Danny Ryan, Ethereum Foundation: Key issues for Ethereum in 2023

原文标题：《 Reflection 2023  》

Danny Ryan is a fellow at the Ethereum Foundation

Qian Wen, ChainCatcher

After what I believe is the most important upgrade in the history of blockchain, Ethereum has successfully shifted its direction to extraction and primary expansion upgrades, with many critical tasks and upgrades to come in the years ahead. While the "Ethereum killer" lurches from bear market uncertainty and Bitcoin culture and technology languishes in a void, Ethereum is stronger than ever, and we continue to build, refine, think, and make an impact.

The technology road map ahead is long and complex, but I'm not worried about our execution and timing. Because we've proven that we can deliver at a high level, and confirmed that the Ethereum ecosystem is moving (and struggling) in the right direction, this has made Ethereum more resilient on all levels. Industry frauds abound, but Ethereum stands. Despite the deep bear market, Ethereum is still building and innovating. In an increasingly volatile global landscape, Ethereum has found a way to make an impact in key areas.

My reflections will focus more on survival issues -- L1 ecosystem health, capture, cartels, Tier 2 alignment with Ethereum, and so on.

1. Technology: The road ahead is long

Ethereum has shown that it can not only accomplish huge technical goals, but that it can do so in a largely decentralized manner. The merger is a unique achievement -- no other project has achieved such technical sophistication, high level of execution, and global decentralization.

Turn   POS  It took a little longer than any of us expected. When I first started working in EF  At work, Aya Miyaguchi  In   2018  Spring Nian asked me when we would be finished. POS  Work. My answer is " 8  months", and in the end it took longer for us to achieve it for a number of reasons, but we still managed to achieve a multi-tier, multi-client, resilient ecosystem and protocol that can improve the decentralization of pledges that other blockchains can't even achieve.

Take a quick look. Vitalik's roadmap document and you realize that there are still many long and complex years to go before the agreement is "done." Year,   10  Years). We should not be complacent about the delivery of the merger agreement, but rather use this momentum, expertise, tools and processes to address the many challenges that remain.

But what "done" means here is in every sense -- finding enough end state. status). Answer what is enough functionality, enough security, enough decentralization, and so on. The key is to be more clear, both ideologically and technically, about what needs to be optimized and what the minimum threshold is. Identifying these areas will help us set priorities and make the right tradeoff between complexity/functionality over the next few years, and I'll describe how this will benefit us in the solidification process later.

Current technical concerns

1.1, PoS  Evolution of

In proposing separation from Builder (PBS), LDM-ghost  Confirmation Rules, Single Slot Finality (SSF), Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE), Certificate of Trusteeship (PoC), Certificate of Execution (PoE), and Early   RANDAO reveal cuts and other aspects, there is a large number of research, interpretation materials to build, will Ethereum from. POS  Into its final, safest and most sustainable form.

Much of this has to do with reducing or eliminating playability, the pain points of cartels, the tragedy of the Commons (a social pitfall in which personal and public interests conflict over the allocation of resources), and the assumption of credit -- enforcing agreements even under extremely adverse circumstances. Although the network can certainly be restored eventually, it is important to ensure that the protocol can handle the maximum range of attack scenarios without interference.

1.2, in practice   DAS

Data Availability sampling (DAS) is an elegant mathematical solution for solving data availability problems. However, it is not easy to instantiate effectively and stably in the actual p2p network construction. In   2022  In 2010, many teams joined the effort to solve the problem -- both academic and practical engineering -- but much work remains to be done before an adequate solution can be reached.

The problem is not intractable, but the scope of the design is so large that it is difficult to quickly strike the right balance between complexity and robustness. If we're willing to compromise on decentralization and robustness. Off-the-shelf network components can be reused to work in the right cases. Given that an attack on this network structure would completely undermine the effectiveness of the chain, it is important to design not only operational systems, but systems that are as resilient as any other aspect of the protocol.

