Author: Chen Jian Jason, Source: Author's Twitter @jason_chen998

The 12th Ethereum Foundation AMA is underway, and as usual, I have organized and interpreted some key contents for everyone.

1. Apart from Layer2, does Ethereum have further plans to expand Layer1?

In response to this question, both Justin and Vitalik answered affirmatively. This indicates that Ethereum does not rely entirely on Layer2 for expansion, but is also finding ways to expand itself. The expansion methods mentioned in the response mainly include precompiled virtual machine execution, speeding up proofs with ZK, reducing node burden with Verkle, and Dankrad mentioned that the expansion of Layer1 and Layer2 is parallel and not conflicting.

2. What is the theoretical basis for the future value-added of ETH? Is the appreciation of ETH considered important?

This is a question that everyone should be most concerned about, after all, the price of ETH has been quite disappointing. Justin directly answered, "ETH is money," and indicated that the appreciation of ETH is very important for the success of Ethereum. He believes that the value of ETH is supported by three points: carrying an economic bandwidth of decentralized stablecoins worth trillions of dollars, providing unquestionable economic security, and attracting the attention of all major economic participants with economic vitality.

3. Because the strategy of Layer2 has led to very low gas fees for a large number of apps, causing ETH to have almost no appreciation in usage scenarios, how to solve this?

This is also an important reason why everyone currently considers the price of ETH to be disappointing. Dankrad said he does not believe that Layer2 will take away Ethereum's fees and MEV, ultimately parasitizing on Ethereum and draining it. He believes that high-value transaction scenarios will continue to exist on the mainnet, and Layer2 will only provide ample expansion space for the mainnet to accommodate a larger number of transactions. The mainnet should originally provide cheaper data availability for Layer2 to survive. Justin's view is not to focus on the amount of a single transaction, but to find ways to grow the overall transaction volume. For example, Ethereum's most successful goal is to achieve 10 million transactions per second, even if the price of each transaction is very low, it can still generate one billion dollars in income per day. So, the main issue currently is the lack of demand at the application layer, the transaction volume is not increasing, rather than the issue of too small transaction amounts.

As governments around the world are putting pressure on and reviewing transactions, what measures is Ethereum taking to ensure the neutrality of the network?

The Ethereum Foundation believes that trusted neutrality is the foundation of Ethereum. First, it ensures that the validator set is decentralized. Second, there are indeed many entities (businesses, governments, etc.) that serve as validators. Therefore, the Ethereum Foundation is also trying to make improvements at the consensus level, such as allowing decentralized validators to forcibly include transactions in blocks.

How much funding does the Ethereum Foundation have? What will happen if the money runs out?

First, the Ethereum Foundation spends 0.1 billion USD annually. Currently, there is still 0.65 billion USD, most of which is in ETH. Therefore, the Ethereum Foundation is highly motivated to find ways to increase the value of ETH; otherwise, they won't have enough money to spend. In addition, during the AMA, it was mentioned that the Ethereum Foundation currently has more than 300 people. To be honest, I think this structure is too bloated. I don't know how many people are receiving salaries and how many are only doing non-productive work such as research and speculation.

If Bitcoin implements OP_Cat and develops a powerful Layer2 ecosystem, what unique value can Ethereum still provide?

This question was personally answered by Vitalik. He said there are four main points. First, Ethereum has a larger available data capacity to support the development of Layer2. And because of POS, it has stronger decentralization capabilities. This point seems to have different opinions among many people who believe that POW is the safest and POS is not secure. However, Vitalik believes that POS is safer than POW. In addition, Ethereum has its community, culture, values, and so on. Honestly, after reading Vitalik's answer, it feels a bit vague. I'm not sure if even Vitalik himself has thought it through.

The rest of the content mostly consists of specific technical discussions. To be honest, I was relatively disappointed after watching this AMA. There weren't clear and inspiring answers to the most concerning issues like the lack of innovation at the application layer and the diversion of value to Layer2. There weren't any practical measures proposed. Vitalik, wake up and don't let your love brain cloud your judgment.