Arbitrum co-founder skeptical of move to based and native rollups: Steven Goldfeder

The history of the CEO of Offchain Labs, Steven Goldfeder, the original story is classic Geek Gold. As a student in Princeton, he heard of Bitcoin for the first time in 2013 during a day of visit to Princeton.

Professor Ed Felten – The future inventor of Rollups on Ethereum, co -founder of Arbitrum and scientific advisor of the White House – gave a five -minute speech on the cost of a government destroying Bitcoin.

Goldfeder’s curiosity was instantly stung, that night, other students organized a poker game with a half-BTC purchase. As he says:

“It was at the time when it was only ten dollars. If only I gathered there… ”

Goldfeder does not really need to worry about this missed opportunity now that Arbitrum has become a force majeure in crypto. It has been designed to solve some of the problems that afflict Ethereum, such as high gas costs, slow transaction speeds and bottlenecks. It is currently the leader among the Ethereum L2 scaling solutions.

But the rollers were criticized to rely too much on the centralized income of sequencers and for a lack of interoperability and composibility in the ecosystem. The researchers of the Ethereum Foundation proposed to make the rollers “based” and / or “native” to solve these problems.

Despite reports from the January sequencing call suggesting that Arbitrum would adopt these solutions, Goldfeder seems to have redesigned.

Why will arbitrum will not become a roll -based roll

The based rollups use Ethereum validators for sequencing, opening the possibility of interoperability and composibility between L2. The native rollers, on the other hand, would use the basic layer network of Ethereum to replace waterproof systems and make the L2 as secure as Ethereum itself.

But Goldfeder now seems much more skeptical about the advantages of arbitrum in the adoption of technology.

“Just to clarify the terms, you know, a based roll is essentially a roller without sequencer which uses Ethereum for sequencing. In fact, if you look at this initial arbitrum document that we wrote in 2018, you could call it a based roller. It has no sequencer; it came later,” he said.

As for the indigenous execution, it echoes the feeling of Vitalik Buterin: the strength of Ethereum lies in its diversity.

“And one thing we are experiencing, these are different models of execution. Thus, Arbitrum is entirely EVM but also has something called Stylus, which gives you the opportunity to write intelligent contracts in other languages ​​such as Rust, C and C ++,” he said.

“But I think that after having put this system in production for four years, in different test phases, I think that the design to which we came is actually the right one.”

“So, I don’t think Arbitrum becomes a Rollup based soon, and I don’t think that should be regarding the native execution.”

The magazine has decided to ask for clarification and an additional context from Arbitrum on its position after the interview. With regard to the chances that his L2 become a based roll, Goldfeder confirmed in a press release that he thinks that the current design of arbitrum is “more efficient, practical and profitable” than the designs based on rollers.

He was more circumspect for the chances of arbitrum which uses the technology underlying native rollers but did not commit to doing so.

“I support Vitalik’s vision on native rolls, which envisages a common core that we take into account which will be useful by many rolllups, but also provides Rollups to extend this with additional features,” he said. “Some rollers can choose to stop at the common core, but it is crucial that we also support innovation and continuous experimentation on the execution layer.”

From poker to protocols: origins of the arbitrum

After the introduction of the Crypto de Goldfeder to Princeton in 2013, its academic activities led him to cryptography and multipartite calculation, finally reaching it to the heart of the research on the security of the blockchain.

In 2018, he had co -founded offchain laboratories with the aforementioned Felten, reviving an old Princeton research project. The result? ARBITRUM – The Rollup solution whose history has anterior Ethereum online.

Unlike many crypto projects with names that look like bad titles of science fiction films, Arbitrum has a clear etymology. “It comes from arbitration,” explains Goldfeder. “So the idea is that we delete as much Ethereum as possible while having Ethereum to be the kind of referee. If something is wrong, Ethereum can, you know, repair things.”

This approach aligns perfectly with the philosophy of Ethereum – decentralized, without authorization and resilient.

How arbitrum competes in the layer 2 of Ethereum

The layer of layer 2 is crowded, with heavy goods vehicles such as optimism, Zksync and Starknet competition for domination. Arbitrum has been the best dog for some time, but the L2 base of Coinbase, breaks down its heels, and faster rolls that sacrifice a certain decentralization for speed like Megaeth – already executed at 20,000 TPS on Testnet – probably seem to be siphoning certain users.

