Technology writer and researcher Emmanuel Awosika said, “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 shape up, and how do they relate to the endgame?”
Criticism of Ethereum’s Ivory Tower
Ethereum’s Rollups expansion goals
Contradictions on the journey
Restricted by decentralization
Vitalik: L1 direction is firm, you’re talking about a broader ecosystem
Emmanuel Awosika said, it’s crazy because a hundred different things are happening at once, we’re just moving on intermittently. If we really care about addressing the criticism of the Ivory Tower, we would be very, very focused on solving problems based on real feedback and showing that we care about bringing Ethereum to millions of people.
He gave an example. Are we going all out on Rollups expansion? Good. We also make sure 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 mental model of approaching upgrades is basically influenced by the idea of “doing everything to provide a massively scalable, secure, and decentralized rollup by a certain year.”
This means prioritizing improving data availability (PeerDAS and Danksharding), execution (EVM-in-EVM verification, L1 ZK-EVM, embedded Rollups, etc.), and interoperability (shared L1 sequencers, pre-confirmed bridging). This also includes investing in research to push us 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) that they are currently striving to become.
Emmanuel Awosika said, what’s the alternative? A very incoherent roadmap, everything feels very random.
Are we doing enshrined bridging to solve the liquidity fragmentation problem, or leaving it to the joint Rollups ecosystem? Are we doing L1 sequencers, or leaving it to others? Are we optimizing for better Rollups now, or leaving it to others? Are we dedicating ourselves to Rollups decentralized technology now or in the next 10 years? Are we expanding data availability to the maximum level now or delaying it for as long as possible? We just don’t know, the lack of a coherent vision for what Ethereum needs to do is basically weakening the ecosystem.
Emmanuel Awosika said, some might say “Isn’t creating a formal roadmap centralizing?” because they want to show virtue, and believe that decentralization is incompatible with creating a better, scalable, user-friendly chain. We all know this isn’t true, so seeing a continued lack of direction – and the negative second-order effects it produces – is very worrying. Too formal governance is just as bad as too informal governance; we are seeing this now.
Our plans should not be measured in centuries. They should be measured in months and years, and should have a clear timetable showing that we have engineers focused on the core protocol. Playing “pick your favorite project on the roadmap at each fork” (without considering specific goals) doesn’t feel ideal.
Vitalik doesn’t seem to agree that L1 lacks direction: “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 in the ecosystem.”
He believes Emmanuel Awosika’s issue is not with L1. He states that about 75% of the examples Emmanuel Awosika mentioned are not functioning on L1. They are challenges of a higher-level ecosystem construction and standardization. Enshrined bridging, Rollups decentralized technology, etc., are not L1 functions.
Having just a roadmap is not enough, we also need resources to execute it. ERC-7683 is good progress, Waku is good progress, but we need 10+ more of these types of things, and have a coherent concept explaining what is missing, who is building them, and ensuring they have the resources and drive to do so.
Rollups
Vitalik
Ethereum