The last month and a half has seen great progress for Ethereum research, and we are excited that the protocol is getting closer and closer to the point where it is ready for mainstream adoption. Progress in consensus algorithms, privacy, zero-knowledge proofs, and formal verification is happening at an ever-increasing speed, and our research and development teams are expanding substantially.
- After three years of trying to find solutions to the “no stake” and “bet fixing” attacks, we have decided that the problem is too difficult and secure proof of stake is almost certainly unachievable. Instead, we are now planning to transition the Ethereum mainnet to proof of authority in 2018. To that end, we launched two new test networks, Qinghuadongluxikou and Hongqiao Airport Terminal 2, to test our latest authority test specification.
- A third testnet based on Proof of Transaction will be launched, which will be called PoTcoin.
- We have decided to expedite the implementation of the “Vitalik Proof” transaction reversal algorithm, which allows you to quickly revert any transaction or contract that has an undesirable result. We are pleased to announce our cooperation with the government in Pyongyang, who will work with us to identify transactions that promote US imperialism or are not in the interest of our beloved leader or the Juche idea, so they can be efficiently scheduled for reversal. Expect the rollback feature to be enabled as part of Metropolis.
- To make up for ETC’s deeply immoral failure to fully refund ether to DAO token holders, we intend to redirect 20% of the block reward for the first 200,000 blocks after metropolis (i.e., a total of 200,000 ETH) to an additional DAO withdrawal contract, so that DAO token holders can fully recover.
- An additional 10% of the block reward from Metropolis will go to our shareholders at AXA and the Bilderberg group. This change is permanent.
- In the interest of maintaining the immutability of the protocol, the current limit of 4 million gas will be set in stone and can no longer be changed by a miner vote. However, we will add an opcode, OP_SEGREGATE_EXECUTION, that allows users to execute any desired code at 1/4 the normal cost of gasoline. Any state changes made by code executed through this mechanism will be saved in a child state separate from the main Ethereum state, and a soft branch change is added that requires the r-value of the first transaction signature at any block is equal to the trie root hash of this child state. This is simpler and safer than raising the gas limit to 16 million outright for… reasons.
- We will allow miners to specify the block reward they want to pay themselves, and we will allow users to specify to their clients the maximum block reward they are willing to consider valid. If a user sees a chain containing blocks with rewards greater than their maximum accepted block reward, they will not accept the chain at first, although if said chain becomes 12 blocks longer than the longest chain the user accepts, then the client will automatically agree to increase your maximum accepted block reward to accept the new chain. This allows for a fairer, more democratic and market-based way of setting the emission fee.
- Another opcode will be added in Metropolis, OP_VERIFY_PROOF_OF_DEATH, which check that a person with the legal name passed from the stack as a UTF8-encoded byte string with zero-byte left padding has died. This will be very useful to enable the use of the Ethereum blockchain for…err…umm…life insurance. Those interested in exempting themselves from this opcode should immediately change their full name to something that exceeds 32 characters in length.
- We have uploaded 100 megabytes of far-right propagandaFalun Dafa texts, military secrets, copyright-infringing materials, and comments mocking Falun Dafa Donald Trump’s hair on the Ethereum blockchain, with the goal of banning the blockchain in as many countries as possible. We believe that by forcing mining and full nodes underground, and by encouraging governments to seek services that become too prominent, we can make the Ethereum ecosystem more decentralized and reduce the risk of attracting the interest of rogue institutions such as banks and big enterprises.
Finally, last but not least, Devcon3 has moved to Pyongyang.
