After Ethereum has completed what I think is the most important upgrade in the history of the blockchain, our forward direction has successfully shifted to extraction and primary expansion upgrades, and we will need to face many key tasks and upgrades in the coming years. At this time, the "Ethereum Killer" is swaying in the uncertainty of the bear market, Bitcoin culture and technology are struggling in a blank space, but Ethereum has shown unprecedented strength, we continue to build, improve, think and produce Influence.
The technology roadmap ahead is long and complex, but I'm not worried about our execution and timing. Because we have proven that we can deliver at a high level and that the Ethereum ecosystem is moving in the right direction (and the hard way), it makes Ethereum more resilient at every level. There are many frauds in the industry, but Ethereum is still standing. Even in the deep bear market, Ethereum is still building and innovating. In an increasingly volatile global landscape, Ethereum has found a way to make a difference in key sectors.
These reflections of mine will focus more on survival issues - L1 ecosystem health, capture, cartels, Layer 2 alignment with Ethereum, etc.
1. Technology: the road ahead is long
Ethereum has proven that it can not only accomplish huge technical goals, but that it can do so in a largely decentralized manner. The merger is a unique achievement — no other project has achieved such technical sophistication, high level of execution, and global decentralization.
The transition to POS has taken a little longer than any of us expected. When I first started working at EF, Aya Miyaguchi asked me in the spring of 2018 when we could finish the POS work. My answer is "8 months", and in the end it took longer for us to implement it for many reasons, but we still achieved such a multi-layer, multi-client, resilient ecosystem and protocol that can improve Other blockchains don’t even have staking decentralization that can’t be achieved.
A quick glance at Vitalik 's roadmap document will make you realize that we still have many long and complex years (5, 10) to go before the agreement is "done". We should not be complacent about the delivery of the merger agreement, but use this momentum, expertise, tools and processes to address the many challenges that remain.
But what "finishing" means here, is reflected in various aspects-finding enough end status (end status). Answer clearly what is enough functionality, enough security, enough decentralization, and so on. The key is to be more aware of what needs to be optimized and what is the minimum threshold conceptually and technically. Clarifying these areas will help us set our priorities and make the right complexity/feature tradeoffs over the next few years, and I'll describe how this helps us in the solidification process later on.
Current Tech Concerns
1.1. Evolution of PoS
In proposal-builder separation (PBS), LMD-GHOST confirmation rules, single-slot finality (SSF), single-secret leader election (SSLE), proof-of-custodial (PoC), proof-of-execution (PoE), and early RANDAO reveal cuts, etc. On the one hand, there is a lot of research, explanation material for construction, and the evolution of Ethereum from POS to its final, safest and most sustainable form.
Much of the above has to do with reducing or eliminating gameplay, cartel pain points, the tragedy of the commons (editor's note: a social trap involving conflict between private and public interests over the allocation of resources), and credit assumptions—even in In extremely unfavorable circumstances, the agreement must also be strengthened. While the network must eventually recover, it is still important to ensure that the protocol can handle the widest range of attack scenarios without intervention.
1.2. DAS in practice
Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is an elegant mathematical solution to the data availability problem. However, in actual p2p network construction, it is not easy to instantiate efficiently and robustly. In 2022, many teams have joined the ranks of solving this problem - including academic and practical engineering - but there is still much work to be done before an adequate solution can be reached.
The problem is not tricky, but the scope of the design is quite large, and it is difficult to quickly strike the right balance between complexity and robustness. If we are willing to compromise on decentralization and robustness, DAS can reuse off-the-shelf network components and work well in the right cases. Considering that an attack on the network structure can completely destroy the validity of the chain, it is important to design a system not just to function, but to design a system that is as resilient as other aspects of the protocol.
EIP-4844 lays the groundwork for scaling data and gives us the parameter data-gas limit to adjust as the DAS handles more load. I think it is prudent to increase this parameter, such as setting the data-gas limit much lower than the theoretical limit, running DAS in parallel for a period of time to achieve a full 4844 download, achieving extremely high network redundancy, etc.