Goldfeder says that Arbitrum has a complete EVM compatibility, allowing developers to carry their intelligent Ethereum contracts for arbitrum without modifications. No new languages, no arcanic integrations – just plug into and play.

Gas fees are also competitive. Arbitrum reduces the brutal gas costs of Ethereum by losing transactions, which makes applications DEFI, NFTS and the game applications much more accessible.

According to Goldfeder, its real advantages of arbitrum are its decentralization and safety. Certain L2 solutions have centralized strangulation points, while Arbitrum was the first Rollup for general use to reach the decentralization of stadium 1.

This marks a transition where the state of the chain is checked with defect evidence but retains a replacement mechanism requiring a consensus of operators and external stakeholders, reducing dependence on operators – a feat that Goldfeder alleys that many competitors must still reach.

As for stage 2, which represents the ideal state where the network is entirely managed by intelligent contracts, it eliminates the need for all human operators and reaches real validation without authorization, which means that anyone can submit fraud tests; It remains a bit far.

Arbitrum’s challenges and roadblocks

Despite its success, Arbitrum is not without obstacles, and Goldfeder is well aware that the competition is fierce, with the growth of the ecosystem of the L2 optimism ecosystem, the aggressive base, Zksync offering cryptographic certainty and zero knowledge of Starknet also making waves.

Goldfeder also wants to make improvements to security.

“Thus, Arbitrum is like the original layer, the first optimistic roll, the first general layer for launching purposes. And the things that we take very seriously and that we are essential for us is that we always put security and decentralization and (values ​​like) resistance to censorship on growth. ”

Arbitrum Dao really has control, says Goldfeder

Crypto governance is often a facade – a handful of initiates pulling the strings while chip holders simply play. This is not the case with Arbitrum, explains Goldfeder.

Goldfeder says that the DAO arbitrum is different insofar as many governance models are advisory – the foundation has the last word. But with Arbitrum, governance is self-executed. The holders of tokens control billions of assets, manage the upgrades of the protocol and even decide the distribution of costs.

“The DoA arbitrum is directly controlled by onchain tokens holders. And by passing, for the costs for the network, they do not come to me. These do not come to a centralized foundation portfolio. These go directly to the Treasury of Onchain, ”he says.

This may be the case, but last month, a proposal from the recently named growth management committee of Arbitrum Dao sparked a counterpoup after recommending that 7,500 ETH be deployed to Lido, Aave and Fluid, three decentralized funding protocols which are not from arbitrum.

Take the game catalyst program (GCP), an initiative of $ 200 million to stimulate web games. Unlike the traditional funds supported by VC where the profits go to the initiates, the only GCP LP is the arbitrum community itself, which is voted by the DAO. Each success directly benefits token holders, strengthening a real property model.

Beyond the L2 scaling, Offchain Labs also contributes directly to the basic development of Ethereum. “We have built Prysm, the main consensual customer of Ethereum,” notes Goldfeder. “Fusion, the transition to evidence of work and even the Blob to come – our team is one of the basic developers who are at the heart of this conversation.”

And then there is Arbitrum Orbit – a frame allowing developers to turn their own personalized channels. With more than 100 developing orbit channels, Arbitrum tries to become web3 AWS, offering tailor -made blockchain solutions for businesses, DAOS and innovators.

The future of arbitrum in Ethereum Scale

Arbitrum fills the gap between the ideals of Ethereum and the real conviviality. By trying to reduce costs, improve speed and decentralize governance, he tries to open the way to a future where Ethereum can compete with traditional financial systems without compromising its basic principles.

Goldfeder has the last word: “Unlike certain other methods of scaling, Arbitrum remains closely integrated into the decentralized framework of Ethereum.”

This remains to be seen, but 12 years after a infamous poker game using Bitcoin in 2013, Goldfeder and his business can further increase the bet.

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Monty Munford

Monty Munford writes regularly for the BBC, the economist and City AM and was a technological columnist for Forbes and the Telegraph. He also runs a growing and visibility consulting firm and appeared at more than 200 events and conferences, interviewing figures such as Tim Draper, the late John McAfee, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, Kim Kardashian, Guns N ‘Roses and many others.

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