What is trust neutrality? How does it bring true fairness to the blockchain ecosystem?

Recently, due to the market's upturn, there have been many token airdrop activities, but complaints about unfair token distribution by certain teams are often heard. It is time to revisit Vitalik's proposed solution four years ago, Credible Neutrality, as mentioned in this article. This solution aims to address the shortcomings of blockchain technology and bring more "fairness" to the ecosystem.

Developers are Often Questioned for Contributions More Than Miners

Imagine a scenario where a project announces a token airdrop as a reward, often allocating a portion of tokens to core contributors. While rewarding developers is entirely reasonable, sometimes people feel it is unfair, especially when these core contributors receive a larger share of the tokens.

Due to the lack of a clear measurement of what constitutes "contribution" and the absence of an open evaluation mechanism, incidents where other participants, usually regular users, feel unfairly treated are not uncommon.

Renzo's coin issuance controversy indirectly led to the detachment of ezETH.

Most reward programs, including Ethereum Foundation grants, Celestia, Avail airdrops, allocate token shares to contributing developers. Although project teams emphasize transparency and decentralization in the evaluation process, they are still subject to skepticism and suspicion from other stakeholders about potential bias and fairness in the evaluation process.

In a sense, miners also receive token rewards based on the size of their contributions, allocated according to the provided computational power and time. However, no one questions whether miners' earnings are reasonable. Why is that?

The issue lies in the lack of "credible neutrality" in the mechanism that rewards the latter.

Introduction to Credible Neutrality

What is Credible Neutrality?

The concept of credible neutrality was proposed by Vitalik in 2020, where V God believes:

If by merely observing the mechanism's design, it is easy to see that the mechanism does not discriminate against or oppose any specific individual, then the mechanism possesses credible neutrality.

A mechanism with credible neutrality treats everyone fairly, such that in a world where everyone's capabilities and needs differ significantly, it operates without bias towards specific individuals. For example:

• Granting 2 ETH to "anyone who mines a block" is credible neutrality; a team stating, "Bob will receive 1000 tokens because he wrote a lot of code," lacks credible neutrality.
• A mechanism where "any post marked as bad by five people" will not be displayed is credible neutrality; a mechanism that biases against blue-eyed people's posts is not credible neutrality.
• A government providing a 20-year patent protection mechanism for "any invention" is credible neutrality; allocating $1 billion for cancer treatment in a specific field is not credible neutrality.

A mechanism that does not favor specific individuals or groups can be considered neutral. If the neutrality of the mechanism can be easily ascertained through observation, the mechanism is deemed credible.

Blockchain can only bring decentralization and transparency, but fairness requires additional mechanisms to achieve, which is an essential element for building a community.

Neutrality is Relative

Neutrality refers to not favoring any party, showing no bias or attitude towards anyone. However, like decentralization, neutrality is not black and white but a relative comparison.

Block rewards favor those with special connections, access to hardware, and cheap electricity, strictly speaking, still favoring those with capital; however, compared to token issuances in blockchain projects, many tokens have already been pre-allocated to specific individuals. Therefore, the level of neutrality in the former case is relatively higher.

This is why private property systems are so effective: not because they are God-given rights, but because they are a "relatively" neutral mechanism that rewards value creation and can solve many problems in society, although far from all.

Trust is Necessary for Sustaining Systems

Not only neutrality but also trustworthy design is essential. For a mechanism to be trusted by a diverse group of people, trust is crucial.

Mechanisms like blockchain, political systems, and community platforms aim to facilitate large-scale, diverse group collaboration. For a mechanism to truly serve as this common foundation, every participant must see the mechanism as fair, and every participant must see others participating in the mechanism as fair.

Because every participant wants to ensure that "others will not abandon the mechanism the next day."

Verifying Miners vs. Verifying Project Developers

Returning to the initial question, this is why rewards for blockchain developers are more likely to be questioned than mining rewards, as verifying miners is relatively easier than verifying project developers. The mining mechanism of blockchain rewards is more credibly neutral than project developer rewards.

Using this example to illustrate a system designed to allow everyone to participate, it needs to meet credible neutrality to reassure participants and sustain operations. This is also a crucial element in the ideal Web3 infrastructure, in addition to blockchain decentralization, security, and efficiency.

Advocating a return to Cypherpunk! Vitalik's vision of blockchain and Ethereum's ideal societal model, integrating speculation and development.

How to Build a Credible Neutral Mechanism

Relying solely on blockchain cannot achieve a credible neutral mechanism; the system needs to meet four main rules:

• Do not embed specific individuals or groups in the mechanism.
• Open-source and verifiable execution results.
• Simplify the system.
• Avoid frequent changes in the mechanism.

Each is explained below.

Do Not Embed Specific Individuals or Groups in the Mechanism

This is the most critical point emphasized in the above explanation, not favoring anyone or anything. In a credible neutral mechanism, decisions should not stem from specific entities but from participants' behaviors.

In a free market, through market mechanisms, it can be discovered that the products Charlie offers are useless, while David's products are useful. Eventually, people stop buying Charlie's products, leading to his bankruptcy, while David profits and can scale up.

Most information output should come from participant behavior as input, not from hard-coded rules within the mechanism itself.

Open-Source and Verifiable Execution Results

The rules of the mechanism should be public and verifiable to ensure correct execution of rules.

In many cases, privacy of participants should be maintained, and it should be impossible to prove how they participated. Achieving both public verifiability and privacy can be addressed through zero-knowledge proofs.

Simplify the System

The simpler the mechanism, the less room there is to insert privileges for the target group.

If a mechanism has 50 parameters interacting in complex ways, it is easy to hide specific rules, but with only one or two parameters, it becomes much more challenging. Think about how much harder it is to cheat in rock-paper-scissors compared to online games.

Avoid Frequent Changes in the Mechanism

Changing the mechanism introduces complexity, making it more challenging to enforce the third rule and resetting the clock on ignorance, as others need to relearn the mechanism rules, potentially reducing neutrality.

Introducing Fairness into the World of Blockchain

Blockchain is only the foundation, not the entirety. While blockchain ensures decentralization and transparency of on-chain information, many other critical components are needed to build a more free and healthy Web3 ecosystem.

Credible neutrality is one of them. If a system exhibits neutrality accepted by all parties, it has the potential to encourage participants to engage more willingly in the ecosystem, ensuring smoother governance or development processes for the entire industry.

Even with blockchain recording and providing high transparency, ensuring fairness in the mechanism is essential for constructing a sustainable community foundation. Lack of a credible neutral mechanism undermines this effort.

If future projects consider how to conduct token issuance or service promotions more fairly, it may reduce many unnecessary disputes.

EigenLayer tokens without circulation feature spark community dissatisfaction.