Interview with Ethereum's leading coordinator Tim Beiko | What is the biggest regret in the crypto field, and how does it feel to work with Vitalik?

Tim Beiko is a prominent figure in the Ethereum Foundation, with his articles and content related to Ethereum being frequently shared by major financial news outlets. As one of the leaders responsible for protocol upgrades and developer meetings, Tim is currently heavily involved in preparing for the merger of Ethereum. According to the plan, the merger is set to take place this summer.

This article is authorized and republished from BlockBeats. Original article can be found here.

Original Title: "It’s Pretty Wild To Have The Opportunity To Shape The Future Of Finance.." Tim Beiko Talks About Life In The Ethereum Foundation & The Merge

Source: CryptoStaker

Tim Beiko is a prominent figure in the Ethereum Foundation, and his articles and updates on Ethereum-related content have been widely shared by major financial news outlets.

He has been working full-time on Ethereum since 2018, and before joining the Ethereum Foundation in 2021, he was with Joseph Lubin's ConsenSys.

As one of the leaders responsible for protocol upgrades and developer meetings, Tim is currently heavily involved in preparing for the Ethereum merge. According to the plan, the merge is expected to take place this summer.

In this interview, Tim and I discussed topics such as the Ethereum merge, mainstream adoption of Ethereum, his biggest regrets in the crypto space, and what it's like working with Vitalik Buterin.

I also asked the communities on r/Ethereum, r/ethStaker, and r/CryptoCurrency if they had any questions, and selected some good ones for Tim to answer.

Tim, before we get into the main topics, could you briefly introduce yourself and where your motivation for work comes from?

Tim: "One of the most exciting things for me is leading a project from the research phase to the actual development phase, completing the entire R&D process. Ethereum is committed to developing interdisciplinary innovations and has incorporated them into its core roadmap. So for someone like me, Ethereum is just perfect. I have also learned a lot from the people I work with, and it's been very interesting to be around these talented individuals."

How did you choose to get involved in crypto, and what was your process like?

Tim: "I first heard about crypto from a friend who always had strange plans. In 2014, he shared two of them with me. The first one was buying Iraqi dinars on eBay because their price had plummeted due to economic sanctions. He hoped to sell them when the US left Iraq and their value rebounded. The second one was Bitcoin. Although it all sounded far-fetched at the time, Bitcoin was much easier to grasp logically, so I chose that direction.

A few years later, when I learned about TheDAO, I started paying attention to Ethereum for the first time. I contributed to the project, but soon lost a large sum of money due to a hack, swinging between ETH and ETC chains, all in my first month of buying Ether.

After that hack, I continued to follow the community, but still thought Ethereum could very well be a failed experiment. Towards the end of 2016 and early 2017, as more projects started to relaunch on Ethereum, I began to pay more attention to it.

By mid-2017, it became clear to me that even if all the current projects failed, Ethereum wouldn't, so I started delving deeper into it. Since I wasn't too keen on getting involved in any specific project at the time and wanted to directly participate in protocol building, but I wasn't an engineer or a researcher, it took me some time to find the right position. In 2018, ConsenSys hired me as the PM for their new mainnet client Hyperledger Besu (then Pantheon). In my second or third week of work, I went to Devcon in Prague, and from then on, I've been dedicated to Ethereum protocol development."

What are the main responsibilities you have at the Ethereum Foundation, and could you give us an overview of your daily work?

Tim: "My main job is dealing with all kinds of events. Initially, as someone who is willing to take the initiative, I wasn't used to it. But when I saw Vitalik doing the same thing on Twitter, I came to terms with it.

Generally, in the morning, I check the latest news on various platforms to see if there are any urgent issues to address. If there are, then my work for the day is handling those urgent events; if not, I reply to messages people sent me overnight to avoid getting blocked by them. Later in the morning, I have a few meetings. When I have free time, I have plenty of time in the afternoon for 'deep work,' and in the evening, I can go for a workout. I also check some news in the evening, but unless it's very urgent, I might reply to a few messages at most."

One of the most popular questions on Reddit is — now you'd earn more working for any DeFi project, what makes you willing to stay with Ethereum?

Tim: "Currently, working for Ethereum allows me to maximize my value. I believe that Ethereum has the potential to become one of the most influential technologies in the world for the next few decades, so I am very willing to be a part of shaping that history. At the same time, when I think about the better future Ethereum might have, I even feel a bit regretful, but that feeling can be alleviated when we accomplish some constructive work. EIP-1559 is the most potent example I can think of: if you explain how Ethereum works to someone unfamiliar with it, they would think EIP-1559 is just how it is. To them, the base fee fluctuating with transaction demand and capturing part of the transaction spend is just normal. In a way, Ethereum would be fragmented without EIP-1559. There are many things like this on Ethereum that might not require much brainpower, but to go from theory to implementation, secure it, and deploy it on the Ethereum mainnet still takes a lot of work. I really enjoy that process."

