As one of the industries with the fastest monetization of influence, for ordinary retail investors deep in the Web3 world, being able to follow the sales posts of various Alpha bloggers and KOLs in real time has almost become a necessary skill for tracking wealth passwords. .
So in the current encryption world, who is the most influential "carrying goods" king?
Although the following rendering of KOL's delivery of goods may not be rigorous, it is accurate to place Vitalik Buterin in the only position - as the absolute talker of the pan-Ethereum ecosystem, although Vitalik rarely "brings goods" directly, Every word and deed of the "clear brand" and "hidden milk" will have a great promotion effect on the market.
The recent surge in $ENS due to Vitalik’s words is a typical example. Therefore, this article aims to take stock of the development and current status of the projects/technical directions that Vitalik has “brought” in history, and try to summarize the reasons behind it and how they have affected and shaped it. Ethereum as we see it today.
Source: Vernacular Blockchain
The famous "preference" for ENS
It is no exaggeration to say that Vitalik "prefers" ENS.
He once publicly stated in an interview: "The Ethereum Domain Name Service ENS is the most successful non-financial Ethereum application to date."
As we all know, the full name of ENS, Ethereum Name Service, launched in 2017, is a decentralized domain name service based on Ethereum. Through a unique bidding mechanism, any user can register one (or more) for his or her Ethereum address through the bidding process. ) Ethereum domain name ending with ".eth".
Simply put, ENS can map a personal long and difficult-to-remember "Ethereum address starting with 0x" to a custom short address, such as satoshi.eth, vitalik.eth, etc. In this case, in a wallet that supports $ENS , users no longer need to copy and paste long addresses, and can directly use ENS domain names to bind various cryptocurrency addresses and receive cryptocurrency payments.
The nickname of Vitalik's X account has always been "vitalik.eth", which is equivalent to a long-term free advertisement for ENS, and also shows his support for ENS from the side.
Source: X.com
Since the first half of this year, Vitalik has directly exited the market and publicly "brought goods" several times, which has produced a strong stimulus to the price trend of $ENS in the secondary market:
First, on January 3, Vitalik forwarded ENS’ Layer2 data parsing solution and posted: “All Layer2 should run on the CCIP parser so that we can register, update and read ENS subdomains directly on Layer2, ENS Very important, it needs to be affordable." Then $ENS rose by more than 30% in 5 minutes, breaking through $12.
On May 21, Vitalik and ENS once again staged a rather dramatic "support" drama - the reason was that Vitalik gave an example of his support for cross-Layer2 standards and infrastructure in discussions with others about sequencers & intentions. views, which highlighted three points: "Key changes in Token transfer, ENS, and smart contract wallets (individuals and organizations)":
We need an open decentralized protocol for quickly transferring assets from one Layer 2 to another Layer 2 and integrating it into the default sending page of the wallet. Key changes to token transfers, ENS, and smart contract wallets are all in It can be easily implemented on Layer1, but it is very difficult on Layer2. The light client, basic reliability and proof system are also more secure and decentralized on Layer1, but they are far from enough on Layer2.
Overall, $ENS has risen from $8 to as high as $30 since January 3, a gain of nearly 300%.
What else did Vitalik “yell” about?
In addition to ENS, there is also a long list of projects and technical directions that Vitalik has “brought” in history.
Plasma
The first is of course Plasma. As the Ethereum expansion solution that Vitalik used to recommend the most, it is now rarely mentioned, and even most new users have never heard of it.
In August 2017, Vitalik and Joseph Poon jointly released the original idea of Plasma - a set of off-chain expansion solutions, which essentially transfers data and calculations (except deposits, withdrawals and Merkel roots) from Ethereum. It is detached from the main chain and placed on the chain for execution. At the same time, some key operating status data are regularly stored on the main chain to ensure ultimate security with the help of the Ethereum main chain.
However, because Plasma could not solve the data retention problem and was not conducive to migrating the contract status to Layer 1, it was eventually replaced by the new Ethereum expansion route represented by Rollup. Nowadays, there are so many Rollups that they have almost become Ethereum. The only mainstream option for expansion.
