Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I heard podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Mus It's Wednesday, October. First there were the miners, and now,
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Ethereum merge, there's a new
Speaker 1: class of blockchain participants in town. These are the builders.
Speaker 1: But what exactly do these builders do and why are
Speaker 1: ethereum critics so worried about them? For insights on these questions,
Speaker 1: we've got Bloomberg Crypto repost as Olga Karife and David
Speaker 1: pat Olga David. What a pleasure to have you both
Speaker 1: in the studio in the case of David and Vert
Speaker 1: trually in this studio. In the case of Olga David,
Speaker 1: why don't you introduce yourself? My name is David pant
Speaker 1: I'm a crypto reporter at Bloomberg. I cover crypto mining.
Speaker 1: Olga hi Um, I'm Olga Kreif. I'm a crypto reporter
Speaker 1: here at Bloomberg um for all kinds of stuff um,
Speaker 1: including happenings and upgrades on Ethereum. And it's great to
Speaker 1: be here Ethereum. I feel like we talked about that
Speaker 1: a lot, because there's been a lot going on. One
Speaker 1: of the things that was going on was the Merge,
Speaker 1: and it's so weird that so many thousands of people
Speaker 1: spent years like preparing for this thing, worrying about this thing,
Speaker 1: criticizing this thing, thinking this thing was never gonna happen,
Speaker 1: and now we're like, yeah, it's totally happened. We've moved on,
Speaker 1: we're in there, We're in the new era. As part
Speaker 1: of that new era, you know, both of you have
Speaker 1: worked on various stories about let's call it premerge and
Speaker 1: post merge, where premerge, the more important players in a
Speaker 1: proof of work ecosystem are some folks called miners. In
Speaker 1: a post merge ecosystem, you're starting to hear words like
Speaker 1: builders and you know, validators, And what I would love
Speaker 1: for you both to explain to our audiences is why
Speaker 1: these builders matter, what they do and where they came from.
Speaker 1: And all girls start with you. Sure, So, before the merge,
Speaker 1: it was a fairly simple system. There were the miners
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much it. The miners essentially organized
Speaker 1: the Ethereum blockchain. And then after the merge, what was
Speaker 1: changed was they got rid of the miners. They did
Speaker 1: this because the miners consumed a lot of energy. They
Speaker 1: used they were basically very powerful computers that were used
Speaker 1: to order transactions from the network. And instead of the miners,
Speaker 1: they now have three types of parties that essentially do
Speaker 1: the same job. They're valid laders, their builders, and their relays.
Speaker 1: And essentially the builders they package transactions into blocks, they
Speaker 1: passed them onto relays, and the relays delivered the blocks
Speaker 1: to validators who ordered the blocks into the block chain.
Speaker 1: So this is the new world order, if you will,
Speaker 1: in this new world order, David, what are some of
Speaker 1: the things that folks are criticizing right now? Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the major things is UM the higher level of
Speaker 1: concentration compared to pre merge era UM, because before the
Speaker 1: merge there literally like hundreds of thousands of miners who
Speaker 1: are UM, you know, validating the transaction data on the
Speaker 1: Etherum network. But after the emerge, we're seeing essentially centralized
Speaker 1: the entities like KIM and other like uh staking services
Speaker 1: providers UM just a handful of them who are kind
Speaker 1: of like UNI responsible for providing the staking of services
Speaker 1: and performing the same tasks that were you know, they
Speaker 1: used to be performed by the miners. So if I
Speaker 1: were to phrase that a different way, the big criticism,
Speaker 1: if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, is that we
Speaker 1: went from this ecosystem in which lots of people or
Speaker 1: lots of computers were equally important and kind of performing
Speaker 1: these key tasks. But in this transition, it's a smaller
Speaker 1: number of important entities that are performing these key tasks,
Speaker 1: and as a result, folks are concerned about the risks
Speaker 1: of concentration and centralization, which are two words the people
Speaker 1: who are fans of crypto are allergic to. This is
Speaker 1: in contrast to like mining bitcoin, because I feel like
Speaker 1: on our own stories, whenever we do a story about
Speaker 1: bitcoin miners, is always like these gigantic data centers litt
Speaker 1: and green, and there's lots of computers in them and
Speaker 1: humming and noise. And then you know, you had the
Speaker 1: story about Etherea miners, and I was like, here are
Speaker 1: some people in their apartments and they have laptops, and
Speaker 1: so it seemed like it was possible for people who
Speaker 1: weren't large corporations to be Ethereal miners. Pre merge is
Speaker 1: not correct exactly, and now post merge not only are
Speaker 1: those folks like out of a job, as it were,
Speaker 1: but they've been replaced by much bigger, spendier, centralized entity.
