The second Community Ethereum Development Conference kicked off in Toronto today. The event features technical talks by leading members of the Ethereum community on some of the most pressing ecosystem initiatives.
The three-day Community Ethereum Development Conference (EDCON[1]) kicked off in Toronto this morning. The nonprofit conference series, organized by the Ethereum application developer and consultancy firm LinkTime, is meant to serve as a type of Ethereum-specific TED Talk. Here, the technicalities of Ethereum's most advanced research are discussed alongside broader social and governmental issues as the platform continues to take shape.
Notably, this year's schedule features talks on the latest developments in Ethereum's switch to full proof-of-stake with Casper, while also promising more details on scalability solutions like sharding.
After an introductory presentation[2] featuring Ethereum co-founder Mihai Alisie, Joseph Poon[3] (co-author of both Ethereum's Plasma whitepaper and Bitcoin's Lightning Network whitepaper) gave a brief presentation on "Systemic Security and Mitigations for Mass Exits," a topic of increasing importance for people who write EDCCs (also known as smart contracts).
Poon's talk focused on adding time as a variable in contracts, which he said affects both block capacity and gas limits. Backdropped by shades of Ethereum purple, Poon said, "I think we remember the days when CryptoKitties[4] increased the gas costs to an incredibly high amount, where things started breaking down. If we have more complex contracts involving time, if you have difficulty getting your transaction in, it could be that your window has expired and your transition has become too expensive."
Poon explained that while the research he was presenting wasn't a solution for "inherent gas costs on the blockchain," it did attempt to destroy the incentive for bad actors to exploit similar scenarios in the