EIP-4844  It lays the foundation for expansion data and provides us with parameters. Compared to many other competitive upgrades, The order in which they will be introduced is still up for debate -- statelessness is the other obvious main contender. My hunch is that. DAS  Need more time to mature, in. 4844  (Stateless, safety improvement, PBS  Etc.) after   12  Focus on non-expansion upgrades for the next month, while observing the main net, working with more advanced myth technologies (e.g. episub, after a potential integration, will

2. MEV -- Pandora's Box

In the past 24  One of the core themes of the month is maximum extractable Value (MEV) -- the impact not only on the application layer, but also on the first layer of consensus and security. It's like opening Pandora's box. MEV  Turning what we think (and hope) is simple into something complex consisting of motivation, aggression, etc. MEV  Centralizing the influence of the validator community, rewarding cartels much more than before, directly incentivizing restructuring and bringing in a whole host of new ones. PvP  Player, complicating the simple user-verifier model.

MEV  Has an impact on what needs to be done before Ethereum is "done". The protocol must be aware of. MEV  Otherwise such incentives will destabilize the network and potentially destroy it. This calls for mitigation measures such as proposer-builder separation (PBS), MEV  Burnt, SSF,   PBS  Anti-censorship in the context.

Is to launch as soon as possible. MEV  I am torn between mitigation measures (the threat is real, after all) or more time to study the problem first and then come up with a solution. I worry that while our understanding of the problem area has made leaps and bounds, research is still in its infancy and that what we can build today will not meet Ethereum's long-term needs.

The reason I feel like maybe I can't "take it slow" is because MEV  The incentives inherent in the domain have led to the creation of a number of solutions, networks, and products that are often quickly adopted and have an impact. If we don't act quickly, third party solutions and activities will become, define, or potentially threaten our existing critical norms.

2.1 Complexity

This is a tricky question. Ethereum is complicated, and it's only going to get more complicated. I fear that this dynamic system is or will become too complex for us to handle, reason, or secure.

In all possible cases, modularity is critical to dealing with the complexity of a system. We are "stuck" in the separation between implementation and consensus, and many of the complexity issues are masked because we use them at the (consensus) network layer. lib  p2p, using strong, audited/verified libraries at the encryption layer.

As a result, each component can be modified individually, and the individuals and teams involved become more specialized, resulting in a more complex whole.

In addition, the capacity of the core protocol should not exceed the level required in any area, which would introduce unnecessary complexity.

Three, L1 coordination game

3.1. Development of L1

In the past. 5  Our ability to make complex upgrades to our protocols has grown by leaps and bounds over the course of the year, as has the number of teams and individuals involved. 5  More resilient, both in terms of software and ideas. Not going it alone remains key to the health of the agreement.

The client-side ecosystem of the consensus layer, the diversity of expertise, and the diversity of usage are great advances. The client-side ecosystem at the executive level starts with many asymmetries and takes more time to achieve a similar level of professionalism and reliability. But I believe we are ready. 2023  Years, change   80%  The main net quilt   GETH  Dominant phenomenon. In fact, the merger is an inflection point here.

3.2 Incentive measures

At the peak of the bull market, I and many others were very concerned about the incentives to work on Ethereum L1, both compared to Ethereum's application layer and L2, and compared to other L1 competitors. All alternatives have Token incentives that have high upside potential with highly liquid products.

During bull markets, valuations for liquid products are high. So we have actual turnover, as well as a more insidious and growing dissatisfaction with the vast difference between working on critical infrastructure and building on it. I'm not sure I said it clearly at the time, but looking back there was a mixture of bitterness and resentment at the vast wealth amassed by the L1 team. Regarding L1 alternatives, some claim that this misplaced incentive mechanism is the fundamental factor in the development of blockchain, and that L1 alternatives will always be the driving force to suppress and eliminate the old L1. These arguments were naive even at the time, but the impact and negative sentiment continues to grow.

There is a lot of positive movement in L1 development incentives. The one-year trial of the agreement conference is 20  Multi-team. 120  Several members raised the money. 1200  More than ten thousand dollars. Funded experiments with traceability of public goods may at least prove that some applications and L2 dependent software are usable and secure. Other funding mechanisms, such as   gitcoin  And   clr.fund  Continue to innovate to support public goods across the ecosystem. In addition, other funded experiments at the social level also show great promise, such as alternative pledge transaction fees /MEV  Split the contract (e.g., you pledge the transaction fee. 1%  Owned by your client).

