Fireside Chat: Aya Miyaguchi - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

hi everyone I'm Vanessa and I'm from the ethereum foundations's ecosystem support program and today we have a here with us who's the executive director of the ethereum foundation so we'll start off with a simpler question we are 10 years into ethereum development now what do you think people still don't understand about ethereum or what are some common misconceptions about the ecosystem yeah uh first of all this this participating in this big event is is kind of um our experiment this year thinking because first setting the expectation um you know like because we're not really here to sell etherum um that's and the reason why is that maybe that you can understand that from my talk uh the most important thing but also um the biggest misunderstood Mis misunderstanding is that EF doesn't own etherum um Al or ethereum is not equal to the eum foundation and it is the technology itself the platform it is uh run by actually currently there are more than 2,000 active contributors monthly which is by far the largest um open Source you know platform Community um and that is very important that like very tiny portion of that is uh from people from the etherum foundation all right and you mentioned that the common misconception is that EF doesn't own ethereum and also that ethereum is a really open and permissionless ecosystem so then what exactly does the EF do yes so so the E Foundation supports all different kinds of activities in the ecosystem that includes um like a core development research uh work of of the platform but also other like educational activities such as there are a lot of local events happening run by local community members and also uh other educational materials um and the important thing is like it's it's not the E that is doing everything I you know someone just asked me oh are you guys running zalu and then zalu is also part of like this popup City idea that was um created by community members and and then there are many other experiments happening and then we do have by deciding what uh our actions we do have three guiding principles one is long-term thinking which is actually base of everything and the second is stewardship of values and the last one is subtraction let's talk about these guiding principles cuz in my opinion they're one of the most distinctive features of the ethereum foundation so you mentioned stewardship of values what values are these so um well the values there are certain set of values that etherum Foundation sorry eum Community believe in and that's not something we created um something that are there and then that I'll talk to to these the most number of developers to participate in this ecosystem open source is you know one of the most important values and um and then like I said open participation credible neutrality decentralization um I just you know like uh heard overheard someone was saying decentralization is just Meme and and uh etherum um does take decentralization very seriously it doesn't it doesn't compromise uh decentralization just to increase the number of transaction quickly uh and that's that you see that in the technology but you you see in the way how our people operate um and then like I said this is you know you can you can participate at any layer but also how these um activi ities are run by all different um teams in the ecosystem there are you know like most number of client teams um running uh clients but also the biggest Milestone the ethanim ecosystem has done the merge in 2022 uh including including the shift of consensus mechanism from proof of work to Pro of stake that work itself was very daunting hard work because that that shift of consensus needed to be done when thousands of applications were already running but also the the more important part is that plug us was made by multiple teams who were involved not by thean Foundation being the product manager and then the boss making all the plans and making that plug us together with all different teams actually being the contributor and that achievement was way harder than yeah like we we could have even expected and so that's why you see that spirit of decentralization in all different parts of ecosystem MH and part of the reason why we take decentralization so seriously and the reason reason why the merge was carried out in the way that it was is because of one of the other principles which is long-term thinking so would you like to elaborate on that a little bit more yeah so it does actually lead to the long-term thinking principle because it's there are so many ways to make things happen quickly or make things bigger um but that if you look at we are looking at the word when we don't exist meaning I personally won't live forever um unless unless the longevity Innovation would really beat that um so we we do think about the the time when we won't exist anymore but then how do we still maintain those values because that is the most important part of what should be the most important part of what we are doing and so the long term we everything has to be based on long-term thinking and then the final guiding principle which is subtraction you gave a talk at Devcon B two years ago about subtraction as a guiding principle and since then there's been a lot of conversation in the ecosystem about what subtraction actually means so can we revisit this concept and can you talk us through how and why the EF landed on subtraction yeah so so when we made the decision or when I gave a talk at Devon 2022 about subtraction and I didn't think this would bring that big of well first also positive feedback but also some like controversy um and and I think that subtraction is something more natural to me I think maybe it's more natural to the Eastern wisdom but uh I realized that it has this this image of like some negative image that um uh for for uh a lot of parts of the world and and that misunderstanding is that it's people think that's equal to doing less or minimalism and then that's actually not exactly uh right or it's actually different um because for for in order to subtract you actually have to think more and I even do more things and I can give you some examples for example one of the thing that happened after I joined e uh we we did was the making the website of ethereum.org as communities and it used to actually the e.org website it used to show up you know the talk about the teams in the foundation that was it uh uh and then now this this website is we for the community run by community members EF people are only coordinating the work encouraging people to participate creating the contents again like with the same concept of like it's open source um anyone can join and then Community can make the decision what content should be out there how to explain there too for example and uh and also there are act a lot of contribut Compu to the translation work like now the the website has 63 languages which is also the great achievement by the community so that actually compared to previous website it requires a lot more work so we actually doing more to subtract and that is seems to be very hard to understand for people um