#Eth1x sync call just finished, after 2.5 hours. Here are a few quick takeaways while they're still fresh on my mind:
This call set a new record for attendance on _any_ Ethereum planning call. We had something like 43 people at the peak (out of maybe 60 core devs globally). It lasted 2.5 hours which is also a record. I feel bad for those in Asia Pacific!
This was the first call that was intentionally run under the Chatham House rule. No recording, no livestreaming, and we will publish unattributed notes shortly. On balance I always want more transparency but several ppl on the call said they felt freer to speak candidly.
We should stop suggesting that Eth 1.x is a monolithic roadmap, which it is not, and each proposal should be evaluated independently: state pruning, Ewasm, storage rent. We need to kill the narrative that "there is a massive Ethereum upgrade coming in June."
Rather, these initiatives will each be phased (e.g. @realLedgerwatch's rent proposal has six phases) and, while the June target is somewhat arbitrary, we do want a sense of urgency. We will meet in January and discuss dates again at that point, but I'm all for deadlines.
We had *very* in-depth, productive dialog and debate about each proposal. Looking forward to sharing the notes shortly and dissecting and discussing them with the community on @EthMagicians forum.
There was an impassioned plea for us to save the network from unbounded state growth, especially in light of a likely ability to increase tx throughput by as much as 10x, which would cause it to explode and cause the network to shrink to a centralized core of nodes.
And one way to frame this is that, while rent is a stick that would have clear UX impacts, a ~10x increase in tx throughput is a carrot that's incredibly valuable, and is a tradeoff that the community may be willing to accept.
There are a *lot* of unsolved challenges around data availability, if we break the existing invariant (*not* specified in the yellow paper, however!) that all block headers, bodies, receipts, and logs are always available within the existing P2P network.
Finally, multiple folks brought up concerns about avoiding a technocratic decision-making process and ensuring that we have community buy-in before moving forward with any of of these proposals, esp. something as controversial as rent.
But also fears that it's a highly technical question that only a very small number of core devs actually understand thoroughly and are fully informed about -- the classic question of pure democratic vs. technocratic governance.
Okay, that's enough for now. My fingers are bleeding after almost three straight hours of furious typing. Thanks for tuning in! More soon!