3.3. Capture

There are a number of well-resourced, well-functioning entities out there that have an interest not only in the success of the Ethereum protocol, but also in controlling Ethereum. They don't seem to be showing bad faith at the moment, but they do have a lot of influence over the development of the agreement. To this end, L2, VC, trading platform and   dapp  Has been added to the L1 governance and development process. We are in a unique period where the number of stakeholders involved in Ethereum is growing and becoming clearer. But many areas of the agreement are, by almost any standard, inadequate and unsolidified. That makes the next few years very risky.

A few years ago, these interested, mature/well-resourced entities simply didn't exist or weren't considering "helping out" and joining. They are mainly. EF, the client team, and various independents in the core protocol dialogue. Eg. If a few years later (eg. ?   5  ?   10  ?) If all parties step in to help, the agreement may be more solidified, and interested parties will face fewer risks in helping.

In fact, ownership of critical infrastructure may be a long-term need for entities that depend on the health and stability of the Ethereum network. Now, ownership of infrastructure means a say in an earlier agreement. Ultimately, the malleable components of the protocol will become smaller and less important, referring to the elements that surround the core, such as network protocols, lightweight client-side communications, content delivery networks, and so on. But there are still huge interests to be had here, and it is still possible to manipulate agreements through less rigid, messy, human upgrades.

Given the growing number of interests emerging, one would like to find a balance where non-client developers/non-researchers have a say in management. It's hard to try to be a gatekeeper for everyone because, in fact, there's never really been a standard. You show up, do the job with integrity, and you'll be welcomed. New people come in with increasingly complex backgrounds and motivations, which can affect even the core maintainers due to increasing conflicts of interest -- the application /L2 investors, DAO  Represents, advises venture capital firms, enterprises, and offers a variety of products; Not to mention the impact of various geopolitical relationships as the global landscape becomes increasingly focused on cryptocurrencies.

I firmly believe that anything more formal than "developers write the code, users run the software" is a long-term existential threat to Ethereum. I have seen community calls for structures akin to political parties or lobbying interest groups. The more structures the process has, the more easily these structures are abused (captured) and become less likely to be removed (anti-curing).

Reaching consensus will not be easy, but we are working towards a more robust agreement that is adequate, robust, and guaranteed against capture. I suggest we in the future. 5  Add as little additional management structure as possible during the year, and focus more on soft things like alignment of mind, building a strong culture focused solely on escalation, and fostering two-way communication between developers and the expansion community in less formal forums. In other words, the governance process is a beast that can be managed, but not directly controlled. Individuals can influence the outcome here through guidance and thinking, and they can speak up if things really go off course, but Ethereum governance is a separate organism that no party can control at the moment.

3.4. Client -- Buy or build?

Even if the protocol evolution and upgrading process is confined to a "developers write code, users run software" model and no new formal structure is added, working on and maintaining the client side remains anyone's entry point into the conversation and process.

As we do in 2022  Years to see, this can be purchased through (Arbitrum -> Prysm) or   Paradigm -> reth), each with its own degree of difficulty, legality and sustainability. For example, buying a client is relatively straightforward, but legitimacy can be sacrificed, and the sustainability of the impact is extremely small - the client is made up of individuals, and until the individuals leave or defect, the acquiring company may only be able to change priorities and perspectives. Building a client is much more difficult, but much more legal and durable. In   2023  Both of these experiments are noteworthy.

Ethereum's development and governance rely on a security-first, consistent development culture. My assessment is that in the current configuration, one or two wildcard client teams or individuals will have a hard time changing paths or feature sets in what we call "capture," because the entire team has a limited ability to evaluate the pros and cons of a proposal and is constrained by its own philosophy to prioritize and move forward. What I worry about is situations where the new entrant diverges from the rest of the client team in terms of "consistency", or some existing, consistent client team leaves, or more client teams are acquired or created by less consistent entities in the next few years.

