According to Coincu, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a middle ground approach to enshrining features within the Ethereum protocol, called minimal viable enshrinement. In a recent article, Buterin acknowledges the unique nature of blockchains as social systems and advocates for minimalism inspired by the Unix philosophy. He argues that enshrinement can help avoid centralization risks, which can occur when complexity is pushed to external layers. However, excessive enshrinement can compromise the protocol's trust and governance, as well as pose systemic risks.
Minimal viable enshrinement involves enshrining specific pieces of functionalities to simplify implementation without imposing strict constraints. Examples include adjusting staking penalty rules for trustless liquid staking or enshrining EVM-MAX and SIMD for efficient operations. Buterin also suggests that de-enshrinement may be necessary for rarely used features, ensuring backward compatibility and a lighter protocol.
Focusing on ZK-EVMs, Buterin highlights the challenges in verifying Ethereum-like blocks within ZK-SNARKs. He questions whether Ethereum can introduce 'verify EVM execution in ZK' as a protocol feature, which would allow Ethereum's social consensus to handle exceptional situations and reduce the need for additional governance in the rollup ecosystem.
