Web3 Leader Spotlight: Julian Ma
This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Julian Ma, a Research Scientist at the Ethereum Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing Ethereum, a network boasting $50 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), along with related technologies.
Julian's research focuses on mechanism design and market microstructure within blockchain systems. Fell free to follow him on X @_julianma.
Can you share your journey and experiences that led you to your current role at the Ethereum Foundation?
My journey into crypto started as a volunteer at Devconnect Amsterdam. I helped with registration and passing the microphone but I tried to follow as many talks as I could. A talk on the transaction fee mechanism of Ethereum caught my eye and I chatted with the presenter, Barnabé Monnot, afterwards.
We stayed in contact and soon after I started an internship with the team of the presenter. I loved the internship and I was lucky enough to eventually transition into a full-time role.
Could you highlight a proposal that is currently gaining significant attention in the ecosystem? What potential improvements could it bring?
My colleagues and I proposed Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL). It is a mechanism that enables multiple proposers to include transactions into a block instead of a single leader.
Its goal is to increase the credible neutrality of the network because a decentralized set of participants can now include transactions and no single party can censor transactions.
How can economists contribute to core protocol development which is dominated by developers or computer scientists?
Blockchain research is a very interdisciplinary field. However, many core problems such as consensus and cryptography could benefit from more economic input. There are clear economic problems related to the Ethereum protocol like its transaction fee mechanism and the block construction supply chain, but there are also less visible problems where economists could have a large impact.
One of my favourite examples is how Caspar Schwarz-Schilling extends the analysis of consensus systems from honest and dishonest behaviour with honest-but-rational parties that follow economic incentives.
What are the topics of the future that you are most excited about?
An important area of research for me is the block construction pipeline. It is concerned with who has what input into constructing a block. FOCIL is a part of this pipeline, but there are many different aspects. In the short-term, I will be spending more time on pushing efforts around block construction to the finish line.
On a higher level, I am very interested in what role different parties play that are involved with the consensus and execution of Ethereum.