The multi-client ethos and ecosystem is one of Ethereum's superpowers, bringing more resiliency, legitimacy, and security through the introduction of numerous software and perspectives. This is one of the ways in which Ethereum brings all sorts of intelligence and ideas, and one of the main feedback loops that makes Ethereum powerful. I don't recommend putting restrictions on joining such informal client teams. Instead, I suggest keeping the door open and explicitly welcoming more highly unified client teams over the next few years. As we do this, it would be nice if we could also enhance the diversity of the Ethereum client team across geography and jurisdictions, as there are still some areas of the world that are too high and too low represented. Deepening global client representation will make Ethereum more resilient while further expanding its intellectual fountainhead.

Four, curing

Bitcoin has tarnished the idea of solidification. Solidified bitcoin is treated as a useless protocol by the Ethereum community, maintained with religious fervour by a group that does not follow any rational course that does not glorify Bitcoin's perfection or detract from other designs. This does raise the question of whether this is due to the peculiarities of the thing being solidified (Bitcoin, in this case) or the act of solidifying itself. My hunch is that religious anti-intellectualism stems from Bitcoin's inadequacy. The Bitcoin protocol is inadequate to meet its requirements, so the case for its proponents has become distorted in favor of its solidified state.

I believe that a protocol that is adequate for its task (in our case, secure, scalable, and sufficient capacity) can make a coherent argument for the solidification of its results. Therefore, the surrounding community does not need to fall into religious fanaticism to defend this choice. Furthermore, in our case, I believe that the fluidity and scalability of the layers supported by the solidified protocol allows the community to explore and optimize the higher layers, thereby maintaining intellectual engagement.

That said, some community members fear that without an evolving protocol, Ethereum will lose its glamour, fall out of intellectual reverence and tarnish many of the things that make it so special and so dynamic. I believe that as long as the second layer provides a sufficient richness of support, we can reap the benefits -- solidifying on a secure basis while still supporting active intellectual exploration and optimization at higher levels in the ecosystem. At least that's the dream.

4.1. Is curing stupid?

But is curing stupid? Is this really possible in the context of Ethereum? And how can curing be useful? Does curing have to be absolute, or can we "compare curing" to get most of the value? Finally, is sufficient solidification intent enough to protect us -- does the imminent threat of solidification keep the process on a critical path, ensure alignment is achieved, and strengthen the immune system against special interests and capture?

I do worry that it is unrealistic to achieve solidification in any relatively near future. There's a long list of upgrades and security improvements still to be done -- sharding, PoS  Evolution (SSLE, PBS  Etc.), security improvements (SSLE, monitoring games, proof of execution, etc.), stateless, ZK-EVM, anti-quantum cryptography, etc. Given the complexity of the task at hand and the average speed of getting online, it will take no less time. 5  Years, or even years. 10  In 2005, I worried that advances in cryptography and emerging problems would keep this list growing and changing for the foreseeable future.

So if this is an endless process, does the rate of change at least slow down? Perhaps a more effective definition of solidification is that it is a trend rather than an end result - it is getting harder, more reason, effort and time to incorporate any changes into the agreement. The agreement doesn't really solidify, and the best we can do is talk to solidify all the time. If we are always trying to solidify or be more solidified, rather than always expecting, longing, or seeking change, then the solidified conversation will be biased toward change skepticism. Enough scepticism may be enough to protect the deal, even as it (slowly) evolves.

In reflection this year, I've come to believe that this dialogue with solidification is not only the best we can do, but is also the best we can do in the unpredictable future to ensure that Ethereum does not evolve in a way that is partially conditioned and unable to cope with the future. But I also believe that the solidifiers -- those who prefer to slow things down, who prefer to change certain components only when absolutely necessary, and who fear the effects of increased complexity and change at the top -- are a tiny minority of both the core L1 process and the larger community today.

Such camps and ideas are not strong enough to be the necessary immune system in an agreement. While there are many respected voices in this camp to ensure that a minimum threshold exists, the arguments and merits of a "hardening agreement" must be articulated over the next few years so that the balance does not tip too much in the other direction at this critical and complex time of flux.