Speaker 1: One clear example that shows that there will be a
Speaker 1: higher level of centralization often emerged is that it required
Speaker 1: the protocol requires at least thirty two ether two you
Speaker 1: know to participate in inter state process. Hello. That my
Speaker 1: name's Moses and I'm one of the producers on the
Speaker 1: bloom Book Crypto podcast. Before we carry on, I'm going
Speaker 1: to quickly break down some of the terms that we
Speaker 1: use on today's episode. Firstly, we have steaking. Now you
Speaker 1: can think of staking like a kind of crypto collateral
Speaker 1: where you agree to lock up your crypto for specific
Speaker 1: amount of time, allowing others to make transactions with your
Speaker 1: digital assets, and in return you earn a reward or
Speaker 1: get paid a yield thirty two ether thirty two okay
Speaker 1: either yep. And if I just made jump in, so
Speaker 1: it's possible for people to contribute less ether and join
Speaker 1: a pool UH and become part of a validator pool.
Speaker 1: But but so so there are issues with concentration and ethereum.
Speaker 1: Now in all three of this UH kind of new
Speaker 1: parts that have been created and emerged. So with validators,
Speaker 1: the problem is that you know, all these people who
Speaker 1: did not have thirty two ether they a lot of
Speaker 1: them joined lido, which is a staking pool, which now
Speaker 1: controls about of all staking power and ethereum. Other people
Speaker 1: UH started staking through coin Base, which now controls about
Speaker 1: another thirteen percent of validator power and ethereum. So together
Speaker 1: they the two entities add up to forty three of
Speaker 1: validator power and ethereum. But experts that I talked to
Speaker 1: said that, you know, it's enough to have for somebody
Speaker 1: to have thirty about thirty three of validator power to
Speaker 1: actually start messing with the network, so allowing double spend
Speaker 1: and so forth. And of course you know, most people say, well,
Speaker 1: we don't expect something like this to happen with coin Base,
Speaker 1: We don't expect this to happen with lido um. But
Speaker 1: you know, looking at ledo for instance, it um it
Speaker 1: is a network of a lot of different validators, but
Speaker 1: it's controlled by by light O through software and light
Speaker 1: or somebody at light it could potentially make, you know,
Speaker 1: decisions that maybe it's community would not want made. Coming
Speaker 1: up more from Bloomberg reports, Olga Careife and David Pan
Speaker 1: on how builders could shake up Ethereum's landscape. There are
Speaker 1: people who believe that the only way forward in constructing
Speaker 1: a blockchain is something that looks and sounds like bitcoin
Speaker 1: and it's built on proof of work, And there are
Speaker 1: folks who are like, absolutely not, proof of steak is
Speaker 1: the way of the future. Where do you all think
Speaker 1: the like the reality of the ecosystem is going, like,
Speaker 1: are we going to see more people really looking at
Speaker 1: this proof of state movement saying like, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to move forward here? Are we going to see people
Speaker 1: like really doubling down on proof of work because they're like,
Speaker 1: we're worried about these concentration risks. Yes, there's other risk
Speaker 1: associated with bitcoin, but this seems like a better trade
Speaker 1: off to us. Well, it seems like in in blockchain
Speaker 1: there has always been people a trade off between like
Speaker 1: do you get more centralization or do you get more security?
Speaker 1: So it's it's uh, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: decentralization that people think exists in blockchain is actually a
Speaker 1: myth because for instance, uh, you know, people love this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, everything in blockchain is run by
Speaker 1: smart contracts. A smart contract now a smart contractor is
Speaker 1: code which lives on the blockchain that operates automatically when
Speaker 1: certain conditions are met. There's no human involvement, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all fair and square, nobody can interfere, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But actually it turns out that, for instance, a ethereum,
Speaker 1: most smart contracts actually have a back door. It's called
Speaker 1: an admin key, and you know, certain people can go
Speaker 1: in and change sometimes everything about the smart contract depending
Speaker 1: on how the keys have been set up. And I
Speaker 1: think this is true to a lot of other um
Speaker 1: parts of the blockchain ecosystem, if you will. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: what people are finding out is that very often, you know,
Speaker 1: to manage something well, you need a little bit more centralization.