However, it is worth noting that since Rollup relies heavily on data availability on the main chain, Plasma completely bypasses the data availability problem and greatly reduces transaction fees, so the popularity began to recover again. At the end of last year, Vitalik Buterin successively published "Exit games" Articles such as "for EVM validiums: the return of Plasma" regard Plasma as a way to improve the scalability functionality of the chain using validity proofs such as zkSync and StarkNet.
This has also led everyone to re-examine Plasma's ability to minimize data availability constraints. It is expected that Plasma may once again play an important role in improving the performance of the Ethereum network in the future.
$RAI
In the stablecoin industry, Vitalik once published a special article explaining his views on stablecoin design, and believes that it can basically be divided into three different categories:
Centralized stablecoin.
A DAO-governed stablecoin backed by real-world assets.
Cryptocurrency-backed stablecoin with minimal governance.
The first two are represented by $USDT, $USDC, and $DAI respectively, while the third category specifically introduces the model of $RAI in detail, believing that $RAI avoids all connections with non-cryptocurrency financial systems, making it more Hard to attack.
Later, when participating in public events, Vitalik also expressed his belief that the rise of $RAI can solve the problem of Lido dominating the LSD ecosystem. He believed that "$RAI's radical governance may not need to go all the way. If the $RAI community adopts more active governance to support staking, Ethereum, and intentionally only accept non-dominant forms of staking Ethereum, that would be enough.”
Image source: Etherscan
However, as of the time of publication, on-chain data shows that the total supply of $RAI is only 1.65 million, and its market share among stablecoins is almost negligible.
SIWE、POAP、SBT
How do you prove who you are in the Web3 world?
Vitalik once wrote that ENS and others can help build an ecosystem around identity because "blockchains are valuable for identity applications because they are independent of institutions." In addition to ENS, SIWE, POAP, and SBT Also regarded by Vitalik as a key component in building an on-chain identity system:
The Sign In With Ethereum (SIWE) standard allows Web3 users to log in to (traditional) websites based on on-chain accounts;
POAP is used to issue tokens representing certificates;
Especially through the article "Decentralized Society: Searching for the Soul of Web3", Vitalik made the soul-bound Token SBT gradually enter more people's horizons and gradually become the actual carrier of Web3 digital identity - SBT can further achieve results while also proving It can detect traces on the chain, record the participation process, and has permanent and non-transferable Token attributes, which lays the foundation for building a one-to-one perfect Web3 identity system.
From this perspective, the core of Soul Binding Token SBT is actually to establish a native Web3 identity system from scratch for each Web3 user in the Web3 world, so that based on this identity system, in DeFi, NFT In addition to other applications, Web3 will be more widely expanded into diversified new application scenarios.
However, as the Web3 social trend subsides, SBT is currently only used as a representative certificate for decentralized identity, and has not yet ushered in large-scale on-chain adoption.
DVT
On December 28, 2023, Vitalik published an article discussing how to handle the huge number of signature loads in the Ethereum network without sacrificing decentralization. He mentioned the corresponding solution, which is to use DVT (distributed verifier technology). ) to build a decentralized pledge pool.
Because DVT allows multiple nodes to act as an Ethereum PoS validator, it can significantly improve security and decentralization. In November 2023, Lido actually began to trial the DVT solution to achieve a so-called decentralized validator network. Road – Powered by Obol Network and SSV Network.
Loopring/Taiko
As one of the early representative projects of the Rollup solution, Vitalik has publicly praised Loopring's solutions many times. For example, he recognized the Loopring protocol in discussions related to transaction performance, saying that it was combined with sharding to horizontally expand the functional solution. Dividing the Ethereum network into thousands of "islands", the network's transaction performance can theoretically reach 160,000 transactions per second.
Taiko, which has a deep connection with Loopring and has just launched its mainnet, was also recognized by Vitalik not long ago - on May 25, Vitalik Buterin promoted the first block on the Taiko mainnet as a block proposer, and on the The block postscript states:
"I'm excited to see Taiko being launched as a Based Rollup platform. Ethereum benefits from L2s taking many different approaches, and I appreciate that Taiko is one of the first to move in this direction." (I'm excited to see that Taiko is launching as a based rollup. Ethereum benefits from L2s taking a plurality of different approaches, and I appreciate them being among the first to go in this direction).
