Ethereum Meetup Vienna, Oct. 16, 2017: Ethereum Byzantium Release (Metropolis Part 1) explained

These are the notes I took. Enjoy!

Event held by: RIAT Blockchain Academy, 1.300 members now, was 250 not long ago.

Event Website: https://www.meetup.com/Ethereum-Vienna/events/243600838/

1. What is Ethereum?

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Ethereum is an agglomeration of many projects with the goal of decentralization.

Why decentralize?
data cannot just disappear
modified only by specific rules
auditable

Platform for decentralized apps (DApps)

3 main projects:
Ethereum
Whisper
Swarm

DApps:
Escrow
Crowdfunding
Insurance
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)
….
DApp store: practically abandoned now! Project not actively developed anymore

Ethereum Enterprise alliance:
Pretty big: Accenture shell IBM…

Ethereum Enterprise:
Public BC Enterprise BC
Public Ledger Private Ledger
Proof of work PBFT
Expensive Cheaper
Anyone can participate access restricted

Ethereum is….
an account based system,
Identified by 160bit address,
has a balance of ether /wei.

Every computation has a fixed gas price: creating smart contract, sending, receiving
Ether price goes up > gas price goes down, and vice versa
Gas x gas price = transaction fee

A contract is like an address but has no private key. Can do all an address can do

Order of blocks is important:
double spending problem
2 transactions interacting with the same contract

Whisper: decentralized messaging. Parity released a new version yesterday

Swarm: reverse hash table, distributed chunk storage. Now ships with mist
when mist is installed, swarm is also running in background

Mist browser: a browser for the ether blockchain

Ethereum marketplace: here you can run DApps
myth browser url request => DApp => payment

Ethereum 2.0+ has a long development roadmap ahead:
*Abstraction: contract pay fees, signing mechanisms: anonymity
*Casper: Proof of stake with finality, Prediction market for blocks
*Scalability: Sharding (split blocks in smaller parts that can interact, complicated) (also off chain solutions like Raiden)

1. Byzantium:

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=Metropolis Part 1
Changes to Ethereum are made by EIP Ether improvement proposals
Go all the way from draft to final
Collection of final EIPs = HArdfork, this time Byzantium

Difficulty bomb: reached 30th of September, 30sec for a new block. With Byzantium postponed for 1.4 years (5sec again)

What is included in Metropolis changed massively over time: with DAO, DoS attacks

Byzantium (was today):
easy EIPs + difficulty bomb: delayed by 3.000.000 blocks , which is around 1.4 years
zcache-style zK-snarks (not completely implemented)
monero-style ring signatures
prepared but not functional now, EIPs from Constantinople missing
EIP214+EIP211 allow the calling of other contracts while a contract is executed
=> Proxy contracts: empty contracts allowing for a contract update over time
EIP140: no more gas overpay in case of error!
some other minor change EIPs included in Byzantium
that´s it

Constantinople expected early 2018:
contains most difficult EIPs
EIP145 can make some computations more efficient
EIP96 introduces a block header, can enable efficient proofs about past properties of the chain, e.g. jumping 1000 blocks back immediately
EIP86 beginning of null abstraction: more anonym, better replay protection. Important for zksnarks and ring signatures. Allows for better and cheaper multisig contracts.
since everything in Ethereum is delayed => also possible end of 2018 (because then the difficulty bomb becomes relevant again)

Byzantium upgrade was successful.
Block time decreased today already from 30sec to 20sec

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Disclaimer: I do not guarantee the accuracy of the information given here - I might have misunderstood something. I do not give financial advice, nor do the speakers from the summit do!