Is Ethereum the ivory tower of decentralization curse? Vitalik: L1 development has solid consensus

Technology writer and researcher Emmanuel Awosika stated: "Ethereum in 2024 feels like a science experiment: dozens of people running around making things explode, occasionally creating something good, but never quite having a clear direction. What are we even doing? How the next 2-3 forks shape up and their relation to the end game."

Critique of Ethereum's Ivory Tower

Emmanuel Awosika argues that it's crazy because a hundred different things are happening at once, and we're just sort of meandering. 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 showing that we care about bringing Ethereum to millions of people.

Goals for Ethereum's Rollups Expansion

He gives an example. Are we going all-in on Rollups expansion? Great. We also ensure we're going all-in on making trustless Rollups expansion work. Literally, this should be one of our biggest priorities if not the biggest. We're close to upgrading our mental model to basically be influenced by the idea of "try to provide super-scalable, secure, and decentralized rollup by such and such year."

This means prioritizing improving data availability (PeerDAS and Danksharding, executing EVM-in-EVM verification, L1 ZK-EVM, embedded Rollups, etc.) and interoperability shared L1 sorter, pre-confirmed bridging. This also includes putting research work into everything that drives us towards a fully decentralized rollup – better on-chain governance, multiple validators, formal verification, etc. The world should clearly see we have a solid plan to make rollup a reliable alternative to alt L1 competing L1s they're currently striving to be.

Contradictions on the Journey

Emmanuel Awosika says, what's the alternative? A very disjointed roadmap, everything feels very arbitrary.

Are we doing enshrined bridging to solve liquidity fragmentation or leaving it to the unified Rollups ecosystem? Are we doing L1 sorting or leaving it to someone else? Are we optimizing for better Rollups or leaving it to others? Are we dedicating the next 10 years to decentralized Rollups technology now or in the future? Are we expanding data availability to the maximum level now or delaying it as long as possible? We just don't know, and the lack of a coherent vision of what Ethereum needs to do is fundamentally weakening the ecosystem.

Constrained by Decentralization

Emmanuel Awosika says, some may say "is creating a formal roadmap not centralization?" because they want to showcase virtue and believe decentralization is incompatible with creating a better, scalable, and user-friendly chain. We all know it's not true, so seeing a continued lack of direction – and the negative second-order effects it produces – is very worrying. Too formal governance is as bad as too informal governance; we're seeing that now.

Our plans shouldn't be measured over centuries. They should be measured in months and years, and there should be a clear timetable showing 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 very ideal.

Vitalik: L1 Direction Firm, You're Talking about a Broader Ecosystem

Vitalik doesn't seem to agree on the issue of L1 lacking 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 for the ecosystem."

He believes Emmanuel Awosika's focus isn't on L1. He states that ~75% of the examples Emmanuel Awosika brings up don't apply to L1. It's a higher-level ecosystem construction and standardization challenge. Enshrined bridging, decentralized Rollups technology, and others aren't L1 functionalities.

Just having a roadmap isn't enough; we need resources to execute it. ERC-7683 is good progress, Waku is good progress, but we need 10+ more of these kinds 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.