4.2. Alignment of L2 with Ethereum

One of the benefits of an L2-centric roadmap is that it allows L1 to hand off various design decisions (cross-domain communication, virtual machine selection and optimization, parallelization, state management, etc.) to "the market" rather than agonizing over picking and implementing a specific (and most likely not optimal) solution. This one is located in   The marketplace of ideas on top of Ethereum L1 can not only find good solutions in the short term, but can adapt to the growing and changing needs of the world for decades to come. Do you need parallelization? You can try the new L2.

Want a better virtual machine to support the necessary forms of validation? L2 can adapt to this change, or new L2 will emerge. This anticure is located on top of the relatively cured base layer, and really has the best of both worlds.

As for the health of the market -- the Ethereum L2 ecosystem is doing just fine. A few different. optimistic  EVM  Routes are under way, many different. EMV  Compatible/equivalent   zk-rollup  Are racing to market, along with some exotic and more experimental ones. rollup  Emerging from the margins (e.g.   Fuel). Some argue that the quest has become a bit bogged down -- focused on nothing more. EVM -- Expect more dramatic changes away from L1 architecture -- Solana-rollup, high parallelization   rollup  And so on -- but the market can still adjust to the success or failure of some current ideas. EVM  It seems to be a moat, and inside the moat, most people are building.

Given that all eggs are in the L2 basket, one thing I worry about is the alignment of L2, both in the short and long term. There are two main problems -- (1 ) L2 is parasitic and will eventually branch off into L1; (2 ) L2 is the Ethereum standard, where users interact but don't believe in Ethereum's values - decentralization, resistance to censorship, support for public goods, radical collaboration, etc.

The former is more of an existential question -- is there really any value in being anchored to the Ethereum safe zone? This is basically the argument of the L2 roadmap - these scalable environments that inherit Ethereum's security and native Bridges are valuable to users, and therefore to the developers, companies, and communities that build and maintain them.

I believe in this thesis -- achieving sufficient crypto economic security is difficult, and in an increasingly competitive environment, most blockchains will inevitably fail to achieve sufficient levels. Cryptographic economic security is a finite resource that is a function of the ongoing economic needs of these systems. So while I do expect some L2s to "give up" on Ethereum and try to leave - some may succeed, others will fail - I don't believe these will happen on a large scale, and a few L2s leaving doesn't shatter the secure-as-a-service theory of the crypto economy.

As for (2 ) I have more concerns. L2 will inevitably be the primary point of contact for the vast majority of users. In most cases, they will exist in, interact with, and bridge between L2s because they are safe and affordable. As a result, L2 became the facade of Ethereum. It may be safe, but is it decentralized, censor-resistant, true to Ethereum's values, and inspiring the world to constantly reimagine itself? At this point, the answer to these questions is clearly not yes.

风险投资公司踏足 L2 领域， Token 在任何地方被随意地分配给内部人员，大多数治理模式是财阀式的，不经通知就任意升级。更不用说大多数 L2 在他们的安全模型中做出牺牲，才能走向市场，希望不断迭代实现去中心化（例如，没有欺诈证明，单一序列器，不明确的紧急退出机制，等等）。

There's an interesting balance here. L2 can and wants to focus more on advertising and business development than the very aggressive ones in this area. alt-L1 competition. This leaves Ethereum L1 neutral in this regard, while the upper tier attempts a wide range of acquisition and check-in technologies. But it's not obvious that L2 will retain Ethereum's brand, value, and soul by default.

对健康的 L2 生态系统进行管理至关重要，需要多方面的努力才能做到——研究和促进安全的结构、实现 L2 的价值（让其展现本质，而非被描绘的样子），在可能的情况下对 L2 的治理风险、安全权衡、不良的 Token 分配、价值调整和其他新出现的问题进行探讨。

And we can't just focus on the negative, but celebrate the positive, the safe, the consistent. Today's Ethereum community has tremendous power in shaping the specifications that will define how the L2 movement will evolve for decades to come. We must ensure that L2 inherits not only Ethereum's security, but also its legitimacy.

summary

This article is an extremely myopic and biased view of things by the author. There are also many problems and even many success stories that the author of this article was unaware of or did not have the time to include.

In short, Ethereum is more powerful than ever. Community building core infrastructure, community layering expansion, and community construction have achieved amazing results. But significant challenges and risks remain.

Ethereum is alive and well. Please do your part to keep it that way.

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