Although it sounds strange, many people are curious if your work at the Ethereum Foundation is compensated? If so, is it paid in ETH?

Tim: "Of course, we are compensated. You can choose to receive compensation in ETH, and they even recently added L2 payments."

What achievement in Ethereum are you most proud of?

Tim: "So far, that would definitely be helping rebuild EIP-1559 and deploying it on the mainnet. However, the merge might be even more significant."

Is there anything interesting about Ethereum that we don't know about?

Tim: "We are writing an executable spec for Ethereum's execution layer (EL). Currently, Ethereum's spec is in a bad state: in the EL, it's essentially 'Yellow Paper + latest fork EIPs'; in the consensus layer (CL), it's a separate executable spec. So, in the EL, we have a readable EIP, but an unrelated (mathematical) spec; and in the CL, we've just made modifications to the spec's code and described it in its PR. I hope that with an executable spec in the EL, we can transition to a simpler system, describe language changes with EIPs, and link them to executable specs in the EL and CL, ensuring they are always in sync with the mainnet."

What would "mass adoption" look like for Ethereum in your opinion?

Tim: "I'm not sure how much different it would be from today; maybe just on a larger scale. We have working applications, improving user experiences, a general awareness of Ethereum/blockchain, but it's a bit early, and the costs are too high. I think the focus should be on narratives around Ethereum's culture, decentralization, and permissionlessness, as they will persist even as we expand beyond native crypto realms."

Do you think blockchain should be both centralized and decentralized?

Tim: "To some extent, yes, because there are some things that inherently lead to centralization. Still, I think we need to have checks and balances in protocols to ensure the honesty of centralized entities. An example is PoW: while producing blocks on Ethereum is very difficult, verifying whether a block is valid is straightforward. That's why you want a lot of non-validating nodes on the network: even if they can't create blocks, they can flag malicious blocks being created and prevent them from spreading on the network. There are still centralized entities in several areas today, so I think we need to design some methods to ensure their honesty on the network. MEV is one example, and many of Ethereum's future roadmaps will focus on avoiding excessive centralization."

After the PoS merge, what will be the next focus after staking withdrawals and sharding?

Tim: "These two are already quite important; beyond that, there might be two other hotspots, namely statelessness and the separation of proposers and builders."

The recent Kiln testnet merge is a significant milestone; could you explain its significance?

Tim: "The release of a testnet is to address issues early and prevent them from appearing on the mainnet. We've run several high-complexity testnets (and development nets that are usually not publicized to the community) to ensure the code's reliability in all circumstances.

Last December, we launched Kintsugi, our first new public testnet. At that time, we expected the spec to be in good shape and started deploying it on applications. Before that, we found some issues online and got initial data points about the application working as expected.

We recently launched Kiln, our second public testnet, and made some fixes. Currently, we are looking into issues at the implementation, application, or tooling level. We've found some issues in the network implementation and are working on fixing them. The community can try out this network and ensure their projects run on the post-merge Ethereum.

After we refine this network, we will start upgrading existing public testnets on Ethereum (Goerli, Ropsten, Sepolia, etc.) and monitor them later. Once all the testnets are upgraded and stable, we will proceed with the merge on the mainnet."

How does it feel working with Vitalik?

Tim: "The most profound impression he gives me is that, besides being online with dual mindsets, he can timely distinguish the importance of various issues and address the most pressing ones. You'll always be amazed at his accurate judgment of problems, and he must have put in a lot of effort behind the scenes."

If you had a billboard that the whole world could see, what would you write on it?

Tim: "I don't have a great idea for that at the moment; maybe I'd put a picture of my dog on it."

Do you have any advice for people who want to get involved in Ethereum development?

Tim: "Ethereum is vast these days, so I might not have a good suggestion for Solidity/application development. In terms of protocol building, I suggest they can find content that interests them in the Ethereum client Github repos, ethereum-magicians.org, or ethresear.ch. Not only that, the link list recently shared by Vitalik is also quite informative."

Can you recommend some crypto podcasts worth paying attention to?

Tim: "I actually rarely listen to crypto podcasts because I keep up with the latest happenings in crypto every day, but I often listen to other types of podcasts, like Cold Takes recently."

Have you bought any NFTs?

Tim: "No, but someone gave me Chromie Squiggle number 1559, and I really like it."

Do you prefer Lamborghini or Ferrari?

Tim: "Tesla?"

What's the highest transaction fee you've ever paid?

Tim: "I might not want to talk about that."

So, when is the merge starting?

Tim: "Very soon."