Technology writer and researcher Emmanuel Awosika has stated, “Ethereum in 2024 feels like a scientific experiment: dozens of people running around causing things to explode, occasionally creating some good stuff, but never really having a clear direction. What are we even doing? How do the next 2-3 forks form, and what do they have to do with the endgame?”
Critique of Ethereum’s Ivory Tower
Expansion goals of Ethereum’s Rollups
Contradictions on the journey
Limitations imposed by decentralization
Vitalik: L1 direction is firm, you’re talking about a broader ecosystem
Emmanuel Awosika expressed, “It’s crazy because a hundred different things are happening simultaneously, and we’re just moving intermittently. If we really care about addressing the critique of the ivory tower, we would be very, very focused on solving problems based on real feedback and demonstrating that we care about bringing Ethereum to millions of people.”
He gave an example. Are we going all out for Rollups expansion? Great. We also ensure to go all out to make trustless Rollups expansion work. Literally, this should be one of our top priorities (if not the top priority). Our approach to the upgrade mindset is fundamentally influenced by the idea of “striving to deliver super scalable, secure, and decentralized rollup by a certain year.”
This means prioritizing enhancing data availability (PeerDAS and Danksharding), execution (EVM-in-EVM verification, L1 ZK-EVM, embedded Rollups, etc.), and interoperability (shared L1 sequencer, pre-confirmed bridging). This also includes investing research efforts to drive everything towards a fully decentralized rollup (better on-chain governance, multi-verifiers, formal verification, etc.). The world should see clearly that we have a solid plan to make rollup a reliable alternative to alt L1 (competing L1) (which they are currently striving to be).
Emmanuel Awosika stated, “What’s the alternative? A very disjointed roadmap, everything feels random.”
Are we doing enshrined bridging to solve liquidity fragmentation issues, or leaving it to the joint Rollups ecosystem? Are we working on L1 sequencer, or leaving it to others? Are we optimizing for better Rollups now, or leaving it to others? Are we committed to Rollups decentralized technology now or in the next 10 years? Are we expanding data availability to the maximum level now, or delaying it as much as possible? We just don’t know, and the lack of a coherent vision of what Ethereum needs is basically weakening the ecosystem.
Emmanuel Awosika remarked, “Some may say, ‘Isn’t creating a formal roadmap centralization?’ because they want to showcase virtue and believe that decentralization is incompatible with creating a better, scalable, and user-friendly chain. We all know this is not true, so seeing a continued lack of direction – and the negative second-order effects it produces – is very concerning. Too formal governance is as bad as too informal governance; we’re seeing that now.”
Our plans should not be measured in centuries. They should be measured in months and years, with a clear schedule showing that we have engineers focused on researching the core protocol. Playing “pick your favorite project on the roadmap at each fork” (without specific goals in mind) doesn’t feel ideal.
Vitalik doesn’t seem to agree with the lack of direction in L1 issue: “I don’t think that’s a big challenge. We have a very solid consensus on the development direction of L1. What we lack is a similar consensus on the infrastructure beyond L1 within the ecosystem.”
He believes the main issue Emmanuel Awosika raised is not in L1. He mentioned that about 75% of the examples Emmanuel Awosika gave do not apply to L1 but to a higher-level ecosystem building and standardization challenge. Enshrined bridging, Rollups decentralized technology, etc., are not L1 functionalities.
Having just a roadmap is not enough; we also need resources to execute it. ERC-7683 is a good progress, Waku is a good progress, but we need 10+ more of these types of things, and a coherent concept explaining what’s missing, who’s building them, and ensuring they have the resources and drive to do so.
Rollups
Vitalik
Ethereum