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Vitalik Buterin

@vitalik.eth

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A fun math aside, on the idea of splitting a large zk proving workload between multiple provers. Suppose you have N provers, and you have a proving workload that you split into N parts (so, one part per prover). You require provers to pre-register, but registration is open-access. Suppose you have a constant fault rate (eg. 1/5 of registered provers fail). Provers expect to complete in one round (eg. 3s). If one prover fails, other provers have to come in and re-prove that load. How many rounds does it take for the entire workload to get proven? Answer: log*(N) (yes, that's the iterated-log function) Why: In the first round, you go from N unproven workloads to N/5 unproven workloads In the second round, each remaining workload gets assigned 5 provers, so per-workload failure rate becomes 1 in 5^5. So you go to N / 5 / 5^5 unproven workloads In the third round, each remaining workload gets assigned ~5^5 provers, so failure rate is 1 in 5^(5^5). So you go to N / 5 / 5^5 / 5^(5^5) unproven workloads
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And my personal focuses for 2025: 1. Ethereum, particularly: (i) L1 long-term roadmap (eg. single-slot finality, long-term VM, statelessness, security / resilience / decentralization) (ii) full-stack security, open source and privacy: ensuring Ethereum is usable in a way that is highly secure, free of centralized intermediaries and privacy-friendly, incl higher up the stack (apps, wallets...) 2. Big-picture d/acc (see https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/01/05/dacc2.html ): * comms tools, info and social layer, mechanism design eg. governance, pubgoods/open source funding * cryptography, OS, hardware, physical infra, bio defense Meanwhile areas that are important but where I am relatively less involved (and others excel): * @gakonst @ansgar.eth @dankrad and others are taking on practicals of short-term scaling (eg. 10x the L1 gaslimit within 2026) * p2p, block construction, other research areas * @hww @tkstanczak are leading many EF matters * proven app layer categories (eg. defi, payments/savings)
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I actually think the growth of app layer is exactly the time that good social philosophy is needed *most*. Analogy: imagine that C++ had been made by a totalitarian racist fascist. Would it be a worse language? Probably not. C++ is general purpose, there isn't much surface for bad social philosophy to wreck it (or good social philosophy to improve it). Ethereum L1 is not quite in that position: someone who doesn't believe in decentralization would not add light clients, or FOCIL, or (good forms of) account abstraction; someone who doesn't mind energy waste would not spend half a decade moving to PoS... But the EVM opcodes might have been roughly the same either way. So Ethereum is perhaps 50% general-purpose. Apps are ~80% special purpose. What apps you build depends heavily on what ideas you have of what ethereum apps (and ethereum as a whole) are there to do for the world. And so having good ideas on this topic out there becomes crucially important. https://x.com/owocki/status/1911160442728419681
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