The cryptographic world computer

We talk about Ethereum as "a blockchain", as though it is fundamentally the same technology as the Bitcoin that Satoshi Nakomoto created back in 2009.

我们将以太坊称为“区块链”，就好像它与中本聪在 2009 年创建的比特币本质上是相同的技术。

In many ways it is, and in some ways even the "lean Ethereum" of the future that is being built along the lines of the Strawmap retains the core trappings of a blockchain.

在很多方面都是如此，在某些方面甚至是沿着Strawmap 的路线构建的未来的“精益以太坊”也保留了区块链的核心特征。

But at the same time, the technology has evolved greatly over the last fifteen years, and is poised to evolve even more over the next three - to the point where it becomes fair to call the thing that Ethereum is moving towards a qualitatively different kind of system.

但与此同时，该技术在过去十五年中已经取得了巨大的发展，并且有望在接下来的三年中进一步发展——以至于可以公平地称以太坊正在朝着一种性质不同的系统发展。

The Ethereum of today has general-purpose computation, proof of stake, onchain applications using zero-knowledge proofs and L2s that provide scaling and privacy.

今天的以太坊拥有通用计算、权益证明、使用零知识证明的链上应用程序以及提供扩展和隐私的 L2。

The Ethereum of tomorrow will have computation with a tunable dial between extreme scale and full generality, multiple forms of multi-participant block construction, a highly optimized form of proof of stake, and zero-knowledge proofs baked in playing key roles at the base layer.

明天的以太坊将具有在极端规模和完全通用性之间可调的计算能力、多种形式的多参与者区块结构、高度优化的权益证明形式，以及在基础层发挥关键作用的零知识证明。

This post will walk through some of the most important fundamental differences between blockchains in 2010 and blockchains in 2030, both from the point of view of the technology and from the point of view of what properties you can expect to have as a user.

这篇文章将从技术的角度以及作为用户期望拥有的属性的角度来阐述 2010 年的区块链和 2030 年的区块链之间的一些最重要的根本差异。

To start off, let's go through the original Bitcoin whitepaper, section by section, and see how this compares to Ethereum - in 2015 ( yellow ), 2025 ( green ) and 2030 ( blue ).

首先，让我们逐节浏览原始的比特币白皮书，看看它与 2015 年（黄色）、2025 年（绿色）和 2030 年（蓝色）的以太坊相比如何。

There are large changes to basically every section.

基本上每个部分都有很大的变化。

To make things more compact, let's make it a table:

为了使事情更紧凑，让我们把它做成一个表：

Pretty much every core property of what it means to be a blockchain either has fundamentally changed or soon will fundamentally change:

区块链的几乎每一个核心属性要么已经发生根本性改变，要么很快就会发生根本性改变：

As an AI might say, the only honest conclusion (ok fine, the honest punchline ) is that a modern cryptographic network like the post-Lean-upgrade Ethereum is called a "blockchain" to a large extent for historical reasons.

正如人工智能可能会说的那样，唯一诚实的结论（好吧，诚实的笑点）是，像精益升级后的以太坊这样的现代加密网络在很大程度上由于历史原因而被称为“区块链”。

In reality it's a hybrid construction that merges together two strands:

实际上，它是一种将两条链合并在一起的混合结构：

Cryptography is not the only science that matters.

密码学并不是唯一重要的科学。

Also important are: formal verification , database theory, peer-to-peer networking theory, information theory, economics and much more.

同样重要的还有：形式验证、数据库理论、点对点网络理论、信息论、经济学等等。

But all of those things are compatible with the fundamental core of "everyone tries to make the next block with valid PoW, one guy succeeds, broadcasts it, everyone else downloads it and re-executes, repeat".

但所有这些事情都与“每个人都试图用有效的 PoW 制作下一个区块，一个人成功，广播它，其他人下载它并重新执行，重复”的基本核心兼容。

The cryptographic changes are not.

密码更改则不然。

The most important conclusion is that the set of tradeoffs for users is radically changing:

最重要的结论是，用户的权衡正在发生根本性的变化：

When building applications, structure of computation is starting to matter a lot.

在构建应用程序时，计算结构开始变得非常重要。

In a simple blockchain, 1 byte = 1 byte and 1 gas = 1 gas.

在一个简单的区块链中，1 字节 = 1 字节，1 气体 = 1 气体。

In the architectures of the future, the same amount of computation will cost you much more if you shove it all into one inscrutable serially-executed transaction, and much less if you put it into well-encapsulated dependencies that can be parallelized or pruned, ideally before the transaction even enters the final block.

在未来的体系结构中，如果将相同数量的计算全部放入一个难以理解的串行执行交易中，则花费的成本会更高；如果将其放入可以并行化或修剪的封装良好的依赖项中（理想情况是在交易进入最终块之前），则花费会少得多。

This affects the incentives of developers, and will over time affect the structure of all applications using Ethereum: perhaps in the long run, we will converge toward programming patterns where information directly related to describing non-commutative state changes and ordering is posted onchain, and everything else is aggregated before it even gets included into a block .

这会影响开发人员的激励，并且随着时间的推移，将影响所有使用以太坊的应用程序的结构：也许从长远来看，我们将趋向于编程模式，其中与描述非交换状态变化和排序直接相关的信息被发布在链上，而其他所有内容在被包含到块中之前就被聚合起来。

Structuring computation lets the blockchain more effectively focus on its job.

结构化计算让区块链更有效地专注于其工作。

Perhaps the most important shift is that the decentralized nature of the network is shifting from being purely a burden incurred in the name of safety and robustness to at least sometimes, in a few limited cases, being a strength even from a performance perspective .

