Ethereum’s “external troubles” are precisely the potential breaking point for it to deliver a stable period.
Written by: Haotian
These past few days have been filled with lectures at conferences and a lot of socializing, so the amount of information I've absorbed has been quite overwhelming. There are Builder entrepreneurs who are helpless about the market not buying into their technical narratives, as well as the excitement and joy of the results achieved by the secondary Fomo MEME. Of course, there are more valuable old coin holders who, like me, believe in the comprehensive development of technology, market, products, etc., but are increasingly unfamiliar and overwhelmed by the "industry atmosphere."
To be honest, I really want to find an answer to this contradiction, division and powerlessness, but I know it is impossible. I will just share the random thoughts that have been floating in my mind these days.
1) A large number of people gathered at the main venue of Ethereum, and there were sharing sessions on various aspects, but in fact, there was nothing good. The only eye-catching one, "Beamchain", was misunderstood by the market. In addition to everyone's emotions about the secondary market not being as good as expected, Ethereum itself has indeed reached the "delivery period" for a series of roadmaps and technical innovation narratives, which means that mediocre innovations are ignored, and small problems are magnified exponentially.
2) Although this is the largest Devcon in Ethereum’s history, there are about 100 or 200 events in Bangkok these days, but there is no main theme at all. Ethereum has become a stage, and no one is interested in the "performance" on the stage. More people are enthusiastic about sharing vertical technologies on the edge, and other social entertainment side events such as disco and barbecue. I basically set the main theme in ZK, chain abstraction, BTCFi and other directions. The gains are much greater than what I heard at the main venue.
3) MEME is blowing all the winds, which is understandable. I will also listen to some cultural attributions behind the MEME coin. I often say that "eliminating meaninglessness is a kind of meaning in itself." There are so many technical narratives that cannot be delivered and there is no wealth effect (meaninglessness). Isn’t the community’s choice of MEME the greatest significance?
I am very sure of the value of MEME in carrying community sentiment and attracting incremental users, but the innovative theme of mainstream VC investment, Builder investing in time, and Holder investing in MAXI cannot be interrupted. Otherwise, the project VCs will openly manipulate MEME and completely fall into financial nihilism. Do you think the Crypto industry will collapse?
4) The Ethereum community is severely divided. On the surface, it seems to be an emotional split over the weak price of the currency, but in essence, it is a tense confrontation between the "right wing" who occupy core resources but stick to their closed-mindedness and the "left wing" who have always been on the margins but fight hard.
Ethereum has always been maintaining the strength of the Monolithic single chain, so the technical iteration and standard optimization are naturally legitimate, but also slow. Take Abstract Account as an example. A large number of AA Wallets have emerged based on the 4337 standard, but they did not accumulate many users after receiving Grants. When they found that the multi-chain era had arrived, a number of chain abstract solutions emerged, which frequently challenged the construction concept of being more flexible, broader, and more accessible to users.
What can we do? We can only rely on Vitalik’s selection and technical orthodoxy to protect ourselves, and call it shrinking and protecting the purity of technology, but in fact it is just not making progress and rejecting new challenges. Don’t forget that for most chain abstraction solutions, the AA standard is also the core primitive. This is what I call Ethereum’s internal troubles. In addition to chain abstraction, similar situations also exist in AVS, zkVM and other directions.
5) I put quotes around Ethereum’s “external threat” because I think it is not a real threat, but a potential breaking point for Ethereum to deliver a stable period. For example, Optimism has been slow to launch the Fraud Proof system, and after it was hastily launched, it was discovered that some chains of the OP Stack could not be synchronized.
What to do? There are so-called external threats that make optimistic proofs of ZK based on AVS security consensus and ZK underlying technology to accelerate its implementation; for example, SNARKs, which can only be launched in the Verge stage, is very important to Ethereum, but in fact, before that, there have been various system zkVM general solutions such as Risc-V and zkMIPS. For another example, although it is still unknown whether the AVS security consensus paradigm provided by Eigenlayer can be implemented, its superimposed financial attributes are exactly complementary to the current situation of Ethereum, which is facing serious delivery difficulties.
I don’t understand why Vitalik doesn’t call out the AVS mechanism. It doesn’t deviate from the decentralization of Ethereum. On the contrary, AVS can integrate most of the external innovative development forces into the Ethereum ecosystem. In my opinion, zkVM, chain abstraction, and PayFi are three “rebel” forces that are gathering sparks on the edge and firing at the high walls of Ethereum. This is what I call internal troubles and “external troubles”. If these innovative forces are regarded as external troubles, then what is Ethereum protecting?
6) I see that many people do not understand Ethereum’s alignment and contraction strategy. Indeed, when a decentralized organization reaches such a scale, everything should be left to the community to confront, conflict, and evolve on its own, while Ethereum only needs to sit back and enjoy the fruits of its labor.
The current situation is that the Ethereum ecosystem is in a state of difficulty in turning around and lacks flexibility, which means that everything Ethereum faces and is solving can actually be solved in the market. I paid special attention to the Ethereum L2 interoperability meeting, and I was curious about how these layer2s with their own positions would "align", but as expected, this discussion was like a long but meaningless meeting between two departments in the company that were blaming each other, and the result was just that everyone felt that they were doing something.
It is unknown when the interoperability within this walled garden will be able to balance the interests of all parties within it, when it will be truly implemented, and when it will benefit application developers and users.
7) Regarding CEX exchanges, all I hear at offline gatherings are conspiracy theories. I rarely analyze issues from a conspiracy theory perspective, perhaps because I am too naive. But from a business logic perspective, I can understand why MEME can replace VC coins and become the new favorite of exchanges. I won’t go into the complex fundraising, liquidity withdrawal, cost effectiveness, etc. behind this, but in essence, it’s all about interests.
Faced with the daily expansion of TXs on the chain, the shrinking transaction volume and user loss of their own mainstream circulating coins, exchanges will naturally make some choices that cater to their own interests. At this time, the call for exchanges to lead the direction of industry values is powerless and useless. Anyway, the market's choice is always right. If it is wrong, it will be corrected. I just hope that most friends will not become cannon fodder in this game of confrontation organized behind the chain and off the chain.
The end.
That's all I have to say. Although I can say a lot about each content, after a few days of browsing, my horizons have been broadened and my heart is exhausted. Who will win between positive feedback and negative Emo? I tend to let their positive forces cancel each other out, so that my inner Crypto faith will come into play. Oh, I haven't heard people say the word "faith" for a long time.