Speaker 1: You know, for instance, one problem with the dows uh,
Speaker 1: the centralized autonomous organizations is that you know, they're very
Speaker 1: hard to manage. You know, a group of people, random
Speaker 1: people from around the world has a very hard time
Speaker 1: sometimes coming to consensus and making decisions and proposing things.
Speaker 1: And so I think some amount of um a move
Speaker 1: to more centralization sort of is probably a normal part
Speaker 1: of making things more manageable and making them more better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you also hear this opposite argument from Bitcoin purists
Speaker 1: and maxis um. You know, they are fully I mean,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin network is arguably the most essentialized the network, and
Speaker 1: it's really hard to control because it's literally you know,
Speaker 1: validated by miners, by computers, and it's hard that mutability
Speaker 1: is really high for bitcoins, for the Bitcoin network. But
Speaker 1: we also see the very um serious issues in terms
Speaker 1: of scalability and also the network efficiency. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it has been really hard
Speaker 1: and time consuming to develop any kind of commercially viable
Speaker 1: UM projects on Bitcoin in terms of like payment or
Speaker 1: even aims or other things that that could be developed.
Speaker 1: All your theory, I think the challenges that you know,
Speaker 1: this is like arguing over whether cake is better than pie.
Speaker 1: It's pie, just for the record. But the UM because
Speaker 1: you know, folks who are on the Bitcoin side of
Speaker 1: the house will say like, well, actually, we don't want
Speaker 1: to be a layer for gaming, right like we're bitcoin,
Speaker 1: we don't, we don't. You can you can take your
Speaker 1: n f T s and whatever it is that you're
Speaker 1: trying to do, Like that's not interesting to us. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's almost as if the incentives or another way
Speaker 1: of thinking about this is it seems like as we
Speaker 1: get more and more specialized approaches to blockchains, what you're
Speaker 1: gonna find is that there are going to be very
Speaker 1: few one size fits all applications, and that you know,
Speaker 1: this seems to be kind of forcing a lot more
Speaker 1: if not necessarily sophistication, at least more nuance in terms
Speaker 1: of I am trying to solve this specific kind of
Speaker 1: problem for the kind of problem I'm trying to solve, Yes,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is gonna work fine for me, or actually I'm
Speaker 1: going to need to do this ethereum, or I'm going
Speaker 1: to need to do this on some other blockain. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly sort of why I completely agree
Speaker 1: with this. Uh. There are so many different block chains
Speaker 1: with such different structures, uh that, and some are supposed
Speaker 1: to be better for for gaming, others are supposed to
Speaker 1: better to be better for m decentralized financial applications, and
Speaker 1: they each have vastly different designs in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: And so that's a chance for people to pick kind
Speaker 1: of what they believe and and and what they feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with. Yeah, and I would say like as we
Speaker 1: go into a more sophisticated stage of the blockchain, industry.
Speaker 1: We're also seeing more niche pitches from from individual different
Speaker 1: blockchain projects. You know, some some of them maybe they
Speaker 1: may be targeting people who are whole prioritized privacy. You know,
Speaker 1: they're also prov like zero knowledge mechanism for certain blockchains,
Speaker 1: and when we when we talk about zero knowledge, it's
Speaker 1: basically making it really hard for somebody to know who
Speaker 1: you are um, which is of course an arms race
Speaker 1: between the FEDS and everyone else. Olga, David, always a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here. Thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Olga, and thank you David. You
Speaker 1: can find more of Olga and David's reporting on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Terminal, on Bloomberg dot com or on Twitter. Olga
Speaker 1: is at Olga Karif that's O l G A K
Speaker 1: H A r I F and David is at David
Speaker 1: Pan Underscore one that's d A v I D P
Speaker 1: A N Underscore and then the number one on the
Speaker 1: next episode of Bloomberg Crypto. It used to be that
Speaker 1: if you were a crypto start up, you could raise
Speaker 1: money with pretty much nothing more than a website and
Speaker 1: a smile. Really, but as the crypto winter comes for
Speaker 1: basically everyone, fundraising is getting more challenging. So who's still
Speaker 1: in the game and when is a down round not
Speaker 1: a down round. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your comments, questions,
Speaker 1: or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: net or find us on Twitter. We're at Crypto. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky very Galina. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Faruk
Speaker 1: and Sharon Barriro. Our associate producers are Ty Butler and
Speaker 1: Moses on Them. Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original
Speaker 1: music by Leo Sidrn. I'm Stacy Marie Schmal. We'll be
Speaker 1: back tomorrow. End of an appetisbo that an instant and
Speaker 1: imp