Ethereum's "external troubles" are precisely the potential breaking point for its delivery stability period.

Written by: Haotian

In the past few days, I've been attending talks and engaging in a lot of social interactions, and the information overload has been quite significant. Among this, there are Builder entrepreneurs expressing their frustration over the market's indifference to technical narratives, the excitement of secondary market FOMO MEME achieving results, and of course, many like me, who hold old-value coins and are increasingly unfamiliar and at a loss with the "industry atmosphere," yet still harbor a belief in the comprehensive development of technology, market, and products.

To be honest, I really want to find an answer to this contradiction, division, and sense of powerlessness, but I know it's impossible. So, I'll just share some fragmented thoughts that have been floating in my mind these days.

1) The main venue for Ethereum gathered a large crowd and featured various shares, but it was actually quite mediocre. The only somewhat eye-catching "Beamchain" was misinterpreted by the market. Besides the prevailing sentiment of disappointment regarding the secondary market, Ethereum has indeed reached a "delivery period" for a series of roadmaps and technical innovations, which means that mediocre innovations go unnoticed, and trivial issues are geometrically amplified into FUD.

2) Although this is the largest Devcon in Ethereum's history, there were one or two hundred events happening in Bangkok over the past few days, with no main thread. Ethereum became a platform, and the "performances" on stage went unnoticed. More people invested their enthusiasm into niche vertical tech sharing and other social entertainment side events like dancing and barbecuing. I basically focused on areas like ZK, chain abstraction, and BTCFi, which yielded much greater rewards than what I heard at the main venue.

3) The wind of MEME is rising, which is understandable. I also listen to some cultural attributions behind MEME coins. I often say, "Eliminating the meaningless itself is a form of meaning." With so many technical narratives failing to deliver and lacking a wealth effect (meaningless), isn't the community's choice of MEME the greatest significance?

I am very certain of the value of MEME in carrying community emotions and attracting new users, but the main stream of VC funding, Builder's investment of time, and Holder's MAXI investment in innovation cannot be interrupted. Otherwise, if project VCs all come to openly operate MEME, we will completely fall into financial nihilism. Do you think the Crypto industry will be on the verge of collapse?

4) The division within the Ethereum community is severe. On the surface, it appears to be a tug-of-war driven by the lackluster coin price sentiment, but essentially, it is a struggle between the "right-wing" that occupies core resources yet clings to a closed-off stance and the "left-wing" that is marginalized yet fiercely fighting back.

Ethereum has always maintained the strength of a monolithic single chain, so technological iteration and standard optimization naturally have orthodoxy, but it is also slow. Take Abstract Account as an example; a large number of AA Wallets emerged based on the 4337 standard, but after receiving grants, they accumulated little user base. With the arrival of the multi-chain era, a series of chain abstraction solutions have emerged, frequently challenging with more flexible, broader, and user-reachable construction concepts.

What to do? We can only rely on Vitalik's endorsement and the protection of technological orthodoxy, beautifying it as a contraction and preservation of technical purity, but in reality, it is a refusal to progress and reject new challenges. Don't forget, most solutions for chain abstraction also have the AA standard as a core primitive. This is what I refer to as Ethereum's internal troubles; similar situations exist in AVS, zkVM, and other directions.

5) I put "external troubles" in quotes because I believe this is not a real trouble but rather a potential breaking point for Ethereum's delivery stability period. For example, Optimism has been slow to launch the Fraud Proof system, hastily going live only to find that some chains in the OP Stack cannot synchronize.

What to do? There is the so-called external trouble based on AVS security consensus and ZK underlying technology to create ZK-based optimistic proofs to accelerate its implementation. For instance, the SNARKs that can only be launched in the Verge phase are very important for Ethereum, but before this, there were already various systems like Risc-V and zkMIPS offering generalized zkVM solutions. Moreover, while it is still unknown whether the AVS security consensus paradigm provided by Eigenlayer can be implemented, its financial attributes complement the serious delivery challenges faced by Ethereum.

I don't understand why Vitalik doesn't appropriately advocate for the AVS mechanism, which essentially does not deviate from Ethereum's decentralization. On the contrary, AVS can integrate most of the external innovative development forces into the Ethereum ecosystem. In my view, zkVM, chain abstraction, and PayFi are three emerging "rebel" forces gathering at the margins, firing at the high walls built by Ethereum. This is what I mean by internal troubles and "external troubles." If we consider these innovative forces as external troubles, then what exactly is Ethereum guarding?

6) I see many people not understanding 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 can simply enjoy the benefits.

The current situation is that the Ethereum ecosystem is struggling to turn around, lacking flexibility. This means that everything Ethereum faces and is trying to solve can actually find corresponding solutions in the market. I am particularly interested in the interactivity operability conference for Ethereum L2, eager to know how these layer 2s, each with their own positions, will "align." However, as expected, this discussion is akin to a lengthy yet meaningless meeting between two departments in a company that keep shifting blame, resulting only in a sense that everyone is busy doing something.

When will this interactivity operability within the walled garden balance the interests of all parties internally, and when will it truly land to benefit application developers and users? These remain unknowns.

7) Regarding CEX exchanges, the offline gatherings I've attended have been filled with conspiracy theories. I rarely analyze issues from a conspiracy theory perspective; perhaps I am too naive. However, from a business logic perspective, I can somewhat understand why MEME can replace VC coins as the new favorite of exchanges. The complex aspects of capital accumulation, liquidity exit, and cost efficiency behind this are too extensive to elaborate on, but fundamentally, it all boils down to interests.

Faced with the daily expansion of on-chain TXs and the shrinking trading volume and user loss of their mainstream circulating coins, exchanges will naturally make some choices that cater to their own interests. At this point, shouting for exchanges to lead the industry's value orientation is powerless and futile. Anyway, the market's choices are always correct; if they are wrong, they will be corrected. I just hope that most friends do not become cannon fodder in this organizational game of confrontation behind the scenes, both on-chain and off-chain.

That's all.

I have said enough. Although each point could be elaborated on extensively, after a few days of exploration, the broadening of my horizons and the fatigue within me coexist simultaneously. Positive feedback and negative emotions—who will win? I tend to let their forces cancel each other out, so my inner belief in Crypto can play its role. Oh, I haven't heard anyone mention the word "faith" in a long time.

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