Is Ethereum the Ivory Tower of Decentralization Curses Vitalik Development on L1 has Solid Consensus
Technology writer and researcher Emmanuel Awosika says, “Ethereum in 2024 feels like a science experiment: dozens of people running around making things explode, occasionally creating something good, but never quite having a clear direction. What are we even doing? How do the next 2-3 forks shape up, and how do they relate to the endgame?”
Criticism of the Ethereum ivory tower
Ethereum’s Rollups extension goals
Contradictions on the journey
Restricted by decentralization
Vitalik: L1 direction is firm, you’re talking about a broader ecosystem
Emmanuel Awosika says, it’s crazy because a hundred different things are happening at once, and we’re just moving sporadically. If we truly care about addressing the criticism of the ivory tower, we would be very, very focused on solving problems based on real feedback and showing that we care about bringing Ethereum to millions of people.
He gives an example. Are we going all-in on Rollups extension? Great. We also make sure to go all-in on making trustless Rollups extensions work. Literally, this should be one of our biggest priorities (if not the biggest). Our upgrade mindset is essentially influenced by the idea of “do everything to deliver a super-scalable, secure, and decentralized rollup before such-and-such year.”
This means prioritizing improving data availability (PeerDAS and Danksharding), execution (EVM-in-EVM verification, L1 ZK-EVM, embedded Rollups, etc.), and interoperability (shared L1 sequencers, pre-confirmed bridging). This also includes putting research efforts into everything that drives us towards fully decentralized rollups (better on-chain governance, multiple validators, formal verification, etc.). The world should clearly see that we have a solid plan to make rollup a reliable alternative to alt L1 (competing L1) that they are currently striving to become.
Emmanuel Awosika says, what’s the alternative? A very disjointed roadmap, everything feels very arbitrary.
Are we doing enshrined bridging to solve liquidity fragmentation issues, or leaving it to the unified Rollups ecosystem? Are we doing L1 sequencers or leaving it to someone else? Are we optimizing for better Rollups now, or leaving it to others? Are we dedicating the next 10 years to decentralized Rollups technology? Are we expanding data availability to the maximum level now, or delaying it for as long as possible? Not knowing what Ethereum needs to do with a lack of coherent vision fundamentally weakens the ecosystem.
Emmanuel Awosika says, some may argue, “Isn’t creating a formal roadmap centralized?” because they want to demonstrate virtue and believe that decentralization is incompatible with creating a better, scalable, and user-friendly chain. We all know this isn’t true, so seeing a continued lack of direction – and the negative second-order effects it produces – is very concerning. Too formal governance is as bad as too informal governance; we see that now.
Our plans should not be measured over centuries. They should be measured in months and years, with a clear timetable showing that we have engineers focused on the core protocol in research. Playing “pick your favorite project on the roadmap at each fork” (without considering specific goals) doesn’t feel ideal.
Vitalik doesn’t seem to agree with the issue of L1 lacking direction: “I don’t see that as a big challenge. We have a very solid consensus on the development direction of L1. What we lack is a similar consensus on the infrastructure beyond L1 for the ecosystem to expand.”
He believes that Emmanuel Awosika’s issue is not with L1. He says that about 75% of the examples Emmanuel Awosika mentioned are not about L1. They are about higher-level ecosystem building and standardization challenges. Enshrined bridging, decentralized Rollups technology, etc., are not L1 functions.
Having just a roadmap is not enough; we also need resources to execute it. ERC-7683 is good progress, Waku is good progress, but we need 10+ more of these types of things and a coherent concept explaining what’s missing, who’s building them, and ensuring they have the resources and motivation to do so.
Rollups
Vitalik
Ethereum