but also we added another for example the glant giving work the effort um and that's also coming from sub sh and like how do we support teams outside of the foundation because that's those are very important and then um and then that's also extra work to do like actually maybe Vanessa you are part of this grant team ecosystem support program and then maybe you can share uh from your experience yeah so so for context the ecosystem support program is a team that's part of the ethereum foundation um but we're also a really public facing team and we focus on providing support to the ethereum ecosystem so that support can be Financial in the sense of awarding Grants to projects that are public goods free and open source non-commercial and that benefits the ethereum ecos system and the protocol or it can also be non-financial support in the sense of providing guidance and connections to these teams so whenever we receive a Grant application evaluating whether or not a team is competent and capable or whether or not the project is feasibly is feasible or technically sound these are the more straightforward parts of the work that we do the harder part is really constantly asking ourselves the question what are the possible third second or even third order positive negative impacts of the decisions that we're making and this really ties into subtraction and long-term thinking so I'll give an example let's say that we decide to provide a grant to a team that's building a solution to solve a specific problem in the eorum ecosystem on one hand it's really great because we are encouraging people to work on important problems in the ethereum ecosystem and the protocol and on the other hand we are then asking ourselves if we support this does it look like this particular solution has an official EF stamp of approval and if yes does this then encourage other people in the ecosystem from creating and developing newer and potentially better Solutions and if yes then what does that then mean for Innovation and diversity in the ethereum ecosystem so it constantly feels like a balance act where you're considering different tradeoffs and so I want to direct this question back to you A how do you maintain balance and decide when and how to subtract um yes so that is actually a hard question uh we need to ask to ourselves um constantly because it it is not just about mindlessly subtracting and then doing less um I I look at the ecosystem just well ethereum ecosystem just like the natural ecosystem not really like a business ecosystem way and the reason why is that since it's not controlled by the eum foundation and we don't know what is going to uh become popular what is going to be the main thing and then how new idea will come and since we don't really control it like acts more like natural ecosystem and then there are a lot lot of moving pieces and living things out there um and so what we need to do is look at observe what's happening in the ecosystem and we ourselves look at our laws in like what is what is the law we have now so it it it should not be the same as our law the eum foundation's law in 2017 for example because the ecosystem is a lot different now and then now there are uh first of all there there is there are twos now and then um so what is the law like we still we what is what are the thing that we we are doing but maybe we should not be doing now what are the thing actually we haven't been doing but maybe we need to start thinking or doing so that is those are the questions that we need to constantly ask and then in that there are things that we definitely need to add because for example I still think that that all of eum foundation uh the important thing is like the gloss is happening you know like you come to this token event and then you see all the layer twos are presenting their businesses and it's so gloss is happening but the maintaining the values maintaining the culture um it is not just it not cannot just by done by the ter Foundation but we do have this unique role still in this and that's why there are things that we you know we need to do more and also another thing about subtraction is by subtracting the goal is not really making something small there is a goal that we want to grow in the end like something we want to grow something in the end so something should be becoming either better or even big and what is that then for us that is the impact this this technology can create in the end uh so we are actually thinking to Glow that and then subtraction is just just just the strategy to get there um so that those questions are really important for us to keep asking and then I think all the youf people now I I'm I'm I'm glad to hear like how you are thinking in in your work to um yeah so that's that's maybe my answer to to that question mhm and I think this conversation is probably one that's really different from the other conversations that are taking place at token and there are a lot of businesses here today at token naturally and you used to be part of a business in the industry as well so do you have a final parting message for people who would like to start thinking about subtraction more yes um yeah uh speaking on business so I used to be yes I used to be a part of a business in the industry I joined this industry a while ago like more than a decade ago uh and then I was uh an early member of um team kren in exchange and then that we were only a few few of us but because the industry was early I was involved in a lot of like industry work like before the business work uh and then one of thing that that I was I I well I had to lead was this this supporting mon go uh Banky work uh that was happening in Japan uh there are like the biggest you know lot of people in the world lost their asset um and then I was working with actually micr girl from the current CE of chain analysis uh we were working together for the project and then convince the trustee of the bankruptcy to not to recreate you know like assets back back in do was mainly uh Bitcoin and because of that work 200,000 Bitcoin were not liquidated and in the point is that was the work was actually we were working together everyone in the industry was like thought this was ex ex existential like Crisis like we we we have to work together otherwise this industry might be killed um but and I think um that was a part that I I felt you know like really great being able to work together with the older realiant but also um I saw when I joined eum I saw this similar this this working together playing infinite games together and then that thought that was reason why um started to call this vision of infinite garden and then I hope like like we're still doing all this together um there's so many businesses now but I hope people see more systemic view of of everything and by doing that by only looking at a bigger picture sure you can see maybe where you can subtract too so that's that's I that's my message in the end is we we look at the big picture and then think we are in the same game all right thank you I believe we are at time already so thank you so much a for sharing your really valuable insights on our guiding principles and philosophies thank you