs. We cannot prop up the world!
Getting to sustainable funding models is a real problem in the whole of the blockchain space. If infrastructure projects do not have a viable business model ALREADY then it would be unwise for us to pump money into their black hole just so we could say "Hey! So-and-so supports ETC now".
The best projects will support ETC because it is easy for them and because ETC makes sense to them and they see a viable business there.
DAppNode, for example, just announced ETC support. I had them on my TODO list and never even got the opportunity to talk to them prior to their announcement. That is a phase shift and I love it! I shared a photo of the post-it note on my desk with them.
Messari: We still have a number of questions left, but it looks like we're up on time. I want to thank both of you for taking the time to join us today! You gave us a wealth of information on ETC and we hope to have you back soon.
Before we wrap up, what is one thing (if you had to narrow it down) you are looking forward to this year for ETC?
Kevin Lord: Personally I’m excited about protocol parity with ethereum which opens the door to an incredible amount of potential for ETC. Also I’m looking forward to the addition of Account Versioning which will make ETC forever backward compatible. No worrying about broken smart contracts as seen with Aragon and others on eth.
We should likely see projects move over to ETC because of this parity. Very exciting.
Bob Summerwill: I am looking forward to the point where people I have known for years within the Ethereum ecosystem who remain ETC-phobic or ETC-wary coming to the realization that "You know? ETC really does make sense, eh? You guys were right. I never thought I would say it, but now I like ETC as well 😂"
Because none of this is a zero-sum game, as Virgil would always say.