也许最重要的转变是，网络的去中心化性质正在从纯粹以安全性和稳健性的名义产生的负担转变为至少有时，在少数有限的情况下，甚至从性能角度来看也是一种优势。

The decentralized network allows larger volumes of data to be stored in parallel.

去中心化网络允许并行存储大量数据。

It allows a high volume of computation to happen in parallel, in many cases inside the mempool.

它允许并行进行大量计算，在许多情况下是在内存池内进行。

In a few cases, it increases privacy, because only decentralized networks can effectively hide metadata (eg.

在某些情况下，它可以增加隐私，因为只有去中心化网络才能有效隐藏元数据（例如

where data and requests are coming from ).

数据和请求来自哪里）。

Back in the mid-2010s, this was an early dream of Ethereum: that we could decentralize not just for robustness but also to increase scale.

早在 2010 年代中期，这是以太坊的早期梦想：我们可以去中心化，不仅是为了稳健性，也是为了扩大规模。

If centralized systems can split up work between different participants to increase their performance, so should we.

如果集中式系统可以在不同参与者之间分配工作以提高其性能，那么我们也应该这样做。

Back then, this was not viable for one primary reason: the missing ingredient was verification .

当时，这是不可行的，主要原因有一个：缺少的成分是验证。

If you split up work, you have to verify that each unit of work was done correctly.

如果您拆分工作，则必须验证每个工作单元是否正确完成。

Early designs attempted to patch this with randomly sampled committees, but they all ran into the same bottleneck: first, committees are complicated to set up and expensive and greatly increase latency, second, there is no recourse if the committee fails.

早期的设计试图通过随机抽样的委员会来解决这个问题，但它们都遇到了相同的瓶颈：首先，委员会的设置复杂且昂贵，并且大大增加了延迟，其次，如果委员会失败，则没有追索权。

Now, with modern cryptography, this problem is solved, and the overhead factor of that solution is decreasing month by month.

现在，通过现代密码学，这个问题得到了解决，并且该解决方案的开销因素正在逐月减少。

Another area to watch for where decentralization can potentially improve performance properties is latency.

去中心化可以潜在提高性能属性的另一个值得关注的领域是延迟。

Ethereum itself will never have latency that competes with servers, but infrastructure built around it could.

以太坊本身永远不会出现与服务器竞争的延迟，但围绕它构建的基础设施却可能存在。

In general, creating a stronger decentralized layer in the middle between users and a chain, that is not itself a chain, could make Ethereum very powerful without compromising any of the chain's fundamental properties.

一般来说，在用户和本身不是链的链之间创建一个更强大的去中心化层可以使以太坊变得非常强大，而不会损害链的任何基本属性。

Later in the future, there is the possibility that Ethereum will go through one further shift - the possible rise of obfuscation (iO).

未来一段时间，以太坊有可能会经历进一步的转变——混淆（iO）的可能兴起。

The holy grail here is that viable obfuscation can eliminate the tradeoff between privacy and generalization: you can have fully generalized computation involving an unbounded number of (asynchronous) participants in a fully secure and encrypted form.

这里的圣杯是可行的混淆可以消除隐私和泛化之间的权衡：您可以以完全安全和加密的形式进行涉及无限数量（异步）参与者的完全泛化计算。

Even weak versions of obfuscation have many applications in eg.

即使是弱版本的混淆也有许多应用，例如。

encrypted mempools.

加密的内存池。

But all of the conclusions in this post will apply long before any of that becomes available.

但这篇文章中的所有结论早在任何结论可用之前就将适用。

This is the "cryptographic world computer": a shift from Ethereum as solely a ledger onto which you can indiscriminately dump computation and data that gets executed, to an architecture that combines blockchains with cryptographic privacy and verification, and powerful decentralized off-chain components.

这就是“加密世界计算机”：以太坊从仅仅作为一个分类账，可以不加区别地转储执行的计算和数据，转变为将区块链与加密隐私和验证以及强大的去中心化链外组件相结合的架构。

There are still many challenges in fully building out this design.

全面构建此设计仍面临许多挑战。

Making zero knowledge proofs efficient enough and safe enough is difficult, but it is encapsulated complexity and is already being heavily optimized with AI tools.

让零知识证明足够高效、足够安全是很困难的，但它封装了复杂性，并且已经通过人工智能工具进行了大量优化。

The more difficult, and systemically complex, piece will likely be managing and parallelizing access to very large amounts of state.

更困难且系统复杂的部分可能是管理和并行化对大量状态的访问。

There are already many ideas on the horizon for how to handle this, though they need to be refined especially as we learn more about what applications will be running in the future.

关于如何处理这个问题已经有很多想法，尽管它们需要完善，特别是当我们更多地了解未来将运行哪些应用程序时。

If you look at the Strawmap , Hegota - the fork planned for next year - is likely to be Ethereum's last "normal" fork, with features and technology that would be recognizable to someone in 2015.

如果你看一下 Strawmap，你会发现 Hegota（计划于明年推出的分叉）很可能是以太坊最后一个“正常”分叉，其功能和技术在 2015 年就已经被人们所认识。

Everything after that involves recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making it all quantum-safe.

之后的一切都涉及递归 STARK、自动形式验证、高度优化的共识算法，并使其全部是量子安全的。

With PeerDAS, Ethereum began its transition from being just a blockchain to being something much more powerful.

借助 PeerDAS，以太坊开始从区块链转变为更强大的东西。

Starting after Hegota, this transformation becomes Ethereum's primary story .

从Hegota之后开始，这种转变成为以太坊的主要故事。

The final outcome of this: much more cheap, scalable and private high-security computation than anything that could be done with the previous era's technology alone.

最终的结果是：比仅使用前一个时代的技术所能完成的任何事情都要便宜、可扩展且私密的高安全性计算。

The cryptographic world computer.

密码世界计算机。