In what order DAS will roll out compared to many other competing upgrades is still up for debate - stateless is another obvious major contender. My hunch is that DAS needs more time to mature, focusing on non-scaling upgrades in the 12 months after 4844 (stateless, security improvements, Mainnet, etc.) After potential integration of technologies such as episub, the data-gas limit is increased from the original parameter.
2. MEV - Pandora's Box
One of the central themes of the past 24 months has been maximum extractable value (MEV) — the impact not only on the application layer, but also on layer one consensus and security. It's like opening Pandora's box. MEV turns what we thought (and hoped) was simple into something complex consisting of incentives, attacks, and more. MEV has a centralizing effect on the validator community, rewards cartels much more than before, directly incentivizes reorganization, and brings in a whole host of new PvP players, complicating the simple user-validator model.
MEV has some impact on what needs to be done before Ethereum achieves "done". Protocols must be aware of MEV, otherwise such incentives will destabilize and potentially destroy the network. This requires mitigations such as proposer-builder separation (PBS), MEV burn, SSF, and censorship resistance in the context of PBS.
I am hesitant to roll out MEV mitigations as soon as possible (the threat is real after all) or to spend more time researching the problem first and then proposing a solution. My concern is that despite the leaps in our understanding of this problem area, research is still in its infancy and what we can build today will not meet Ethereum's long-term needs.
The reason I feel like maybe it can't be "take it slow" is that the incentives inherent in the MEV space lead to the creation of a pool of solutions, networks, products that are often quickly adopted and impactful. If we do not act fast, third-party solutions and activities will become, define, and potentially threaten our existing key norms.
2.1. Complexity
This question is tricky. Ethereum is complex and will only get more complex. I worry that this dynamic system is or will become too complex for us to handle, reason about, and keep it safe.
Wherever possible, modularity is essential to handle system complexity. We're "stuck" in the separation of execution and consensus, and a lot of the complexity is glossed over because we're using libp2p at the (consensus) network layer and a strong, audited/validated library at the encryption layer.
In this way, each component can be corrected individually, and related individuals and teams are more specialized, and ultimately aggregated into a more complex whole.
Furthermore, the capacity of the core protocol should not exceed the level required in any domain, otherwise it introduces unnecessary complexity.
3. L1 coordination game
3.1. Development of L1
Over the past 5 years, we have grown by leaps and bounds in our ability to make complex upgrades to the protocol, with a 5x increase in the number of teams and individuals involved, more resilient in both software and thought. Not going it alone remains key to the health of the protocol.
The consensus layer's client ecosystem, diversity of expertise, and diversity of usage is a huge improvement. The client ecosystem at the execution layer started with a lot of asymmetry and took more time to achieve a similar level of professionalism and reliability. But I believe we are ready to change the phenomenon that 80% of the Mainnet is dominated by GETH in 2023. In fact, the merger is an inflection point here.
3.2. Incentive measures
At the height of the bull market, I and many others were very concerned about the incentives of working on Ethereum L1, both compared to Ethereum's application layer and L2, and compared to other L1 competitors. All alternatives have token incentives with high upside potential, with highly Liquidity products.
During a bull market, valuations for Liquidity products are high. So we're faced with actual turnover of people, along with a more insidious, growing dissatisfaction that stems from the vast disparity between doing work on critical infrastructure and building on it. I'm not sure if I made it clear at the time, but in retrospect, there's both bitterness and dissatisfaction with the huge fortunes people have amassed relying on the L1 team. Regarding the L1 alternative, some claim that this misplaced incentive mechanism is a fundamental factor in the development of the blockchain, and that the L1 alternative will always be the driving force to suppress and eliminate the old L1. These arguments were naive even at the time, but their influence and negativity continued to grow.
There is a lot of positive movement in L1 development incentives right now. Protocol Guild’s one-year pilot raised over $12 million for 120+ members across 20+ teams. Funded experiments in traceable public goods may at least demonstrate that some applications and software on which L2 depends are available and secure. While other funding mechanisms such as gitcoin and clr.fund continue to innovate to support public goods across the ecosystem. Additionally, other funded experiments at the social layer hold great promise, such as optional staking transaction fees/MEV split contracts (e.g. 1% of your staking transaction fee goes to your clients).
