You can also read this post, along with many others, on my blog HERE.
The Next Web hosted a Q&A with Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, in which anyone could ask a question and have it answered by Vitalik. He responded to questions about Raiden, Plasma, Proof of Stake, and Sharding among many others. Below are some highlights from the Q&A.
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thovre: How do you like your steaks cooked?
Vitalik: I prefer fish.
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ARIONIA: Hey Vitalik, any release dates regarding Raiden and Metropolis implementation? THX.
Vitalik: Metropolis is now in testing phase; I have less visibility into Raiden as that is a separate team.
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ali zahid dar: any update on OMG reagarding plasma?
Vitalik: Now that the Plasma whitepaper has been released it will start being developed; I already know multiple teams who are interested. Development will proceed in parallel with sharding, state channels and other scalability-focused projects that I believe will all be complementary to each other.
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#: Vitalik, How is POS/Sharding doing on pyethon in testnet so far...any minor/major hiccups? 2. with the recent paper with JPoon, Plasma, can you explain how and why it is complementary to POS/Sharding and what impact you foresee it having on the Ethereum ecosystem?
Vitalik: PoS and sharding are being actively developed, see the repos at https://github.com/ethereum/casper and https://github.com/ethereum/sharding. The scalability of Plasma and channel-based systems generally is inherently limited by the possibility of mass withdrawal attacks, where an attacker attempts to cheat in many Plasma chains or channels at once, and there is not enough block space to respond to every challenge; hence, base-layer scalability upgrades like sharding proportionately increase the maximum capacity that systems like Plasma can have.
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Vojtěch Pištora: Hi Vitalik, Ethereum project so awesome though for these kind of ambitious projects it tends to happen that key milestones are delayed. What are your updated estimations for Metropolis, zkSnarks, Proof of Stake, Sharding? Thanks so much for your time, you are my hero!
Vitalik: Metropolis: a couple of months. ZKSnarks: a couple of months for the required protocol changes (Metropolis), a couple more months for the infrastructure to get rolled out. Casper: we'll see, it's moving forward substantially more quickly now than before as we are almost done a PoC implementation in python http://github.com/ethereum/casper Sharding: later than Casper, but sooner than we thought. Follow ongoing progress at http://github.com/ethereum/sharding
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Yashar Rashedi: Hi Vitalik will Raiden Network integrate into ethereum core or do you have alternative plans for scalability and transaction speed?
Vitalik: The Raiden network is a layer-2 network on top of ethereum; ethereum core does not need to be modified for Raiden to work. We do also have alternate scalability plans (parallelization, sharding, plasma); they will all be implemented in parallel.
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Luke Sieber: Regarding zk-snarks - does testing indicate any additional overhead for transactions using that protocol? Do they use more gas or take longer to confirm?
Vitalik: Yes, zk snarks are quite expensive, at least initially. We'll need sharding and parallelizability techniques to make them more affordable.
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Eugene Mutai: With Ethereum moving to POS soon, have you guys also considered adding masternodes to it?
Vitalik: No. We are trying to make a protocol that is as master node-free as possible.
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Jad Mubaslat: Vitalik, how do you see public chain applications versus private/consortium chains playing out long term? It seems short-term, it might be easier for incumbents to build consortiums, but perhaps public blockchains have better long term potential.. thoughts?
Vitalik: Public chains do indeed have more long-term potential. I expect in the long term we'll see every possible combination of public and private emerge, including pure consortium chains, consortium chains connected to public chains via relays, consortium chains with fraud proofs enforced on public chains (ie. plasma and similar systems), purely public chains, and so forth. The challenge right now is to get the scalability of public chains higher, and come up with better answers for privacy challenges. Many people talk about consortium chains where data is encrypted so that only people who need to see a piece of data can see the data, though I think people who want this really want a combination of state channels and proof-of-existence anchoring.
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Alvaro Collado: Hi Vitalik, thanks for your effort developing Ethereum!. My question are: 1) how payments made with crypto improve other systems like Wechat pay (or similars)? Uptoday Wechat is live and working with not issues or problems and adopted widely. 2) About DApps. is it necessary so many different tokens when a standard like ETH could be used? Do the tokens of Dapps use ETH "gas" to run? If they do, how they pay it to the ethereum blockchain? Thanks
Vitalik: I think the initial value of cryptocurrency and blockchains for payments will not be within countries, but rather between countries. Crypto is really great for very easily and efficiently sending money across any borders in a standardized way, and ethereum-style systems can extend that from just payments to more complex forms of applications and smart contracts. If crypto can succeed in that niche, then we can go from there.
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Chris Philips: Hi. Do you intend to raise funding for plasma, and based on the lessons you learned at ethereum, would you run a token sale or opt for private money? Thanks.
Vitalik: Plasma is an open-source non-profit collaboration between members of the ethereum foundation and several independent groups of developers. No ICO, no DAO, no VC.
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Showcase Creative (After asking question): Sorry, Vitalik, I was thinking of the musician Vitalic :)
(This is my favorite answer)
Vitalik: There's also the musician Vitas: