Author: Pavel Paramonov
Compiled by: TechFlow
How to research and understand everything in cryptocurrency?
Basically, we need two key steps:
analyze
comprehensive
Imagine you are playing with Lego blocks. Normally you would assemble the blocks into a whole, but we are going to do the opposite process.
1. When you want to understand a topic, one of the best ways is to break things down into smaller parts to understand the function of each part.
From a scientific perspective, analysis is the detailed examination of the elements of the object of study.
Let’s say you want to learn how re-staking works, specifically in relation to @eigenlayer. By spending 10 minutes on Google to find the description of EigenLayer, you can list the main components of re-staking:
Actively Validated Services (AVS)
operator
Re-pledgee
assets
Of course, you can find other parts as well, but these are the main ones.
After breaking the structure into its main parts, it is important to find the relationship between each part:
AVS is a system that requires its own distributed verification semantics for verification.
An operator is an entity that helps run the AVS software.
Restakers entrust their assets to the operator.
Assets include native ETH or LST ETH.
Through these four points, we can understand how each major part is connected to each other, thus having a general understanding of re-staking.
2. Try to be skeptical and make everything seem unreasonable until proven otherwise
It is important to fully understand the topic you are studying by asking yourself questions.
If every service can be setup locally, why do we need AVS?
If restakeholders can decide which services they want to protect, why do we need an operator?
What happens if a malicious actor wants to cheat?
Why can re-stakers also deposit LST ETH? Aren’t there too many wrappers?
How exactly do assets protect the network?
Why can't I deposit stablecoins but only ETH?
The idea is to ask yourself as many questions as possible to clearly define the functionality of each part and its limitations. This is also why new startups are created to solve problems with existing solutions.
This is also why there are direct competitors, rather than protocols built on top of @eigenlayer’s foundation:
@symbioticfi supports any mix of tokens as collateral for re-staking (not just ETH).
@nektarnetwork More modularity for operators and AVS.
@ExocoreNetwork allows re-staking with multiple tokens on multiple chains.
By asking yourself more specific questions related to the main parts of your product, you will not only understand it better, but you will also be able to find potential solutions to loopholes and unsolved problems.
3. When you feel confident in your analysis, it’s time to rebuild the system from scratch using a comprehensive approach
You’ve asked yourself a lot of questions and probably broken down the main parts into smaller pieces.
For example, when you study how operators interface with AVS, you might learn:
Penalty conditions
Cryptoeconomic Security
OwnPod
Quorum
Now you have an idea of how everything works. The next step is to rebuild it from scratch.
From a scientific perspective, "synthesis" is about combining elements into a coherent whole, bringing together all that you have learned and trying to reconstruct what you originally broke down.
As a kid, I often disassembled computer components to learn about their features and why they were important.
This develops a great learning skill: if you want to understand something, take it apart and put it back together again.
Twitter English account:
https://x.com/TechFlow_Intern