3.3. Capture
There are now quite a few well-resourced, well-run entities interested not only in the success of the Ethereum protocol, but also in controlling Ethereum. They don't seem to be showing malicious intent at the moment, but they do have a lot of influence over the development of the protocol. To this end, L2, VCs, exchanges, and Dapp have joined the process of L1 governance and development. We are in a unique period where there is a growing number and clarity of stakeholders involved with Ethereum. But many areas of the agreement are, by almost any standard, inadequate and unfixed. This makes the next few years at great risk.
A few years ago, these interested, established/resourced entities simply didn't exist, or would consider "helping out" and joining. They're mostly EF, the client team, and various independent people in the core protocol conversation. If after a few years (3? 5? 10?), parties come forward to help, the agreement may be more solidified, and interested parties will face less risk in helping.
In fact, ownership of critical infrastructure may be a long-term need for entities that depend on the health and stability of the Ethereum network. Now, ownership of infrastructure means a say in an early-stage agreement. Eventually, the malleable components of the protocol will become smaller and less important, and they refer to elements around the core such as network protocols, light client communications, content delivery networks, and so on. However, there is still huge interest in this regard, and it is still possible to manipulate the protocol through less rigid, chaotic, human upgrades.
Given the growing interest, one hopes to find a balance where non-client developers/non-researchers have a voice in management. It's hard trying to check in on everyone, because in reality, there's never really a standard—you show up, do your job with integrity, and you're welcome. The backgrounds and motivations of newcomers are getting more and more complex, which affects even the core maintainers, as there are more and more conflicts of interest - app/L2 investors, DAO representatives, VC firm advisors, corporate , and the offering of various products; not to mention the impact of various geopolitical relationships as the global landscape pays more and more attention to cryptocurrencies.
I firmly believe that anything formal other than "developers write code, users run software" is a long-term existential threat to Ethereum. I've seen communities call for structures similar to political parties or lobbying interest groups. The more structures this process has, the more easily those structures can be abused (captured) and become less likely to be removed (anti-cured).
Reaching consensus is not easy, but we are working towards a more robust protocol that is adequate, robust, guaranteed, and prevents capture. I suggest we add as little additional management structure as possible over the next 5 years and focus more on softer things like alignment of mind, building a strong culture that only focuses on mission escalation, and in less formal forums It facilitates two-way communication between developers and the scaling community. That is, the governance process is a beast that can be managed, but not directly controlled. Individuals can influence the outcome here through guidance and thought, and they can speak up if things do go astray, but Ethereum governance is an independent organism that no single party currently has control over.
3.4. Client--purchased or self-built?
Even if the development and upgrade process of the protocol is limited to the "developers write code, users run software" model, without adding new formal structures, working on and maintaining the client is still anyone's entry into the dialogue and process.
As we see in 2022, this can be done by buying (Arbitrum -> Prysm) or building (Paradigm -> reth), each with its own difficulty, legality and sustainability. For example, buying a client is relatively straightforward, but legitimacy may be sacrificed, and the impact is minimally sustainable—clients are made up of individuals, and the acquiring firm may only be able to change priorities until the individual leaves or defectes. matters and opinions. Building a client is far more difficult, but far more legitimate and durable. In 2023, both experiments are ones to watch.
The development and governance of Ethereum relies on a security-first, consistent development culture. My assessment is that in the current configuration, one or two wildcard client teams or individuals will have a hard time changing paths or feature sets in what we call "capture", due to the limited ability of the entire team to assess the merits of a proposal, And be limited by your own philosophies to set priorities and move forward. My concern is the emergence of situations where new entrants deviate in "alignment" with others on the client team, or some existing, like-minded client teams leave, or more client teams Acquired or created over the next few years by less aligned entities.
