How does Vitalik Buterin view the future of the Ethereum ecosystem?
In the Ethereum ecosystem, balance is the most important governance challenge – or more accurately, the integration of decentralization and cooperation.
The strength of this ecosystem lies in the wide range of individuals and organizations – client teams, researchers, Layer 2 network teams, application developers, and local community groups – all working towards their respective visions of what Ethereum can become.
The main challenge is to ensure that all projects collectively build an Ethereum ecosystem, rather than 138 incompatible territories.
To address this challenge, many people in the Ethereum ecosystem have proposed the concept of “Ethereum consistency.” This may include value consistency (e.g., open source, minimizing centralization, supporting public goods), technical consistency (e.g., collaboration with standards within the ecosystem), and economic consistency (e.g., using ETH as a token whenever possible).
However, this concept has been poorly defined in history, leading to the risk of social control: if consistency means having the right friends, then “consistency” as a concept has failed.
To address this issue, I believe that the concept of consistency should be made clearer and broken down into specific attributes that can be represented by specific indicators.
Everyone’s list will be different, and the indicators will inevitably evolve over time. However, I believe we already have a solid starting point.
Open source: This is valuable for two reasons: (i) code can be audited for security and, more importantly, (ii) it reduces the risk of proprietary lock-in and allows third parties to make improvements without permission. Not every part of every application needs to be fully open source, but the core infrastructure components that the ecosystem relies on should be. The gold standard here is the FSF Free Software Definition and the OSI Open Source Definition.
Open standards: Strive for interoperability with the Ethereum ecosystem and build on open standards, whether existing (e.g., ERC-20, ERC-1271) or in development (e.g., account abstraction, cross-L2 transfers, L1 and L2 light client proofs, upcoming address format standards). If you want to introduce a new feature that existing standards cannot serve well, collaborate with others to write a new ERC. Applications and wallets can be rated based on the number of ERCs they are compatible with.
Decentralization and security: Avoid trust points, minimize audit vulnerabilities, and minimize reliance on centralized infrastructure. Natural metrics are (i) The walkaway test: If your team and servers disappear tomorrow, can your application still function? and (ii) Internal attack testing: If your team itself tries to attack the system, how much damage would it cause? An important formality is the L2beat aggregation phase.
Positiveness: 1) Ethereum-centric – the success of a project should benefit the entire Ethereum community (e.g., ETH holders, Ethereum users), even if they are not part of the project’s own ecosystem. Specific examples include using ETH as a token (thus contributing to its network effects), contributing to open-source technology, and committing to donate a certain percentage of tokens or revenue to public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem. 2) World-centric – Ethereum aims to make the world a freer, more open place, enabling new forms of ownership and cooperation, and making positive contributions to major challenges faced by humanity. Has your project achieved this? Examples include applications that bring sustainable value to a wider audience (e.g., financial inclusion), donating a certain percentage to public goods outside of Ethereum, and building practical technologies beyond cryptocurrencies (e.g., funding mechanisms, general-purpose computer security) that are actually used in these environments.
Ethereum Node Map
Image /
ethernodes.org
Obviously, the above standards do not apply to every project.
For Layer 2s, wallets, decentralized social media applications, and more, applicable indicators will vary greatly. Different indicators may also change in priority: two years ago, using “training wheels” for Rollups was acceptable due to being in the “early stage,” but today, we need to reach at least the first stage as soon as possible.
Currently, the most obvious positive indicator is the commitment to donate a certain percentage of tokens, and more projects are doing so. In the future, we can also find clear indicators for other aspects of positivity.
My ideal goal is to see more entities like L2beat emerge to track how projects are meeting the above standards and other standards proposed by the community.
Projects should not compete to make the right friends but should strive to remain consistent based on clear and understandable standards.
The Ethereum Foundation should maintain a certain distance in this regard: we fund L2beat, but we should not become L2beat.
Creating the next L2beat itself is a permissionless process.
This will also provide a clearer path for the Ethereum Foundation and other organizations (and individuals) that want to support and participate in the ecosystem while remaining neutral. They can determine which projects to support and use based on their own judgment and partially based on which projects best align with their most important standards.
This makes it easier for the Ethereum Foundation and everyone else to be part of the motivation to make projects more cohesive.
Only with a clear definition of “merit” can elite management be achieved; otherwise, you will have a (potentially exclusive and zero-sum) social game.
The best solution to the concern of “who watches the watchers” is not to rely on ensuring that all influential people are angels but to rely on proven decentralized technologies.
Entities like L2beat, block explorers, and other ecosystem monitors are excellent examples of how this principle works in today’s Ethereum ecosystem.
If we can do more to make different aspects of consistency clearer while not concentrating them in a single “supervisor,” we can make this concept more effective and fair and in line with what the Ethereum ecosystem strives for.
This article is a collaborative reprint from:
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