Ethereum is transitioning through several phases of development called Olympic, Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and Serenity. Metropolis will include improvements to simplify VM I/O and allow dynamic storage sizes, while Serenity will transition the protocol to a proof-of-stake model. Additionally, Ethcore is working on projects like Civility for reliability, Tenuity for light clients, and Purity for the Serenity fork. The document outlines several upcoming improvements to the Ethereum protocol as it progresses towards further decentralization and scalability.

1. Ethereum:
Next Steps
Dr. Gavin Wood
co-founder, ethereum
co-founder, ethcore.io
@gavofyork

2. Where are we?
● Olympic released
● Frontier released
● Homestead released

3. Coming up next for Ethereum...
Metropolis
Protocol improvements and browser
Serenity
Move to proof-of-stake
Beyond
Hyper-scalability, confidentiality and more...

4. ... and for Ethcore
Civility
99.99999% reliability through hypervisor + actor-based arch.
Tenuity
Light client
Purity
Parity fork for Serenity
PoA enterprise-grade Consortium chains

5. Metropolis Hard Fork
VM I/O Simplification
Removal of BLOCKHASH, provision of information in low-id contracts
Dynamic-sized Storage Slots
Moving from fixed 32-byte slots to arbitrary length
Null-signature Transactions
Provision for alternative means of identification & payment

6. Metropolis Hard Fork
Explicit Contract Addresses
Contracts identity on CREATE no longer nonce-based
Receipts Less Informative
Removal of medstate and gas used from logs

7. VM I/O Simplification
BLOCKHASH @ 0x10
Opcode removed (yey)
STATEROOT @ 0x20
Useful for Serenity/PoS
GAS_USED @ 0x30
Alternative for logged information

8. Dynamic-Size Storage Slots
Store any length of data in any slot!
Storage now a key/value DB with keys restricted to 32-bytes.
Makes a lot of stuff cheaper (less gas!)

9. Null-Signature Transactions &
Mining Logic
Authenticate-by-Contract
Contracts may authenticate through use of transaction data & alternative
crypto
Payment-by-Contract
No longer critical requirement that users own ether to use Ethereum
Mining Logic
Miners now check for alternative payment methods

10. Explicit Contract Addresses
Used to be creator + nonce
Now creator + code
User can be certain that address has (or will have) the supposed code in it;
cleaner when we use unsigned transactions to create contracts.

11. Receipts Less Informative
Receipts no longer have medstate
No longer have to execute in sequence!
Transaction parallelism
Though we still have to avoid state collisions between execution

12. The Road to Crypto (R)evolution
We built the kernel
Now we need the rest!
Three pillars which support the ecosystem

13. The Road to Crypto (R)evolution
Identity
Individuals, unique stuff. There is only one of each “thing”. The “one”.
Assets
Ownership of stuff. Each “thing” may be plural. The “many”.
Data
General information, not formally structured. The “infinite”.

14. Identity
People
You and me.
Unique Things
My priceless Monet painting. Your shipping container.
Devices
My door knob. Samsung’s washing machine.

15. Assets/Ownership
Real fungibles
I own 500g of gold in the warehouse. You want 1 tonne of granulated sugar.
Virtual fungibles
I have $500. You have 50% share in my DAO.

16. Data/Information
May be attributed or global
Attributed to identity or fungible. Global is unassociated.
May be freeform or formatted
Depending on usage.
Adding external relevance to internal stuff
Crypto-law rather isolated otherwise!

17. But the real magic...
...comes from combining these things.

18. Data + Assets
Insurance/Gaming
Data is arbitrary real world information/random series. Assets dispersed on
the outcome.
Pegged Currency
Data is asset performance. Contracts bet on asset against hedgers. Contracts
are split into tokens to form currency.
Asset Classification
Attributing information to assets to form asset language.

19. Data + Identity
Oracles
Identity claims global information.
Reputation
Identities claim scalar information on each other.
Badges
Asymmetric ascription of non-scalar (e.g. attendance, donation, purchase)
information to an identity.

20. Assets + Identity
Certification
Badges-for-stuff.
Asset Tracking
Attach previous-ownership information to assets.
Judged Escrow & Bonded Identity
Third-party escrow to assign ownership; bonded identity allows punitive
damages to be taken by the adjudicator.

21. And more...
Credit Rating/KYC
Derived from Reputation system
(Mostly-)Trust-free Oracles
Reputation + Oracles: to provide high quality fault-tolerant information
Virtual Retail
Pegged Currency + Assets: online shops and exchanges for chain-expressed
assets & services.

22. And more...
Real Marketplace
Reputation + Escrow + Virtual Retail: Decentralised eBay!
Simple Truth Engine
Data + Reputation: Given a statement, is it true or false?
Court
Truth Engine + Bonded Identity: Court of the internet able to assign damages.

23. And more...
Trade Mediator
Truth-engine + Escrow: Simpler court for trading.
Trade Finance
Credit Rating + Currency + Asset-tracking: Combine the lot to rewrite trade!
Transparent Supply-Chain
Certification + Asset-tracking: Know everything about what you’re buying

24. Ethereum:
Next steps
Dr. Gavin Wood
@gavofyork
Questions?