The multi-client ethos and ecosystem is one of Ethereum's superpowers, bringing more resilience, legitimacy, and security by bringing in numerous software and perspectives. This is one of the ways Ethereum brings all kinds of intelligence and thought, and it is one of the main feedback loops that make Ethereum powerful. I don't recommend putting limits on joining such informal client teams. Instead, I recommend keeping the door open and explicitly welcoming more highly unified client teams over the next few years. While we're doing this, it would be even better if we could also increase the geographical and jurisdictional diversity of the Ethereum client team, as there are still some regions around the world that are both over- and under-represented. Deepening the representation of global clients will make Ethereum more resilient while further expanding its intellectual wellspring.
4. Curing
Bitcoin has tarnished the notion of solidification. The solidified Bitcoin is regarded as a useless protocol by the Ethereum community, and is maintained by a group of people with religious fanaticism. They will not follow any rational route that does not glorify the perfection of Bitcoin or derogate other designs. This does raise the question - is this due to the specificity of the thing being solidified (in this case Bitcoin) or the act of solidification itself. My hunch is that religious anti-intellectualism stems from the inadequacy of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin protocol is insufficient for its claims, so the arguments of its proponents have been twisted in favor of its solidified state.
I believe that a protocol that is adequate for its task (in our case, secure, scalable, and of sufficient capacity) can make a coherent argument for the solidification of its results. Therefore, the surrounding community need not descend into religious fanaticism to defend this choice. Furthermore, in our case, I believe that the Liquidity and scalability of the layers supported by the solidification protocol allow the community to explore and optimize higher layers, thereby remaining intellectually engaged.
That said, some community members worry that without an evolving protocol, ethereum will lose its charm, its appeal to intellectuals, and many of the things that make it so special and so alive. I think we can reap the benefits as long as the second layer provides rich enough support - solidifying on a secure foundation while still supporting active intellectual exploration and optimization at higher layers in the ecosystem. At least that's our dream.
4.1. Is curing stupid?
But is curing a fool's errand? Is this really achievable in the context of Ethereum? And how can solidification be useful? Does the cure have to be absolute, or can we "compare the cure" to get most of the value? Finally, is enough fixation intent enough to protect us—does the imminent threat of fixation keep progress on the critical path, ensure alignment, and strengthen the immune system against special interests and capture?
I do worry that solidification is unrealistic in any near future. Because there is a long list of upgrades and security improvements still to be done - sharding, PoS evolution (SSLE, PBS, etc.), security improvements (SSLE, Guardian Games, Proof of Execution, etc.), statelessness, ZK-EVM, quantum-resistant cryptography Learn and so on. Considering the complexity of the task at hand and the general speed of going online, it will take no less than 5 years, or even 10 years. I worry that the progress of cryptography and emerging problems will keep this list in the foreseeable future. growth and change.
So, if this is an endless process, will the rate of change at least slow down? Perhaps a more valid definition of solidification is that it is a trend rather than an end result—it is increasingly difficult, requiring more reason, effort, and time to incorporate any change into agreement. Protocols don't really solidify, and the best we can do is to talk to solidities all the time. If we are always trying to solidify or be in a more solidified state, rather than always expecting, yearning, or seeking change, then the dialogue of solidification can be biased toward change skepticism. Sufficient skepticism may be enough to protect a protocol, even as it (slowly) evolves.
In reflection this year, I've come to believe that this dialogue with solidification is not only the best we can do, but a way to ensure that Ethereum doesn't become partially conditioned to cope with the future in an unpredictable future. But I also believe that fixators -- those who prefer to slow down, who prefer to change certain components only when absolutely necessary, fearful of increased complexity and changes that will impact the upper layers -- have a lot to offer in today's core L1 processes and There are very small parts of the larger community.
This alignment and thinking has not been strong enough to be the necessary immune system in the protocol. While there are many respected voices in this camp to ensure that minimum thresholds exist, the arguments and merits of a "protocol towards solidification" must be articulated over the next few years to navigate this complex, ever-changing critical mass. Period, the scales don't tip too much in the other direction.