Source: Vernacular Blockchain
Farcaster
In September 2023, Vitalik's X account was hacked and a phishing link was posted to receive ConsenSys' Proto Danksharding commemorative NFT for free, causing the user to lose more than $690,000.
Later, Vitalik stated on the decentralized social media Farcaster that his X account had indeed suffered a SIM card hijacking attack. The reason may be that the mobile phone number was exposed when registering X Blue. He also said that he had uninstalled X and joined the Ethereum network. Address to control Farcaster account recovery.
Judging from the situation at the time of posting, Vitalik has indeed regarded Farcaster as his main social media base. He has posted more than 10 posts on Farcaster in the past week, but none on X. The latest one was on June 11 Reply to old post.
Source: X.com
The secret battle over Ethereum’s “legitimacy” behind the delivery of goods
Returning to the core issue, as a super public figure whose words and deeds have a decisive influence on the pan-Ethereum ecosystem and even the entire Web3 world, what are the considerations behind Vitalik's public "promotion of goods"?
There is no other reason. To a large extent, it is to maintain the "legitimacy" of Ethereum, or to ensure that the development of Ethereum does not derail or stall, and is committed to mapping out the ideal future - the further decentralization of Ethereum. And implement the blueprint of Mass Adoption.
Just from the ENS, Plasma, and Taiko mentioned above, we can clearly see a main line to maintain the legitimacy of Ethereum DA:
First of all, behind the ENS Layer2 data analysis solution that Vitaik actively promotes, it is required that the ENS service that extends functions to various Layer2 networks must use the orthodox Ethereum DA, that is, the DA must be placed on the Ethereum mainnet, thus choosing Celestia, etc. Layer 2 of third-party DA platforms are excluded.
Since ENS is a key component in the construction of the Ethereum identity system, it will be a non-financial application and infrastructure that Layer 2 cannot ignore when the Pan-Ethereum ecosystem realizes the influx of Mass Adoption traffic in the future.
Setting up the standard in advance that "If Layer2 wants to deploy ENS, it must put DA on the Ethereum main network" further enhances the opportunity cost of Layer2 choosing a third-party DA, and it has to carefully consider whose overall cost is higher.
The intention of Plasma is undoubtedly more obvious - in the context of the DA war, it completely avoids the problem of data availability and can greatly reduce transaction fees. Especially combining Plasma with ZK zero-knowledge proof, it just proves Plasma on the main chain. The effectiveness of the block reduces the dependence on the exit mechanism.
Finally, as the first implementation project of Based Rollup, the core highlight of Taiko is to realize the Rollup expansion function through Layer1 sorting - entrusting the sorting power (and derived sorting, MEV and other income) to Layer1, that is, all sorting and security are provided by Ethereum Layer 1, further enhancing the economic attractiveness and competitiveness of the Ethereum mainnet.
Behind all public actions, there are legitimate or improper (private or public) interests, and Ethereum and Vitalik are no exception. The Vitalik struggle can be seen as early as the beginning of the third-party DA debate set off by Celestia. Very rich experience.
There is an interesting analogy in the article "On the Impact of Vitalik and Various Roadmaps on the Ethereum Governance Process", that is, Vitalik actually plays a substantive "CTO" role in the Ethereum ecosystem to control the giant ship of Ethereum. Off track:
He is responsible for guiding the development process of Ethereum to be consistent with the planning directions of each "roadmap", and even has the final say on whether the development direction is in line with Ethereum's vision (regardless of whether he is willing to be so "arbitrary").
From this perspective, no matter how everyone usually ridicules the difference between Vitalik and Satoshi Nakamoto as the first two cryptocurrency/ecosystem founders, at least Vitalik is a very qualified project founder - working hard to maintain the legitimacy of Ethereum and always firmly Firmly control the giant ship of Ethereum to move in the direction that he (and some key figures) think is appropriate, and not derail or stall in the public chain competition.
summary
Vitalik is a human being, not a god. As long as you look at it from this perspective, you can clearly see the answers behind all questions.
For us ordinary users, it is enough to remember that Vitalik’s various research on Ethereum often contains the possibility of leading new hot spots, and to be able to keenly sense the main battlefield of future financial competition that may be hidden in it.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reproduced with permission from: "Deep Wave TechFlow"
Original author: Terry, Vernacular Blockchain