4.2. Alignment of L2 and Ethereum
One of the benefits of an L2-centric roadmap is that it allows L1 to leave various design decisions (cross-domain communication, virtual machine selection and optimization, parallelization, state management, etc.) Pick and implement a specific (and probably not optimal) solution. This marketplace of ideas on top of Ethereum L1 can not only find good solutions in the short term, but also adapt to the growing and changing needs of the world for decades to come. Need to parallelize? You can try the new L2.
Want a better virtual machine to support the necessary formal verification? L2 can adapt to this change, or a new L2 will emerge. This anti-cure sits on top of a relatively solid base layer and really has the best of both worlds.
As for the health of this market - the Ethereum L2 ecosystem is doing just fine. A few different optimistic EVM routes are underway, many different EMV compatible/equivalent zk- Rollup are racing to market, and there are some exotic more experimental Rollup popping up from the fringes (like Fuel). Some argue that this exploration has been a bit bogged down - just focus on EVM - hope for more dramatic changes away from L1 structures - Solana- Rollup, highly parallelized Rollup, etc - but the market can still adapt to some of the current The success or failure of an idea. EVM seems to be a moat, and inside the moat, most people are building.
Given that all the eggs are in the L2 basket, one thing that worries me is the alignment of L2, both in the short term and in the long term. There are two main problems - (1) L2 is parasitic and will eventually fork to become L1; (2) L2 is the standard of Ethereum, where users interact, but do not believe in Ethereum's values - decentralization, Censorship resistance, support for public goods, radical collaboration, and more.
The former is more of an existential question - is there really value in being pegged to the Ethereum enclave? This is basically the thesis of the L2 roadmap - these scalable environments, which inherit the security and native bridges of Ethereum, are valuable to users, and therefore valuable to the developers, companies, and communities that build and maintain them.
I believe in this argument - achieving adequate cryptoeconomic security is hard, and in an increasingly competitive environment, most blockchains will inevitably fail to do so. Cryptoeconomic security is a finite resource and a function of the ongoing economic needs of these systems. So while I do expect some L2s to "abandon" Ethereum and try to leave - some may succeed, others fail - I don't believe this will happen on a large scale, and a few L2s leaving won't break cryptoeconomic security Theory as a service.
As for (2), I have more concerns. L2 will inevitably be the primary touchpoint for the vast majority of users. In most cases, they will exist in the L2, interact with the L2, bridge between the L2, because these L2 are safe and affordable. Thus, L2 becomes the face of Ethereum. This approach may be secure, but is it decentralized, censorship resistant, upholding Ethereum's values, and inspiring the world to constantly reimagine itself? At this point, the answers to these questions are clearly not yes.
Venture capital firms set foot in the L2 space, tokens are randomly distributed to insiders everywhere, most governance models are plutocratic, and they are upgraded arbitrarily without notice. Not to mention that most L2s make sacrifices in their security model to go to market hoping to iterate towards decentralization (e.g. no fraud proofs, single sequencer, unclear emergency exit mechanism, etc.).
There's an interesting balance here. L2 can and wants to pour more effort into advertising and business development to compete with the very aggressive alt-L1 in this space. This makes Ethereum L1 neutral in this regard, while the layers above try numerous customer acquisition and onboarding techniques. But whether L2 will retain the brand, value and soul of Ethereum by default, the answer is not obvious.
Stewardship of a healthy L2 ecosystem is critical and requires a multifaceted effort - researching and promoting secure structures, realizing the value of L2 (letting it be what it is, not what it is portrayed to be), where possible L2’s governance risks, security tradeoffs, poor token distribution, value adjustments, and other emerging issues are explored in each case.
And, we can't just focus on the negative, but also celebrate the positive, safe, consistent parts. The Ethereum community today has enormous power in shaping the specifications that will define how the L2 movement will evolve for decades to come. We must ensure that L2 inherits not only the security of Ethereum, but also its legality.
summary
This article is the author's extremely short-sighted and biased view of things. There are many problems, even many success stories, that the author of this article is not aware of, or does not have time to write this article.
In short, Ethereum is stronger than ever. Community building core infrastructure, community layered expansion, and community building have achieved amazing results. However, major challenges and enormous risks remain.
Ethereum is still alive and well. Please do your part to keep it that way.
